by Janice Goveas
Early into a conversation with Martin Mordecai (pictured with a young fan), one of Diaspora Dialogues' four mentors in fiction for 2010, it becomes understandable why his debut novel, Blue Mountain Trouble (Toronto: Scholastic Canada, 2009), has been so remarked on for its magical realism and the cadence of its language. A reviewer for the Quill & Quire, for example, comments on his surprise at finding himself interested in a children's book that mixes adventure with magical realism, and says this: "Most delicious of all in this plum pudding of a book is the language. For some young Canadian readers the diction and cadence of this story will be as comfortable and familiar as an old boot. For the rest of us, Mordecai, without resorting to explanations or a glossary, teaches us how to hear and understand."
The reason this is understandable is because, early into a conversation with him, Mordecai confesses to two passions: music and reading, especially the writing of Colombian novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez, winner of the 1982 Nobel Prize for Literature, whose work is most noted for its magical realism.
Mordecai recalls agreeing with a literary critique in which the critic argued that there were only two books that absolutely had to be read: Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude and the King James Bible.
As for music, Mordecai has had a life-long love of genres like classical, jazz, and 60's and 70's rock, but enjoys almost all other types of music except for some dance hall and much of rap. He believes, however, that a love of music transcends genre because "good songs get into you and bad songs irritate you."
Blue Mountain Trouble, incidentally, began as a bedtime story he created for his younger son, the youngest of his three children, who is now a struggling writer in his thirties. Mordecai hopes his son will consider applying to the Diaspora Dialogues mentorship program in the near future.
Over his lifetime, Mordecai has worked in newspapers, radio and television. His intriguing observation about television is that it is "the great wasted technology of the twentieth century" having not lived up to its potential to deliver quality work, unlike film, a medium created around the same time. Mordecai also spent twelve years in the diplomatic service for his birth country, Jamaica, much of it in England. He remarks on the delightful coincidence of the daughter of his one of his former diplomatic colleagues being one of his mentees in the Diaspora Dialogues' program.
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