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The loch of love
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Brian Jay Corrigan
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Article published June 23, 2005
Kansas City Star
Kansas City native Brian Jay Corrigan began writing The Poet of Loch Ness
for his dying wife, Damaris.
She was diagnosed in 1993 with primary pulmonary hypertension, a rare
illness that affects blood flow from the heart to the lungs.
I just felt like I had to write something, Corrigan said in an interview
this week. She had spent a year abroad in Scotland studying … and she had
some wonderful stories. I really wrote it so I would memorialize her. … She
was given two years to live.
Corrigan's first novel is a haunting and haunted yarn with a sense of place:
Its center is Loch Ness, the Scottish lake allegedly inhabited by the famous
monster. But the supernatural element is just one feature of the book; this
is a mysterious love story fused with a legend.
Corrigan, who teaches Renaissance literature at North Georgia College and
State University in Dahlonega, will sign and discuss his novel tonight at
the Last Chapter Bookshoppe and next Wednesday at Rainy Day Books (see
accompanying box for details).
But he has already been back in Kansas City several days. This stop is not
just part of a book tour; its a visit home to his mother and brother, who
still live in town. Corrigan was born Feb. 19, 1957, at St. Luke's Hospital.
In addition to his wife's illness, another factor in the books creation was
Corrigan's Midwestern background. It was especially helpful, he thinks, in
crafting the books mythic qualities.
I think there's something in the Midwestern spirit that can make one
interested in the macabre, says the author, who confesses to growing up with
dreams of ghosts and skeletons and also owns up to going to the haunted
houses every Halloween, (doing) the slide of death downtown, and all that
sort of thing.
He was especially interested, though, in stories of Nessie, the creature
that supposedly swims the depths of Scotland's great Loch Ness.
From youth, the Loch Ness monster was the one thing I really hoped existed.
… The book really isn't about the Loch Ness monster; its a love story. But
it seemed like the perfect metaphor for the secrets beneath the surfaces of
people.
Corrigan isn't all surface himself. His path to novelist has been rather
serpentine. After graduating from Center High School, he spent five years
being a theatrical actor.
Although I was succeeding, it was not the kind of life I really wanted. You
get one job, and you're constantly looking for the next one.
Yet he did audition for a film role that of Luke Skywalker, which Mark
Hamill would make his own in the original three Star Wars films. (To
Corrigan's credit, he was called back to read a second time … then never
heard another word from George Lucas and Co.)
Corrigan's next move was getting his bachelors degree and getting fascinated
with Shakespeare as he studied at the University of Missouri-Kansas City
with Bard scholar Robert F. Willson Jr. Then he was off to Tulane University
in New Orleans, where he earned his law degree. And then he got his masters
and doctorate in Renaissance literature.
But he has not let his scholarship destroy his sense of wonder. No, he has
never actually seen Nessie, though he has been to Loch Ness numerous times.
The closest (I) came to a sighting (was) someone started yelling, There,
there; look over there! She was actually yelling at her husband to look in
the trunk of their car for something.
He does observe that Loch Ness is three-fourths of a mile deep, a mile wide
and 24 miles long: Its at least imaginatively possible that something the
size of an elephant could live there and not be seen. … You cant help
feeling when you're there that there's a presence. … Its visceral. If
there's nothing there, there should be.
That feeling wells up in The Poet of Loch Ness, thanks to Corrigan's
ethereal prose. Yet he's not a man to waste words; the novel is 302 pages
long. At times, his style reminds one of the clipped, almost brusque sound
of a Scots accent: Andrew Macgruer awoke early that Sunday morning and
dressed: rough linen shirt, waistcoat, and a tartan plaid wrap of Hunting
Fraser design.
In other passages, he allows himself to be more expansive. Although not
overtly Shakespearean, The Poet of Loch Ness takes as one of its touchstones
the romance play A Winters Tale.
Mostly, though, the novel is very much a book about love and the questions
that come about love and about what you would do for the person you most
loved.
By the way: The person Corrigan most loves is still with him. Damaris did
not die. A new medicine came on the market that reverses some of the effects
of her disease.
I'm proud to say … she's still with me, and she's actually doing better than
she was in 1993. Its not a cure, but she's not blue anymore; she's pink
again. And she's not in a wheelchair. She has even regained enough strength
to teach Latin and Greek at the University of Georgia in Athens.
Corrigan smiles. Happy as he is about the new book, its clear the novel is
not the most important part of his life. Yet he, too, cant help marveling at
the love story that led him to write a love story.
People who believe in soul mates, he says, should read this book.
TONIGHT AND WEDNESDAY
Brian Jay Corrigan will sign and discuss The Poet of Loch Ness in two
appearances in the Kansas City area: At 6:30 tonight at the Last Chapter
Bookshoppe, College and Antioch in Overland Park, and at 7 p.m. Wednesday at
Rainy Day Books, 2706 W. 53rd St., Fairway. For information on the Last
Chapter event, call (913) 339-6616; for Rainy Day, call (913) 384-3126.
THE AUTHOR'S NEAR MISS
Author Brian Jay Corrigan (above) auditioned for the part of Luke Skywalker
in the original Star Wars films. He was called back to read for the part a
second time, then never heard anything more from director George Lucas.
AN EXCERPT
(H)e pulled at the dry, cracked oars of his little rowboat on that cool,
dark September night, and sent the black water swirling and gulping under
the lantern light. The tiny craft slid like a skater across the surface of
the loch, and the deep, impenetrable waters parted only slightly to allow
him passage to that secret, hallowed place.
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This page last modified on: Tuesday, 09 August 2005 18:26:46 -0400 by University Relations |
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