Andrew Pyper

Like everyone else, I’m just devastated by Andrew Pyper’s passing last week. I was so destabilized when I heard the news I thought maybe the website obituary was somehow a prank or a fake? It’s not; the word is more widely circulating now, and it’s definitely real. Incredibly sad, an incredible loss. This (paywalled) piece by Craig Davidson in the G&M is a good tribute, I thought.

Before I started knowing Canadian writers, I didn’t realize how easy it would be to know all the Canadian writers, or at least meet them. Social media plus a few literary festivals green rooms with free cheese plus a small scene plus grad school plus a lonely profession equals it is almost never possible to do six degrees of separation in this world. I mainly tap out at two max with almost everyone. So when people say Andrew Pyper knew everyone, it’s not especially special—it’s the consistency of how sweet and funny and personal all the stories about him that folks are coming out with. He truly was a lovely person—both charismatic (we lost touch before the invention of “rizz” but I assume he was fine with it) and deeply kind. And a talented writer. So here’s one more story from someone he wasn’t really friends with but who deeply appreciated our brief acquaintance.

When I started thinking that I wouldn’t be content with just writing quietly on my hard drive for no one and never finishing anything, but before I took the plunge into grad school and subsequently trying to publish, I took a few evening creative writing classes at UofT. I had read Andrew Pyper’s first book, the 1996 collection of stories Kiss Me when it came out, as part of a contemporary fiction class (it’s a good collection and when I reread a couple stories today, I was happy to see it stood up—plus the cover is one of my favourites in history. The original Porcupine’s Quill cover; there’s an unfortunate reprint floating around with a less-good cover) so I was surprised and excited to see that Pyper was teaching one of the classes. The contemporary Canadian fiction class had been trying to bring fiction to life and into the present moment but I still had that McGill idea that literature happened elsewhere, got buried in sand, waited for an appropriate amount of time, and then we dug it up and studied it. It was not as shocking as finding out that William Wordsworth was teaching a class I could take—I had known Andrew Pyper was a living man—but still. Gosh, I just read back that sentence and then had to take a break.

Anyway, it was a really good class. By then I had read Lost Girls and The Trade Mission—I worked at Harper Collins around the time The Trade Mission came out and there were copies lying around that I could have. I admired the writing even as I shivered through the stories. I was impressed, even though they weren’t exactly the books for me. The class was exactly for me—warm, collegial, exacting, and fun. At the beginning, Andrew admitted that it was one of the first—possibly the first—he had ever taught and he wasn’t sure it would go well, or that he would ever teach again. I thought it was a great class, and I was pleased to hear through the grapevine that he did teach at least a few times in the years following, so I guess he thought so too. Those creative writing continuing education classes at University of Toronto were a gift—from what I hear, they continue to be—open to strivers who have been writing for years and folks who just wondered what it would be like to write something other than an email. Every week, AP would teach a lesson on some aspect of storycraft and then workshop our pieces with us. He would answer any question, puzzle out any knot as best he could. I met some new friends in that class who would become my writing group for the next decade and a half and together we worked seriously on writing fiction and memoir, some poetry, but others in the class were forever asking what commas were for, and I remember AP tirelessly diagramming sentences on the board.

By the time The Wildfire Season came out, I was happily ensconced in grad school—those evening classes had sparked all they needed to spark—but I read a copy from the library as soon as I could. But when The Killing Circle came out, I was a normal person again, with a normal job and free time, and with the friends from my writing group, I planned to go to the launch. The Killing Circle is about a writing group gone sour—and maybe murderous—and we joked with each other and with AP that it was about us. He was delighted to see us, delighted we had found each other and stuck together. This was nearly 17 years ago, so I am missing a lot of detail on the evening, but I remember how delighted we all were, what a happy event.

I only read one more book by AP—the next one, The Guardians. I went to that launch too, got one more signed hardcover, basked in one more joyful celebration. I had honestly known since The Trade Mission that we were growing apart generically, but he was just so talented, so clever and smart and interesting, that I kept trying. And I liked him so much. The Guardians was way way too scary for me, I barely made it to the end, and I knew I wouldn’t read another book in that style, but I wasn’t too worried about it. Maybe AP would circle around, write something different after a while. There would be time to write all kinds of things, I figured.

There was not, mainly because of a life cut unfathomably short but also because he was really happy and successful writing things that terrify me. I’m thrilled he found his niche and sorry I couldn’t follow him there. We continued to see each other around at lit events, the way everyone sees everyone, at least until the pandemic. AP was always good for a smile and a friendly comment, an air toast across a room. He was always a face you were glad to see at any event, always a hopeful sign that this would be a good night. We didn’t stay friends because we weren’t friends—what I’m trying to explain is that AP was just an asset to the whole community.

Despite my tenderfoot nature, my favourite of the AP books I have read is actually The Killing Circle. It’s about writers in Toronto, and I love inside baseball stuff like that. I just kind of squinted at more violent parts. It’s also about bitter envy and snark and the misery of that. When I took out my copy of the novel this weekend to prepare for writing this post, I looked at the inscription to see what he had written. “Congratulations!” What? I had to think about it, dig up the memory. That was 2008, the fall Once came out. At his own launch, he was excited to see me because he’d heard about my book. What an incredibly kind, generous guy. The creative leap of writing about murderers and ghosts is huge, but I think so is writing about jerks when you are actually just a really lovely person.

There’s a donation page for Trees Canada in Andrew’s memory if you would like to contribute.