Festival - a novella. Introduction by the author. While studying at the University of Toronto in the early 1990s, I spent two summers in London, England. In the later 90s, I wrote this novella about my experience in London, and how it affected my life back in Toronto. This was my "Catcher in the Rye", my coming of age novel. My unpublished coming of age novel. I taught English as a second language in Poland in 1995/96, and it was in Poland that I completely restructured this novella. It was at that time that I reread "Room with a view" by Forster, and a passage in that book made me realize what I - as a person - and I - as the author of Festival - was trying to do. After Lucy and George Emerson see the fight in the plaza, an emotional Lucy says to George something like, "after these emotional experiences, they pass, and you just go back to your old life". George disagrees, and (I'm very much paraphrasing from memory) says "No, I shall want to live." That's what I was trying to explain to myself through the writing of this novella. "Go ahead, young man, live." Structurally - the narrator, Peter, is living his life in Toronto, and reminiscing about the summer he just spent in England. He is writing down memories of London, and interspersing them with scenes of his present day life in Toronto.
3 parts