Happy, happy Columbus Day America!!
October 12, 2009
This is my day. This day is ALL ABOUT ME, Christopher Columbus, Admiral of the Western Seas…and beautiful character in Thomas Trofimuk’s “Waiting for Columbus.” I am excellent. And today there are 350 million Americans celebrating me!!! God bless you America!!! Though I did not discover America – I actually think some Norsemen were there 500 years before me – and in truth, the Chinese were probably there before that, and of course, there were perfectly fine populations of Native Americans thriving there before we came along – and I never actually stepped foot on what we know as America today….well, I was close enough. Seriously….I THOUGHT I was close to Japan. Or the outer islands of India, so what does it matter if I was actually not in America. I was the first white guy in a long, long, long while to be in that vicinity. While I am unquestionably great, and awesome wicked, I do like to throw a bone to my writer, Trofimuk….So, here…here’s an interview he did recently on a site called Working Writers. The guy actually has a sense of humour (woops. In “honor” of our American readers, we’re going American with the spelling today….so humor).
I should add that on the weekend on Saturday night, actually Sunday morning, after much scotch and a lot of Thanksgiving turkey, ham and well….a lot of food – Trofimuk went into a long tirade about how intensely personal this book was for him. Of the three, he said, this was the most profoundly personal. “It’s because I have a daughter. I have an eight-year-old and I brought all my fears and anxieties and anxiousness to the fore. I imagined the worst thing that could happen to me and then I put my head down and wrote.”