Johnston, Wayne 1958-

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Johnston, Wayne 1958-

(Wayne Gerard Johnston)

PERSONAL: Born May 22, 1958, in Goulds, Newfoundland, Canada; son of Arthur Reginald (a civil servant) and Genevieve (a secretary; maiden name, Everard) Johnston; married Rosemarie Patricia Lang-hout (a professor of history), 1981. Education: Memorial University of Newfoundland, B.A., 1978; University of New Brunswick, M.A., 1984.

ADDRESSES: Home—148 Briar Hill Ave., Toronto, Ontario M4R 1H9, Canada. Agent—McDermid & Associates, 83 Willcocks S., Toronto, Ontario M5S 1C9, Canada.

CAREER: Writer, novelist, and journalist. St. John's Daily News, St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada, reporter, 1979–81; freelance writer, 1981–.

AWARDS, HONORS: First prize, Newfoundland Arts and Letters competition, 1982; W.H. Smith/Books in Canada First Novel Award, 1985, for The Story of Bobby O'Malley; Air Canada Award for Best Young Writer, 1987, for The Time of Their Lives; Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award for Best Atlantic Novel, for The Divine Ryans and for The Colony of Unrequited Dreams; Governor-General's Award nomination, Giller Prize nomination, and Canadian Authors Association Award for Fiction, all for The Colony of Unrequited Dreams.

WRITINGS:

The Story of Bobby O'Malley, Oberon Press (Ottawa, Ontario, Canada), 1985.

The Time of Their Lives, Oberon Press (Ottawa, Ontario, Canada), 1987.

The Divine Ryans, McClelland & Stewart (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1991, Anchor Books (New York, NY), 1999.

Human Amusements, McClelland & Stewart (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1994.

The Colony of Unrequited Dreams, Knopf (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1998, Anchor Books (New York, NY), 1999.

Baltimore's Mansion (memoir), Knopf Canada (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1999, Doubleday (New York, NY), 2000.

The Navigator of New York, Doubleday (New York, NY), 2002.

Also author of screen adaptations of The Divine Ryans and Human Amusements.

Contributor of short stories to anthologies, including The Original Six, 1995. Contributor of poems and stories to magazines. Poetry editor of Fiddlehead, 1984–86.

SIDELIGHTS: Wayne Johnston's novels are frequently set in his native Newfoundland, giving readers a vivid sense of that place and its people. His first book, The Story of Bobby O'Malley, is the fictional reminiscence of a boy who was raised in a community near St. John's, Newfoundland. "Johnston's hero," wrote William French in the Globe and Mail, "must overcome not only the pains of growing up, but the added stresses of growing up in a closed society, away from the mainland and the mainstream." Bobby's father is an eccentric television weatherman, and his mother is an intensely devout Catholic. The humor that the author injects into his characterizations endears Bobby and his family to the reader and allows, according to French, "a glimpse of a fairly hermetic society at a time of transition, [which] enables us to see Newfoundlanders in a new way." The reviewer considered Johnston's novel to be "an honorable addition" to the province's already distinguished literary tradition.

Also set in an isolated Newfoundland village outside of St. John's, Johnston's second novel, The Time of Their Lives, is much bleaker than the comic Story of Bobby O'Malley. In a review of The Time of Their Lives for the Globe and Mail, French asserted that the tale of three generations of a Newfoundland family "is claustrophobic, but Johnston clearly intended it to be. He wants us to share the suffocatingly small universe of his characters, and he succeeds too well; reading it isn't a comfortable experience." Ever-present tension among kin is exacerbated when a son who moved to Ontario returns to his hometown with a wife and children. The relatives reject them, prejudiced against the wife because she is not a Newfoundland native. Unable to make peace with his father, the husband and his family return to Ontario. "Despite our resistance to the characters' unappealing natures and unfortunate circumstances," French ventured, "Johnston portrays these characters with great skill, and the story grips us with its power."

Johnston's third novel, The Divine Ryans, is lighter in tone than The Times of Their Lives. It is, according to a Publishers Weekly reviewer, "a hilarious sendup of a strict Catholic family [that] crackles with black Irish humor while gently touching the heart." The central figure and narrator is Draper Doyle Ryan, a nine-year-old who explains that his family is known as "Divine" because so many of its members have taken religious vows. Following the unexpected death of his father, Draper and his mother and sister move in with Aunt Phil, a tyrannical housekeeper and religious bully. Phil and her brother and sister—a priest and a nun—terrorize the bereaved family with their strange brand of love, while the fallen-away Uncle Reg provides some relief with his witty digs at the church and its members. "Although Johnston produces numerous sidesplitting passages, he has a deeper plan here than merely to caricature religious zealotry," commented the Publishers Weekly writer. A long-buried secret helps to free the family from the clutches of Aunt Phil, in what is a nearly a "perfect blend of irresistible humor and subtle pathos."

Johnston tried a new setting in Human Amusements, a comic story of a Toronto family during the 1960s. Narrator Henry makes his debut at age seven in a children's television show written, produced, and hosted by his mother. The show's phenomenal success isolates the family, and that condition only becomes more pronounced when the mother creates another, even more successful, program for Henry to star in when he reaches the teenage years. Diane Turbide noted in her Maclean's review that the book is "comic yet oddly claustrophobic," focusing as it does on just three characters. She added that "Johnston has a gift for comedy."

A famous Canadian provided the inspiration for the novel The Colony of Unrequited Dreams. Joey Small-wood was a diminutive, fierce politician who became the first premier of Newfoundland. Maclean's reviewer Sandra Gwyn noted that it was bold of Johnston to turn Joey Smallwood into a fictionalized character, for "this five-foot, six-inch colossus … was such an overwhelming phenomenon that even Tolstoy might have had a tough time with him." Gwyn judged that ultimately, Johnston falls short of his mark, yet she allows that the book does contain some masterful sections. John Bemrose in Maclean's acknowledged that "some reviewers have complained that Johnston fails to catch the real Joey Smallwood, but the book's best passages lovingly reflect something even more important: the mythic vibrancy and humor of the people of [Newfoundland]." Booklist reviewer Grace Fill lauded The Colony of Unrequited Dreams as "sweeping historical drama, hilarious satire, mystery—this story is big both in length and in scope."

Johnston steps away from fiction and into Newfoundland history and family memoir with Baltimore's Mansion, the story of three generations of his family as they settled the Avalon peninsula and learned to live in the rugged landscape and unforgiving environment of Newfoundland. He describes his grandfather's days of making a dwindling living as a blacksmith, while his father became a codfish industry inspector for the Fisheries of Canada. He relates his own experiences growing up in a country that "turns a passion for place into family commitments and political ties," noted reviewer W.H. New in the Journal of Modern Literature. Johnston also looks at the bitter political turmoil that occurred in 1948 when Newfoundland voted to confederate with Canada rather than become an independent country, which his father and others who supported the creation of an independent nation wanted. The book's title refers to Lord Baltimore, an Englishman who founded the community of Ferryland on the Avalon peninsula near Johnston's home. After one harsh and nearly deadly winter on the peninsula, Lord Baltimore hastily returned to England, leaving his mansion to crumble. Johnston's forebears stayed, however, and learned to thrive in the difficult climate, the decaying mansion of their British founder symbolic of their own endurance and determination. Though Library Journal reviewer Judith Kicinski found the book's descriptions of physical hardship and political travail to be "slow going," Johnston's "vivid and often lovely writing, however, does entice." The "signature qualities so loved in his novels are only heightened" in the story of his own and his ancestors' lives, noted reviewer Grace Fill in Booklist. Reviewer Margaret Mackey, writing in Resource Links, called the book "a pleasure to read from beginning to end." Johnston "has an interesting story to tell, and presents it with great skill," observed a reviewer in the Atlantic Monthly.

The Navigator of New York brings Johnston back to historical fiction. Central to the story is the fierce competition between Admiral Robert Peary and Dr. Frederick Cook to become the first to reach the North Pole. Protagonist Devlin Stead is a Newfoundland orphan raised by his aunt and uncle, growing up in the wake of what he has always believed was his mother's suicide and his father's disappearance and presumed death during an early polar exploration. After receiving a series of astonishing letters from Cook, Devlin is invited to join the explorer in his home in New York, where the lonely Newfoundland boy will learn much more about his own and his parents' background, and their inseparable connection to Cook. Captivated by Cook, Devlin becomes embroiled in the man's furious attempts to beat Peary to the Pole, and the apparent defeat of Cook turns out to be not what it seems. A Publishers Weekly contributor noted that Johnston offers "a captivating narrative that delves into both the noble and the seedier aspects of the human need to discover and explore." The novel is "generously stuffed with crisp writing, rich characterizations, and haunting descriptions of the harsh beauty of the Arctic," commented a Kirkus Reviews critic. Kicinski, in another Library Journal review, offered similar comments, stating that the physical environment, atmosphere, and harsh beauty of arctic exploration are "splendidly evoked" within the novel. "Johnston is an accomplished storyteller, with a gift for both description and character, which he uses masterfully here," commented Kristine Huntley in Booklist. Reviewer Brett Grainger, writing in Toronto Life, called Johnston "Newfoundland's most important author."

Johnston once told CA: "I have greatly admired the Russian novelists and may have been influenced by them. I believe that the best writing in Canada has come from the 'regions,' not from the cities."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Atlantic Monthly, July, 2002, review of Baltimore's Mansion, p. 97.

Booklist, May 15, 1999, Grace Fill, review of The Colony of Unrequited Dreams, p. 1668; June 1, 2000, Grace Fill, review of Baltimore's Mansion, p. 1836; October 15, 2002, Kristine Huntley, review of The Navigator of New York, p. 386.

Globe and Mail (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), February 15, 1986, William French, review of The Story of Bobby O'Malley; January 9, 1988, William French, review of The Time of Their Lives.

Journal of Modern Literature, summer, 2000, W.H. New, review of Baltimore's Mansion, p. 565.

Kirkus Reviews, August 15, 2002, review of The Navigator of New York, p. 1164.

Library Journal, May 1, 2000, Judith Kicinski, review of Baltimore's Mansion, p. 112; September 15, 2002, Judith Kicinski, review of The Navigator of New York, p. 91.

Maclean's, June 13, 1994, Diane Turbide, review of Human Amusements, p. 44; November 9, 1998, Sandra Gwyn, "Conjuring Smallwood: A New Novel Brilliantly Evokes an Era, if Not Its Main Protagonist," review of The Colony of Unrequited Dreams, p. 85; December 7, 1998, John Bemrose, "Telling Tales in Canada," review of The Colony of Unrequited Dreams, p. 69.

Publishers Weekly, June 14, 1999, review of The Divine Ryans, p. 46; August 26, 2002, review of The Navigator of New York, p. 38.

Resource Links, October, 2001, Margaret Mackey, review of Baltimore's Mansion, p. 57.

Toronto Life, September, 2002, Brett Grainger, "Wayne's World," profile of Wayne Johnston, p. 8.