Entitlement: Jonathan Bennett Interview
by Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer

Our own Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer interviews Jonathan Bennett about his new novel, Entitlement.

I read Entitlement on a plane in late in August and was blown away by the sheer force of the plot. Event leads to memory leads to event as we are drawn in spirals deeper and deeper nto the life of Andy Kronk—-an unlikely blue-collar confidant of the rich and famous—-even as he recollects his own parabolic rise and fall in the secretive world of Canada’s obscenely wealthy.

The characters here are simultaneously real and foreign, the twisting nature of ambition both driving and destroying everyone involved. It was a hum-dinger of a book, one that ended up managing to walk that shadowy border between literary novel, social ethnography, and good old fashioned mystery. I found myself discussing it and savouring the twists of its plot with others the way one might with Dan Brown, then turning round and talking about the implications of its lead characters’ social allegiances and obligations the way one might with Robertson Davies.

Kathryn interviewed Jonathan in August, and now that his book has finally hit the stands, we can offer you this window into the history of Entitlement, Bennett’s take on “entitlement” as a concept in Canadian culture (as distinct from American), and the vagaries of setting a novel when you’re an author caught between two homelands, as Bennett is with Australia and Canada.

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Kathryn: Jonathan, your first novel, After Battersea Park is set both in Australia and Toronto, your second book, a collection of stories, called Verandah People, is set entirely in Australia. And now, Entitlement a novel not just set largely in Toronto, but set among the jet set, the wealthy. I can’t think of another topic more avoided in Canadian Letters. How did it happen that you found yourself delving here?

Jonathan: I conceived of the novel in Australia. I was back on a trip about five years ago and was, very generously, sent for a few days away to a beautiful country inn in the southern highlands. It was off season. My wife and I found ourselves the sole guests in this fully-staffed inn, that turns out was the former country estate of a well-known Sydney mercantile family.

It was very odd. Uncomfortably so, in many ways. And in other ways, after a time, well, I found myself thinking, if absolutely pressed, maybe one could adapt?

In any case, I’ve always loved “big house” novels-especially the early and mid 20th century English ones, like Brideshead or Howards’ End. There’s such a history of house as character. I’m a setting guy. I’m also, thematically, interested in class. So, here I am, walking these grounds as if to the manor born, enjoying staggeringly long dinners only to then be obliged to put a few glasses of fine Australian Muscat and Tokay’s out of their sticky misery, and were that not enough to cope with, or maybe because of all this, suddenly I felt a novel coming on. But this presented a problem.

Sometime during the late writing and publishing of Verandah People, I made myself a promise that I’d move my writing over to where I now call home—-Canada. I just couldn’t keep setting books in Australia. I’m not there any more, haven’t lived there since 1991, and I did not want to risk rewriting the same book, or be stuck eternally somewhere in the fading antipodean past. I like the present, presently at least.

So, the problem was, as you so neatly put it in your question, we don’t really do class-themed novels featuring the wealthy in Canada. And that’s what, I realized, I wanted to do. Well, why not find out why, was ultimately what I decided.

Kathryn: While I read Entitlement, I got to thinking about my own lack of entitlement that I think may have something to do with a typical Canadian post-war upbringing (Who do you think you are, putting on airs?), a middle class disgust for anything showy. I wonder if, as much as the rich may shun the poor, the middle class shun the rich. Are average Canadians afraid of success? And the obvious corollary to this question: how did you research this novel?

Jonathan: The patriarchal figure in my novel, Mr. Aspinall, has thoughts on this. He opines, strongly, that the middle class in Canada, through an historical disinclination for conflict, aggression or showiness, largely ignore the wealthy thereby permitting them a kind of invisibility. He rather likes it, and exploits it. To address one thing you said, I don’t think he would suggest (but I wouldn’t want to put words in his mouth) that the wealthy shun the poor-on the contrary he’d point to his Foundation and philanthropic work. He does, though, point out the hypocrisies present in Canadian culture (on say immigration or aboriginal land rights), but instead of pointing the finger at those in charge or those with power, he points it right back at those who vote and are in charge of running the democracy, i.e., largely speaking, the middle class.

How did I research this? Well, some of it was just observation. The openness of class distinctions present in Australian and Canadian culture differs. I understood the one, so the other seemed askew and interesting to me. Class is very present in Canada, it’s just a topic that’s seen to be a bit gauche or something. So it simmers away unstirred by the middle class (if Mr. Aspinall is right, the rich quietly benefiting from the cover, the poor having no voice.) Why, I came to wonder, was it collectively decided that class, as a framework of understanding, was not germane to any meaningful investigation of national self with our literature?

Entitlement is malignant. The novel, through various characters and their perspectives, politics and positions, shows union members, lawyers, media, and old money as all entitled in various ways. It makes this point, I hope.

Kathryn: The love story, such as it is, between the protagonist, Andy Kronk and Aspinall’s son, Colin, is most poignant, and it is around this hub the story largely revolves. The tension-derived less from the rich/poor paradigm than the normal/abnormal one, is a new space, too. The wealthy Colin is a Wildean creature destined to extreme behaviours; Andy is the quintessential Canadian dream—-a solid middle-class kid with hockey skills. Is not Andy’s entitlement portrayed as benign—-the entitlement ultimately to be oneself, especially in the face of choice?

Jonathan: Maybe. A reading might also be that Andy is a puppet of the Aspinalls and lets himself be bought and used for one purpose or another because he’s initially ambitious, but then gets in too deep and doesn’t know how to break free. He makes a kind of Faustian pact with Mr. Aspinall after all. Whatever the reading, I don’t personally see Andy’s plight as benign. It’s a story that finds bankrupt motives and nuanced outcomes on all sides.

As for their relationship, I have explored the quiet brutality of male relationships before. This one, now set in Canada, finds the same pain and power at play. This book is more overtly homoerotic than some previous work, but I don’t see it as a homosexual novel. It’s really a love triangle between brother and sister (Colin and Fiona Aspinall), and friend (Andy). I don’t think there’s an appropriate coupling anywhere in Huntington House.

Kathryn: Jonathan, could you speak directly to the comment you made about entitlement being malignant? How so? Why? And must it be? Also, in light of that comment, would you say that Colin and his sister, Fiona, and by association Andy, are then formed by entitlement? What I’m wondering, I suppose, is how does this malignancy play itself out.

Jonathan: The novel, I hope, portrays entitlement thematically, and not in a didactic or pedantic way that gets in the way of the story proper. The book’s got a plot. Having said that, I’d hope readers take from the story that the idea of entitlement is dangerous and harmful. In the Americanised world in which we all live, it seems, increasingly, there is no possibility of failure: only working towards success; no opening to admit mediocrity as a final state of affairs: only a brazen belief in “next time.” These are not hollow words. These were once aspirations or motivations, but they have metastasized—-to push the analogy too far—-into full fledged rights.

It’s serious state of dissolution. And it’s on shop floors and in boardrooms, in waiting rooms and class rooms. Everyone has the right to more, better, faster. Their claim is infallible and the logic for it is based on their own existence. This is harmful because it weakens the collective good and furthermore, as a state, it lacks compassion, empathy and kindness. How, as a society, can we deliver perfection to the never-satisfied? Even in death those who love us are now seemingly entitled to be pain free. We’ve pathologized mourning and have outsourced to grief counselors any healthy need to not cope, and just be fucked up for a while.

We expect this sort of disillusionment from the offspring of the wealthy, such as Fiona and Colin. At least there, there is noblesse oblige—-he says cheekily. But the entitlement exists elsewhere in the story, in Andy’s unionist father who steals from his employer and justifies it by equating it with the brass getting air miles, and in Andy himself when he takes advantage of a young women (in fact two) because he’s handsome and sure. I hope the book pokes its barbed theme into all the characters. It will likely be read differently, or with differing weights, in this regard, by different readers.

This happened to me with my first book. About a set of twins, the narrative was evenly split between the two characters. Personally, I thought of them rather evenly. But many readers confided in me that actually one twin was more engaging, more likable, or their favourite. I hadn’t seen this coming in the writing of it, and it might have been instructive to me as an author if they all chosen the same one…

Kathryn: Would you say Trudy, the Aspinall biographer, is acting out of hubris with her idea that she can have that story, that it is hers for the taking? She does seem to want the story more for the possibility of the economic win-fall and celebrity she feels she may acquire. I’m poking pins, a bit, I guess, as I am wondering whether this thematic concept of entitlement being malignant, which incidentally I like very much, can be extended to ‘artists’ (insofar as Trudy is an artist). Not to get too meta, but you yourself, as a writer, as the writer of a book called ‘Entitlement’ must experience a certain sense of that same, else how/why write? Is not some entitlement important to society, in order to keep such things in check?

Jonathan: Well, as for Trudy, I kind of like that she was not up to the task of the biography. Not talented enough to get to the bottom of it, and therefore, properly tell it. Hubris, entitlement, heck naiveté, nemesis, oh, I’ll leave it up to poor reader to make the call. But I can relate with Trudy. She was almost given up on several times, herself. As for the meta reading, hard question. Important to society, you say. You might be casting me as having cultural currency or responsibility—-icky thought that. What exactly am I keeping in check? Are novelists societal ombudsmen, poised to rant and rave via symbolism when they suspect societal excess? Reasonably, the rights we all hold are what’s important. The delusional augmentation of them to include not just wants but dreams is, I think, the malignancy about which we are talking.

Kathryn: What of striving? Of ambition then? Of the sort of dreaming that leads to ingenuity? I ask this in the context of various comments and subplots involving the immigrant, which are important to the book, I think. What of Stuart Aspinall’s opinion of immigrancy as a potential colonialisation; is all striving wrong?

And Jonathan, I have heard it said by a few people, you included, I think, that this book is stylistically a departure from your earlier writing, which has been characterized as lyrical. Of course, you have recently published a collection of poetry, Here is my street, this tree I planted. Is this a form/function decision? Also, I’m curious about the limitations you set yourself around punctuation. It is markedly more difficult to write fiction without dialogue punctuation, for instance; what is the pay-out to you in terms of craft for this decision?

Jonathan: Dreaming that leads to ingenuity, as opposed to entitlement, is a different act-it’s done deeply, over long periods and involves risk and courage. At the outset, they might look similar, but the gifted are soon sorted from the deluded. And, those that are classy as well as gifted, exercise humility, and exhibit qualities like grace or respect. Complicating matters, Stuart Aspinall, I might suggest, is both ingenious and entitled. He holds and acts on opinions that seem extreme because he speaks critically about, in fact profits from the weakness of, the Canadian liberal experiment. Yet he is also a family man, a Canadian patriot, a philanthropist, a kind employer, and loyal to those in his inner circle.

I’ve spoken before about my penchant for the lyrical line. It’s the long-standing David Malouf influence I endure. But, now I’ve written two novels, a collection of stories, and a book of poems, I’ve come to see the laden lyrical line as burdensome for the reader of a novel. It gets in the way of the story, is too showy. I used every bit of everything I had to keep this novel within its own form, not over-tighten, and not clot it with poetic lines and images. (That said, yep, I left some in.) These days, when I feel these urges come on, I write a poem. I’ve gained a respect for the novel form. I began, ten years ago, wanting to all but destroy it. Now, I submit to it, because there is a time and place for everything. And, while I know Canadian Poetry will never fully let me be an insider because I write more fiction than I do poetry and they hate part-timers, I simply enjoy writing poems and I’ll just keep doing it anyway.

You asked about the stylistic decision to write dialogue without quotation marks. My brother in Australia is into cars. One day I was in the passenger seat and we were bombing along Sydney’s twisty streets, and I noticed sometimes he was shifting gears without engaging the clutch. When I asked him about this, he said if you get the revs exactly right, it’s unnecessary. I don’t know if this is true, but I like what it means. Kathryn, you know, for a book that has a whole section which is a formal taped interview, dropping the quotation marks seemed to de-clutter the page, at times destabilized the line between direct speech, indirect speech, interior monologue and thought—-and all of that worked for my purposes. I like the free play and the uncertainty—-as long as it doesn’t pull the reader out.

Kathryn: Well, the novel is not without poetry, of course. I seem to recall a certain curly haired Yonge street vendor flogging his poetry chapbooks. Would you like to comment on that? Anyone we know?

Jonathan: Yes, that was a shout out. Thanks for noticing.

Kathryn: Entitlement seems to me a tragedy not of Andy Kronk, but of Colin Aspinall. It is Colin whose station is reduced, after all. He cannot be fulfilled in any way, and once he finally tries for some middle road, he is cruelly stopped. Andy’s ability to maneuver freely is limited by the Aspinall family’s entitlement, but his limitations leave him much as his father lived, with a little hope, and large emotional burden. Is this not the parameter most Canadians live within? Surely, all our lives cannot be viewed as tragic?

Jonathan: Well, I suspect you’re being purposefully provocative but, to get at the beginning of your question, yes that reading of which one, Andy or Colin, is the tragic figure is indeed there. Might not be the only or right one, though. I’m not sure it’s my job to answer the latter half of the question. So I’ll parry. Is it inevitable that it be writ large in the way you suggest? If you strip away the misguided entitlement, must you be left with tragedy? Might not you simply be left with the reality most Canadians live within?

Kathryn: Purposefully provocative? Me? Jonathan, will you speak a little about your writing process with this book? It is a diversion from your previous work, certainly in terms of voice; how did you go about constructing this novel?

Jonathan: I wrote my first novel the hard way—-through a very free and open ended process of discovery. Then I spent enormous energy re-writing and editing into something I liked. With this one, I actually constructed the shape of it ahead of time: a novel idea, that, using an outline. Turns out it makes the writing process more manageable. It took me longer, but we had two children during the writing, which slowed me down, as you might expect, or even hope. Still, I did do some small, but important structural editing with Michael Holmes, my editor at ECW Press. What I learned about writing and novels through this book I don’t yet know. It will take a year or two after publication when I’ll begin to see exactly what I did right, and wrong. The aftermath. I think that’s the most instructive part of processes for me. Because really, how could I begin another one without completely digesting what I’d done previously? So, for now, I’ll write some more poems as I let this book go off and “be” for a while.

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Jonathan Bennett’s latest book is Entitlement: a novel. He is the author of three previous books including the critically acclaimed novel, After Battersea Park, a book of poetry, Here is my street, this tree I planted, and a collection of short stories, Verandah People, which was runner up for the Danuta Gleed Literary Award. He is a winner of the K.M. Hunter Artists’ Award in Literature. Jonathan Bennett’s other writing has appeared in many periodicals and journals including: the Globe and Mail, Quill and Quire, Antipodes: A North American Journal of Australian Literature, and Descant. He is on the board of the Writers’ Trust of Canada. Born in Vancouver, raised in Sydney, Australia, Jonathan lives in Peterborough, Ontario.