Charles Frazier
Topic: The Film Industry
TORONTO - "Last I heard, they have a list of directors and screenwriters," novelist Charles Frazier smiles. "As for the lead, I have not been able to come up with a name for who I'd want to see play Will.
"I've been trying to think of actors in their mid to late 20s, but I haven't seen a lot of movies the past few years. So," he chuckles, "I'm somewhat unaware of the younger actors that are out there right now."
Placing his coffee cup down on a glass-topped table in the third floor conference room of his Canadian publisher's office, Frazier, 56, was in town earlier this month to talk about his immersive new novel "Thirteen Moons," his much-anticipated follow-up to 1997's best-selling American Civil War Epic - "Cold Mountain."
That love story, brought to celluloid life by Oscar-winning director Anthony Minghella and stars Jude Law and Nicole Kidman, spent over a year on the New York Times best-seller list and has sold over four million copies worldwide.
Straight out of left-field, the former university professor watched his debut snatch the National Book award from Don DeLillo's heavily favoured hands and then sat back as a bidding war ensued for the rights to distribute his next literary tome.
Reportedly, after reading a one-page outline, Random House beat all the other suitors, offering Frazier an advance worth more than $8-million. Then, Hollywood producer Scott Rudin ("Wonder Boys," "The Royal Tenenbaums," "Closer") stepped in, lavishing the bristle-haired author with another $3-million for the movie rights.
And so begun Frazier's almost-decade long journey back to book shelves across North America. But it was a journey, he says, that started when he was penning "Cold Mountain" in the mid-'90s.
"When I was doing some of the library work for 'Cold Mountain,' I had run across this reference to a very old man (William Holland Thomas) in an institution who some days only spoke Cherokee," he says. "He didn't have a place in that book, but I kept coming back to that man, wondering what that story was about. And I found out that he was a guy who at age 12 or 13 went out by himself to the edge of the Cherokee nation to run a trading post. He was then adopted into that group of Cherokee and from then on his life was tied up with these people."
When the curtain lifts on "Thirteen Moons," readers glimpse an elderly Will Cooper, grappling with the dawn of the industrial age and wrestling with the one true love that got away. At the frontier of his life, he recounts being orphaned and then sold into servitude at age 12 to manage a trading post in Cherokee territory in western North Carolina.
Learning the Cherokee language, Will becomes friends with the local chief, Bear, and is adopted into their tribe. With his heart set on acquiring as much land as possible to ensure the livability for future generations, Will sets about helping Bear.
"I grew up as a neighbour to the Eastern Band of Cherokee," Frazier says. "Most people are aware of the Trail of Tears (the removal of the Cherokee to the Western territories) but most people aren't aware that there was this small group of Cherokee that was able to stay. So I was interested in finding out that story, finding out how it is that that one group of people has managed to stay. Has resisted this overwhelming force of the government. They're still there, preserving their culture. They succeeded where most other Native American groups were not able to.
"But really," he continues, sitting back into his chair, "this is a book about that whole period of transition. From the early 19th century to the early 20th century. And a big part of that for many areas in the United States was the conflict between white settlers and Native Americans.
"So we can understand how we came here, how we came to occupy this place, that whole history of Native Americans anywhere in North America is a story people need to have a greater understanding of."
Traversing both the white and native worlds, Will educates himself. Becoming a lawyer he acts as both the legal and political voice of the tribe as the United States government plots to forcibly remove them from their southeastern ancestral lands, into the newly created Indian Territory in Oklahoma.
Fixed mostly in Will's middle years, at its core, the book shares "Cold Mountain's" romantic yearning. Like Inman, Will's life is forever altered by a chance meeting with Claire, a beautiful, ghost of a woman who haunts the peppery narrator throughout his life.
As Will's adventure takes him from store clerk to the upper echelons of Washington, it's his periodic meetings with Claire - who is married to a wealthy "white Indian," named Featherstone - that give "Thirteen Moons" most of its heart. And it's Will's eternal yearning for Claire that invests the book with the same unresolved longing that lined "Cold Mountain."
"Well," Frazier says, "in a sense I see this one as having a happy ending, to the degree that nobody's dead in the snow."
Breaking for a moment, Frazier stares outside as a midmorning sun blankets King Street toward St. James Park, and then goes on in his low Southern drawl. "But seriously, Will has this long life. He succeeds at a great many things and fails at a few. Maybe not fails, but doesn't succeed; doesn't get everything he wants in life just like few of us do.
"Claire is one of those things that doesn't resolve itself the way he wished it had. So, as a 90-year-old man, he's still yearning for her, still wishing his life had worked out differently in some regards and he's still waiting for that brand new telephone hoping Claire will be on the other end.
"Everybody ends up with some things that they're still wishing had happened differently or ended differently."
Calling Jim Harrison's "Legends of the Fall" a great inspiration for much of the style of "Thirteen Moons," Frazier says his aim with this book was to pen something "so crisp, so condensed that it just moves right along."
He also strove to craft a narrative that covered a long period of time more quickly. "With both 'Cold Mountain' and this one, I found myself thinking about the history of that place. I'm interested in the Southern Appalachians. I'm interested in the natural history, the human history, and the landforms, everything about that place.
"It's home for me. It's a place I love and a place I know, so it's kind of like, my subject matter."
Unmoved by New York's bustling literary scene, Frazier hid out at his home in Ashville, N.C., before heading out on this latest book tour. And even though "Thirteen Moons" is rooted on best-seller lists across the continent, the author seems most ecstatic when he's talking about the book's reception amongst natives.
"That's been one of the most gratifying parts of this book," he says looking pleased. "The reception I've got from the Eastern Band has been so generous. I was awarded the Cherokee Phoenix award, which is an award that's given to non-members of a tribe for their work in helping the Eastern Band preserve their culture. The thing that I've liked the most is how people have said, 'You got our humour right.'"
He's even helping facilitate plans to translate "Thirteen Moons" from English to Cherokee. "Right now there are no children's books in Cherokee, so we're hoping this ends up being a continuing project. Hopefully this could be a way to immerse kids in Cherokee."
Frazier, who is readying himself for a flight to London later in the day, smoothes his hands over freshly pressed jeans and admits that while he liked Tinseltown's adaptation of "Cold Mountain" just fine, he has no ambitions to nab a Best Adapted Screenplay anytime soon.
"I won't adapt it," he stresses. "I can hardly understand screenplays when I try to read them."
But after almost an hour in conversation, he's thought of a leading lady for Claire. "Actually, Natalie Portman," he says. "She's only in 'Cold Mountain' briefly, but her scenes were just remarkable. Yes, Natalie Portman."
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