Cece chats with Joseph (Joe) Kertes, winner of the Stephen Leacock Award for Humour
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Volume VII
Cece chats with Joseph (Joe) Kertes, winner of the Stephen Leacock Award for Humour
Photo credit: Marco Lappano
Encouraged in his early days of writing by renowned Canadian philosopher, Marshall McLuhan, (the medium is the message), and Canadian poet, Irving Layton, Kertes was recognized by the best of the best as having something ‘special’ – the ‘it’ factor for writing.
“I admired them both enormously, Layton for his creative energy, and McLuhan for his perspective and his mind, which was so spectacular,” Kertes says. “McLuhan’s viewpoints were vastly different from everyone else’s. He died in 1980, over forty years ago, yet he is more relevant today then he was back then.”
As Kertes was honing his writing chops, he came upon the Seal-Bantam First Novel Competition which the renowned Jack McClelland, president of McClelland and Stewart, (1961-1985), had launched. The year was 1987 and the prize was $50,000.
“My first novel, Winter Tulips, was a contest finalist, and of course, I couldn’t have been any more excited,” Kertes says.
Winter Tulips went on to win the 1989 Stephen Leacock Award for Humour, a writing genre that Kertes prefers to write in more than any other.
“My lifelong ambition was to win the Leacock award, so when I actually won it, in my acceptance speech I said, I guess I am done now,” Kertes says laughing. “A lot of it, I think, was luck.”
Register for the Free May 27th Virtual Book Club featuring Joe Kertes Event at Jen@artyourservice.org
Interestingly, the concept of luck is one of humourist Stephen Leacock’s most often quoted sayings.
“I am a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it.”
There is a recurring theme, a common thread that weaves its way through each of Kertes’ seven published books, which is, love transcends all differences. It is as true in his books as it is in Kertes’ personal life.
In 1977, Kertes, who is Jewish, married his wife, Helen, who is Greek Orthodox. “At the time it was a very daring thing that Helen and I did,” Kertes says. “There was a crossing of the floor that had to occur. It was very hard on both of our families, especially our mothers. The feeling was that I was volunteering to leave the faith as it were. Times are so much different now – we had to teach our parents to think differently.”
Kertes’ laugh, which feels like a spontaneous all-embracing hug, is a winning storyteller with a deep empathetic connection to both his myriad of characters and his much-devoted audience.
His current book, Last Impressions, was released in March, a week before the pandemic hit. The lack of visibility and fanfare surrounding the book is as much a loss for the reader as it is for the author.
The main characters in Last Impressions are forces to be reckoned with, outsized personalities that are alternately over-the-top, and sometimes frustrating, but in all cases, laugh-out-loud funny. My favourite is Zoltan Beck, the patriarch of the family, who, except when he is asleep, is causing some kind of kerfuffle. As the book opens, Zoltan is in the hospital unable to eat solid food.
“Zoltan slurped purply and rapidly on the (blackberry) jam, and while it was not a full-blown Prince concert, Ben had to sit back to avoid the purple mist falling around them.”
Register for the Free May 27th Virtual Book Club featuring Joe Kertes Event at Jen@artyourservice.org
And when Zoltan can’t find his dentures, his son Ben, after much searching for them, scoots up to his father’s bedroom, where “grinning up at him from Zoltan’s pillow, were his teeth.”
The much maligned Ben ‘couldn’t pretend to know how such a man as his father came along. At best, he could assemble only a composite sketch.’
Meanwhile, Zoltan, who has been marked by war and tragedy, discovers a secret from the war that could either knit together or implode his family; he is not sure which way it will go.
The love that transcends the family’s differences in Last Impressions is so captivating and endearing that the book travelled over a three day period, from my night stand, to my morning coffee breaks, to my final après dinner readathon.
Reviews for Kertes’ fifth book, Gratitude, (Penguin Group Canada, 2008), which is a much more serious tome than his current novel, talk about the beautifully precise writing and the complexity of human psychology and motivations that the book embraces. It is a story set in Budapest at a time – March 1944- when the Germans have descended upon the city, dismantling and destroying the lives of both the Jews and the non-Jews of Hungary.
Budapest
A refugee himself – his family fled Hungary when he was a young child- Kertes’ writing of Gratitude, as well as The Afterlife of Stars, (Penguin Group Canada, 2014), is informed by both a dedication to detailed research, as well as the personal stories and diaries of family and friends.
“I felt that I owed a debt of remembrance to the families who came before me,” Kertes says. “My dad was a holocaust survivor and my mother’s parents and six of her siblings died in the camps. And even though she experienced all of that, my mother made the family feel good to be alive; that is the greatest gift you can give your family.”
Along with the many personal traumas experienced by Kertes’ family during the war, there was also the trauma of material losses.
One of Kertes’ great grandfather’s buildings that he owned in Budapest
“My great grandfather had 10,000 people working for him at one point, and owned thousands of acres of land,” Kertes says.
And to that point, Kertes paints a poignant scenario of being in a doctor’s office a few years ago and noticing an article in Macleans magazine.
“As I read through the article and began studying the photographs, I recognized a piece of art that belonged to my family – that we had owned and subsequently lost during war,” Kertes says.
But Kertes, who is easy going and pragmatic, says that at this point there is nothing the family can do. Instead, he turns his attention to the positives of what is, and the humour that can be found in everyday occurrences.
And with that, he recounts a funny anecdote around a book club meeting that he attended (pre-COVID) as the feature author.
“There were seventeen people in attendance, fifteen who were lawyers and one person who was a judge. It was like an interrogation,” Kertes says laughing. “The lawyers kept asking me questions such as why did you do this, or why did that happen, or why did you knock him off. What the hell I thought, it’s fiction!”
Kertes, who founded Humber College’s creative writing and comedy programs and was the college’s Dean of Creative and Performing Arts for many years, has a satchel full of stories from his tenure there.
“I love comedy so I proposed that we bring in some of the big names in comedy to teach the students. In fact, it was a great way to meet some of my own heroes, like Billy Crystal and Chevy Chase,” Kertes says, with a grin that spreads all the way down the phone line. “I was able to get Chevy Chase’s personal phone number and after I finally got him I explained who I was and what I wanted. I asked Chevy if he would come and speak to the students in Humber’s comedy classes. I then asked him what his usual fee was, to which he replied, $25 million. ‘I said, how about zero?’”
“You drive a hard bargain,” he replied.
“Not only did Chase come for free, he paid his own expenses. Mike Meyers also came to the program three times.”
It kind of restores one’s faith in humanity, or at the very least, in humour, doesn’t it?
As a dedicated mentor, author and humourist, Kertes encourages would-be writers to write their truth. “Most people have good stories to tell. The aim in writing is not to be published but to give your own story the life it deserves,” he says.
Kertes is available for zoom book club meetings at joe.kertes@gmail.com.
Oh, and by the way, lawyers and judges need not apply.
Register for the Free May 27th Virtual Book Club featuring Joe Kertes Event at Jen@artyourservice.org
Cece is the feature cover writer for several prestigious publications, and an informed, connected and enthusiastic book blogger at cecescott.com. Her first book, The Love Story, was published in 2019. Her second book will be coming out in early 2021. Cece is also working on a book of Daily Reflections for Auto Immune Condition Warriors.
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If you are not a subscriber to Cece’s Chat on Chapters you can do so right here, right now . Cece is the feature cover writer for several prestigious publications both in print and online, and an informed, connected and enthusiastic book blogger at cecescott.com. Her first book, The Love Story, was published in 2019. Her second book will be coming out in late 2020. Cece is also working on a book of Daily Reflections for AutoImmune Condition Warriors.
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