Things as They Are (33 page)
Read Things as They Are Online
Authors: Guy Vanderhaeghe
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Literary, #Short Stories & Anthologies, #Short Stories, #Literary Fiction, #Single Authors
Some of these stories have appeared previously: “Home Place” in
The London Review of Books, Best Short Stories 1988, The Minerva Book of Short Stories, Grain
, and
The Bridge City Anthology: Stories from Saskatoon
, and before first publication was broadcast on
CBC
Radio; “The Master of Disaster” in
Canadian Fiction Magazine;
and “New Houses” in
Border Crossings
.
In “Man on Horseback” certain sections have been typeset in italics to appear as direct quotation. They are not, with the exception of a fifteenth-century definition of a good horse taken from
Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable
. Nevertheless, I would like to acknowledge the following as sources of certain information used in this story:
The Horse in Blackfoot Indian Culture
by John C. Ewers, Smithsonian Institution Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 159, Smithsonian Institution Press, City of Washington, 1955;
The Astonishing Adventures of General Boulanger
by James Harding, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1971;
The Horse in West African History
by Robin Law, published for the International African Institute by Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1980;
Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable: Centenary Edition
, Cassel & Company Ltd., London, an affiliate of Macmillan Publishing Company Inc., New York, 1975.
I would like to acknowledge the financial assistance of the Saskatchewan Arts Board during the writing of these stories.
I would also like to thank my patient and thoughtful editor, Ellen Seligman.
Guy Vanderhaeghe
June 1992, Saskatoon
Guy Vanderhaeghe was born in Esterhazy, Saskatchewan, in 1951. He is the author of four novels,
My Present Age
(1984),
Homesick
(1989), co-winner of the City of Toronto Book Award,
The Englishman’s Boy
(1996), winner of the Governor General’s Award for Fiction and the Saskatchewan Book Awards for Fiction and for Book of the Year, and a finalist for The Giller Prize and the prestigious International
IMPAC
Dublin Literary Award, and, most recently,
The Last Crossing
(2002), a long-time national bestseller and winner of the Saskatoon Book Award, the Saskatchewan Book Awards for Fiction and for Book of the Year, and the Canadian Booksellers Association Libris Award for Fiction Book of the Year, and a regional finalist for the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book. He is also the author of three collections of short stories,
Man Descending
(1982), winner of the Governor General’s Award and the Faber Prize in the U.K.,
The Trouble With Heroes
(1983), and
Things As They Are
(1992).
Acclaimed for his fiction, Vanderhaeghe has also written plays.
I Had a Job I Liked. Once
. was first produced in 1991, and won the Canadian Authors Association Award for Drama. His second play,
Dancock’s Dance
, was produced in 1995.
Guy Vanderhaeghe lives in Saskatoon, where he is a Visiting Professor of English at S.T.M. College.