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Dennis Bolen Charged Krekshuns with Compassionby Blaine Kyllo
Dennis Bolen grew up in the '50s in Courtenay, next to the Comox Air Force Base, at that time a major military target due to its proximity to the eastern U.S.S.R. "I was told by my parents that my death was imminent because of politics and things beyond my control," the Vancouver author recalls. "We were taught to roll under our desks if there was a nuclear attack." His childhood may have been played out in the shadow of the Cold War, but Bolen has spent his adulthood immersed in the highly visible realities of poverty, homelessness and crime. He's been a federal parole officer in the Lower Mainland for nearly 20 years, and two of his three published novels describe, sometimes in gory detail, people most of us don't want to know or understand. In both his first novel, Stupid Crimes (Vintage, $14), and the recently released Krekshuns (Random House, $18.95), Bolen attempts to detail, through the character of Vancouver-based parole officer Barry Delta, the lives of those who become criminals. "I needed to write books where a person's story was told before their crime happened," he says. He finds fault with the news media, who accurately report crime but are unable or unwilling to provide any background to the story. "They'll always report a body found, but never anything about the people involved; the perpetrators, the victims, the families. They don't report the circumstances." Bolen knows the stories behind the scenes. Sitting in the Fairview Pub on West Broadway, a place he says is a hangout for local rounders, he relaxes with a martini. "Most of my friends come here," he jokes. While Bolen's books amply document the personalities and backgrounds of the criminal characters, Barry Delta, our guide into the dark alleys of crime and punishment, is more of a cipher. Bolen decided that his readers should work to understand Delta's role; he wants them to wonder why something happens. And we certainly do wonder about Delta. He is a smooth operator in the shady world he works in, twisting regulations, acting on instinct, and occasionally using his criminal contacts to solve problems. Like all of us, he is influenced by what surrounds him, and we watch him change from naive and hopeful to frustrated and disillusioned. Our compassion for the Delta of Stupid Crimes transforms into disgust in Krekshuns. "I'm not uncomfortable with people not liking the character," Bolen says with a shrug. "The environment Delta is working in is poison; there's death and destruction all around him. His reactions are predictable and understandable.' Bolen challenges his readers to feel compassion for his characters. "Compassion is an understanding," he explains. "It is not a dumb devotion to the goodness of people. It is an understanding of where a person has been and what has happened to them. It is a concern that maybe we should try to change those circumstances for future generations." Port Alberni, a rough town that has a reputation for breeding criminals, was Bolen's teenage home. He witnessed criminal potential first-hand, and years later former classmates from his old high school reappeared as part of his caseload. "The whole nasty Port Alberni scene spoiled my high school years. I couldn't wait to get the hell out of that town." The book-loving Bolen managed to slip through the fingers of those nasty influences and escaped to Victoria to study literature. He later earned an MFA at UBC. Bolen's eyebrows rise in mock surprise as he recalls the lack of job opportunities for writers. "The correctional service was recruiting on campus and..." The rest is, well, history. Twenty years in corrections has made Bolen a crusader of sorts. He has come to realize that a person's childhood - their history - determines their future. He feels that early on in school, children should learn their rights as human beings. "They should feel that they are being supported and that they are in a comfort zone, not a violent zone," he says. He also believes that, in the later grades, children should be taught about proper parenting and prenatal care. Bolen leans forward, his eyes dead serious, his voice taut with frustration. He talks about the parolees who inspired Stupid Crimes. Many of them were serving life sentences for "stupid idiotic things," he says, adding that in order to better understand their motives, he began to delve into their pasts. "Their mothers had not taken care of them in the womb; their fathers had not taken care of them in infancy; society had not taken care of them. Nobody ever came through for them." For Bolen the solution is simple. "If we took care of people, for every dollar we spend on a kid, we would save ourselves a hundred thousand dollars incarcerating an adult for years," he insists. Bolen's books may be fiction, but the issues they deal with - how to prevent or punish violent crime, and how crime shapes our world - are real, and are becoming hotly debated at all levels of Canadian society. Now 43, Bolen plans to take early retirement from the parole board in July of next year. As fiction editor of the local literary magazine sub-TERRAIN and half owner of Anvil Press, he'll likely keep out of trouble. He smiles. "I'll probably just end up writing a lot of books." The third Barry Delta novel, Toy Gun, is sitting on the desk of Random House's executive editor, and a fourth is in progress. In spite of the fact that his subject matter often makes people uncomfortable, he's sticking with it. "A lot of people have said they've read my books and even though they were repulsed and somewhat disgusted, they couldn't put them down. It's like seeing a car accident. You know it's horrible, but you can't turn away." ©Georgia Strait |
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