From language experiment to enduring literary voice

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This article was published 07/11/2024 (563 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

For more than 40 years, Armin Wiebe has been mayor of Gutenthal, ruling with a soft fist and a Tolkien-esque handling of regional dialect, a middle-province mishmash topped with a “mild additive” he refers to as Flat German — a colloquial concoction that marches to the beat of its own trommel.

The son of a school teacher who by 1980 was a burgeoning writer of short prose, poetry and fiction, the Altona-raised Wiebe became an educator in his own right, commuting daily to the Elie Hutterite colony to teach in a one-room schoolhouse.

“That reawakened the language inside of me that I’d been away from for about a decade,” he recalls Wednesday.

Moving among linguistic modes, shifting to keep up with the dialectical time-signatures and pronunciations associated with High and Low German, Wiebe recognized the potential for fiction.

“I decided to do an experiment with language,” he says, noting that at the time he was a student of creative writing at the University of Manitoba, learning from Robert Kroetsch and Ed Kleiman.

“I still remember how I started, though I had no idea where I was going.”

In his head, a Low German expression bounced about. “So yeti daut dann emma,” which literally translates to “So goes it, then always.”

“I wrote those words down and then I had to add to it. Set on a farm, I hear cows mooing and before the bottom of the page, I had invented Yasch Siemens, who became the narrator of my first novel.”

At the time, Wiebe was part of a creative writing group that also included Sandra Birdsell, Victor Enns, Brian MacKinnon and Jake MacDonald, all of whom studied under Kroetsch.

“He was a novelist and poet originally from Alberta, and he very much encouraged us to write about the Prairie, about where we are, and that we didn’t have to be provincial in doing it,” he says.

Each meeting, a member brought a selected piece to share; when Wiebe’s turn came, he brought Yasch and another character, Oata Needarp, to the table.

The reception was strong. Soon, Andris Taskans — the publisher of a defunct periodical called Writers News Manitoba who went on to found Prairie Fire magazine, the Thin Air Writers Festival and the Manitoba Writers’ Guild — gave Wiebe “my big breakthrough.”

“He published it and that was the first opportunity people had to read that voice in print.”

Wiebe continued to develop the Gutenthal world, creating in Siemens a young man destined to either learn lessons or ignore them. Soon, he had the rough draft of The Salvation of Yasch Siemens, a coming-of-age novel first published by Turnstone Press in March 1984.

“The book was written from Yasch’s point of view, so it was very male, and he was almost misogynistic at times, reflecting the view of other young men in the late ’50s and early ’60s,” Wiebe says.

After an initial print run of 2,000 sold out, the novel had three reprints before year’s end, earning spots on the shortlist for Books Canada’s Best First Book Award and the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour.

“A few years later I was at a conference and the men kept coming up to me and saying how much they liked Yasch and the women told me how much they loved Oata, and she turned out to be a more interesting character for me,” says Wiebe, who increasingly centred her voice as the Gutenthal saga played out.

Wiebe was asked after Yasch’s publication to contribute to a book of Manitoba humour.

“I knew what they were after, so I went back and invented another character, Corny the Snoop, who shows up again in my novel Murder in Gutenthal, and then I came back to Winnipeg and had the notion for another novel using that setting. So I went to that world for my first play, The Moonlight Sonata of Beethoven Blatz.

“Kim McCaw, the director, had encouraged me to put that onstage and eventually, that led me to The Recipe.”

The Recipe, which has its world première tonight as the season-opening production of the Warehouse program, is a new concoction from Wiebe, starring the characters who have occupied his imaginary town since that first linguistic experiment in 1980.

The show is directed by Ardith Boxall, the former artistic director of Theatre Projects Manitoba, the co-producing company.

Bringing the story of small-town crushes and big-time life decisions to light are a quartet of Winnipeg actors.

Playing Siemens is Toby Hughes, a reliable stage presence known for his work as a comedic actor and as an improviser with Outside Joke. Amanda Shymko, a graduate of the University of Winnipeg’s acting honours program, makes their RMTC and TPM debut as Oata Needarp. Aaron Pridham makes his fourth RMTC appearance and first with TPM as Pug Peters, while Rhea Rodych-Rasidescu, who started working on The Recipe during its workshop stage in 2021, plays Sadie Nickel, the target for Yasch’s affection.

Wiebe is satisfied that what started with a single line in his head is still reverberating today, especially because he never expected anyone to read it.

“When you’re first writing, you’re just having fun. You have no expectation of being published, and therefore no pressure to live up to. You’re just free to go and then gradually a world unfolds.”

So goes it, then always.

ben.waldman@winnipegfreepress.com

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