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C2 THE OAKVILLE BEAVER Wednesday, November 17, 1999 Books and Brunch Three authors discuss their non-fiction books at a recent authors series event S to rie s by C a ro l B aldw in ENTERTAINMENT EDITOR David Layton's first book Motion Sickness: a memoir is not about his famous father, Irving. Not really. Motion Sickness is about the splitup of David's parents as seen through the eyes of a 10-year-old - a unique perspective on marital break-up. The personalities in this book and the fact that they really do exist add another dimension to the fascinating tale Layton weaves. "It's a great story, with amazing characters, extraordinary people. And it is about a 10-year-old kid. It's about me," the author explained in an interview before the recent Books and Brunch event at The Oakville Club. "It's a story about three fantastic characters: my mother and my step father and, of course, my father. It's a story about fam ily...It's not a mother dearest. It's not a father-dearest." Layton says he didn't even feel emotionally involved in the story, except for the part where his father tells him that he and his mother are separating. "I couldn't understand why that was the case. Then I realized it was because, at that moment, my father was saying `Good-bye.' He was leaving my life for good," explains the 35-year-old. "And that is some thing that is common to every kid, because inevitably the children go to live with one of the parents, usually the mother. And no matter how hard that father tries, he gets taken out of the daily lives of his children, and they become strangers." Layton says conflicts between par ents and children do not arise because the kids hate their parents, but rather that they love them. And it is not just children of divorced parents who experience that friction, although they may conflict over different issues. Layton's own conflict certainly didn't include rebelling against his father's profession - writing. Howev er, he is quick to point out that writ ing a novel bears little similarity to writing poetry. "I had no ear for poetry. I had no interest in poetry. It just wasn't on my radar screen," he says. "Being a poet would have been impossible. I could never have written poetry." As a child of the '70s, Layton says, he never thought about writing, one way or the other. In fact, he never thought about any career for that mat ter. It wasn't a question that young people were asked or asked them selves in those days. Layton's book, which is as much about the '70s as it is about family, tells of a decade that saw parents traveling extensively with their chil dren so the entire family could gain "an experience." And he traveled around the globe with his parents, his mother in particular, summering in Greece and visiting such exotic locales as Lesbos, Casablanca and London. "In those days, you could become an artist with the purchase of an air ticket to Casablanca. And that's something that has disappeared now," says Layton. "So you had lots of peo ple who were not just traveling. They were smoking dope and banging heroine and taking speed and just hanging out for this notion of just gaining experience, to write about...hence become an artist." Traveling, in part, accounts for the title of his book. However, there is more to the title Motion Sickness than that, and Layton is quick to dispel any notion that "sickness" has any thing to do with the story. "The aspect of motion sickness that interested me when I came up with the title was that it is something that affects the passengers, not the driver. People who are driving a car do not get motion sickness," he explains. "So then you realize it is'not just about movement, it is also about control. And to me, that's an analogy for childhood. That describes child hood. Children are passengers, and they are never in control." He says he would love to meet some of the people he bumped into on his travels as a child, but suspects that many of them are now settled in stable lifestyles, tending their gar dens. He, on the other hand, devel oped a lust for travel during his child hood and can't understand people who don't travel. "My father used to tell all his stu dents, `If you want to find out if you're going to be a writer, go to Greece and live for a year, go to Italy," ' he says, adding that the first summer his family spent in Greece, they rented a house for $25 for the entire summer. "And the people rent ing the house thought they were rip ping us off. They thought it was the biggest joke...That kind of disparity just doesn't exist any more." Does he have another book in the making? Yes. But, the only thing he was willing to divulge about it is that it is fiction. So, stay tuned. In the meantime, Motion Sickness is available in most bookstores for $29.95. Olga Romanov: Russia' s Last Grand Duchess By Patricia Phenix Olga Romanov, youngest daughter of Tsar Alexander III, lived in Canada for a time. The Tsar's last surviving child lived in Campellville and Cooksville before moving to Toronto where she died, relatively poor, in 1960. A biography by Patricia Phenix, Olga Romanov: Russia' s Last Grand Duchess combines romance, adven ture, danger, murder and exile as it follows Olga from the palaces of St. Petersburg to a small apartment above a hair salon in Toronto. And, of course, the mystery of the princess Anastasia and the devious manipulations of the infamous Rasputin have not been omitted from this real-life story of Olga's fall from pomp and privilege to pain and poverty. Even though Olga publicly denounced Anna Anderson, a woman in a Berlin hospital who claimed to be Anastasia, personally, she was unde cided. These uncertainties were expressed to others as well as in let ters and gifts that she sent to Ander son. Yet, since Olga was the highest Photo by Peter C. McCusker Patricia Phenix, David Layton and Jan Wong were featured at this month's Bookers Books & Brunch author series in The Oakville Club. ranking member of the Russian royal family to visit Anderson, her public repudiation of the woman sealed the alleged impostor's fate. "DNA testing proved definitively in 1994, that it was not Anastasia. But Olga remained conflicted throughout her entire life. And I think that it probably was Anastasia," Phenix said in an interview before the recent Books and Brunch series at The Oakville Club. "It's not a popular opinion for me to have and (Olga's) family members life to the citizens of St. Petersburg and disgrace the imperial family. And for that reason she sort of veered away from him and ended up basical ly repudiating him, too," Phenix said. So on the one hand, Olga was try ing to persuade her brother to dismiss Rasputin, while on the other hand she was trying to maintain her privacy and keep Rasputin's sexual advances at bay. "He never missed a chance to approach a woman and Olga was no exception," said Phenix, adding that Rasputin kept trying to win Olga over as a lover as well as an ally in the . .B u t in public, because o f m palace. "And she said, `No' in pri her brother' s situation, vate. But in public, because of her brother's situation, she had to imply she had to im ply th at that Rasputjn did not have control Rasputin did n ot have over the family because it would control over the fam ily make her brother look impotent." Along with anecdotal information because it w ould m ake her from surviving members of the brother look im potent Romanov family and those who knew Olga in Canada, Phenix gleaned her ...P h en ix I information from letters from the State Archive of the Russian Federa actually aren't too in love with me for tion and the Russian State Historical saying this because they are adamant Archive. In order to gain access to that she (Olga) never, never, never these letters, detailing the coronation believed that she (Anderson) was of Nicholas II, the murder of Anastasia. But the evidence of a Rasputin, the royal family marriages, woman who spoke to Olga in 1959 in and the time that Olga spent as a which Olga said, `I did think she was nurse in the Kiev army hospital dur Anastasia because she knew the pet ing the First World War, Phenix had name of my dog' was at least com to bribe archivists. pelling enough for me to still put a "Those letters are absolutely the question mark around that issue." best. And they have never been pub Olga also held conflicting public lished before. And most of them, and private opinions of Rasputin. actually, are in English," she said, Only this time, she privately ques obviously delighted with the letters, tioned his so-called "mystical pow some of which were passionate love ers" while publicly supporting his letters from Olga to Nicolai. comings and goings in the palace. Her experiences with some of the Her public endorsement was designed many Romanov family descendants to help save the reputation of her were a little more personal and, there brother Tsar Nicholas II and his wife, fore, somewhat disconcerting at who elevated Rasputin to a demigod times. because he supposedly healed their "You think they won't stand on son, Alexei. ceremony, and they always say, `I But it wasn't just Rasputin's tie to won't stand on ceremony,' but if you Nicholas and Alexandra that elicited don't address them as `your highness' Olga's support, it was also Rasputin's or something like that, some of them persistent interest in Olga's unusual can get quite picky about it," she said. relationship with her husband, Prince "It was like walking around land Peter of Oldenburg, and a handsome mines at times." soldier, Nicolai KuliRovsky (who In the end, Phenix added, she only later became her second husband), scratched the surface of the available that made her fear his motives. material in the Russian archives, "He was extremely lascivious and since she was paying by the letter for he was a little too curious about information. Consequently, she said, Olga's relationship with Nicolai and her book is not the definitive her husband. They shared a house Romanov biography - there are sure they had a little menage a trois going to be more to come. there - in St. Petersburg. And she was In the meantime, however, Olga afraid that Rasputin was going to Romanov: Russia' s Last Grand divulge everything about her private Duchess is already sold-out as far as copies in the warehouse are con cerned. So, only copies already in book stores are available. And Phenix is not expecting a second printing. So, if Russian royalty piques your interest, this biography may still be available for $35 in your neighbour hood bookstore. Jan Wong' s China By Jan Wong Once again Tiananmen Square is making the news. Only this time it's members of the Falun Dafa spiritual movement that are being whisked off in vans in an attempt to restrain the banned religious group. Jan Wong, whose second book Jan Wong' s China recently hit the book stands, is glad that she did mention the rise of religious cults in that book, which went to press in April. "By the time they (Falun Dafa) came into the fore, I had already left China," she says. "I had written about Falun Gong, which is meditation and breathing exercises, which many of the people practise, but I hadn't even heard of this cult...It's fascinating," she said in an interview before a recent Books and Brunch event at The Oakville Club. "Because these people are reli gious, there are going to be fanatics. It's sort of like the students (in Tiananmen Square) - fanatical and wanting to be martyrs. When you deal with religion, you're going to get martyrs." · But it isn't the religion that will free the people of China, speculated Wong. It's the internet and the unre stricted access that it affords average Chinese citizens in greater and greater numbers. `T he dissidents communicate by email and the government can't control it," she said, noting that China's recent window into the Western World through the internet has precip itated a number of illegal migrants from China to Canada. And that's only the beginning, she predicted. `T h ey 've opened the door to the West and technology, and now tech nology has overtaken anything they could possible control. I think it will shake the communist party and maybe dislodge it." Wong said she wasn't allowed much time away from her day job as a reporter to write this book, yet she felt she had to return to China to assess the current situation. Wong, who was bom in Montreal, had an advantage in China over other Cana(See `Jail' on page C3) V STUDI O F* X /' A S P resents p e rfo r m in g a n d v is u a l a rts s c h o o l Studio PAVAS & Bongo Productions A 2-Day Workshop "SUCCESSFUL A UD1TIONS - Kids on Camera " Schultz' s show promises variety Albert Schultz, one of Canada's most versatile performers, is coming to the Oakville Centre for Performing Arts on Thursday, Dec. 2nd at 8 p.m. Although Schultz is best known for his role in CBC television's Street Legal, the career of the actor/singer took off in 1987, when, at age 23, he stared as Romeo at the Stratford Festi val. His performance gained him recognition by author Keith Garabien, who wrote in his book The Well Bred Muse that Schultz was "the finest Romeo this country has ever seen." When Schultz moved into televi sion and film, he appeared in dozens of programs including five seasons as leading actor in the series Street Legal and later in the series Side Effects. 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