Collin Piprell - Bangkok and Thailand based Canadian Novelist 1946 - 2022.

 

I’ve always believed that to know someone truly you must first sit with them and engage in easy free-flowing conversation for many hours. Booze may be involved but it need not be. Some need prompting, some require encouragement, but most of us have an aching desire to communicate – and perhaps that’s why we spend as much time as we do writing letters, novels, and adding those meaningless little status updates on (anti)social media.

Perhaps there’s this deep primeval desire to communicate. We are the modern-day cave painters who instead of illustrating bison in smears of blood and urine tap photo montages on our Samsung A637s.    

But sometimes we must speak with a real human being in actual time. The fear is overwhelming. Conversation is a strange dance. Certain steps must be learned, boundaries tested, and areas avoided. With both the cha cha and the chit chat there’s an almost tangible shared respect at play. You can step on their toes once or twice but don’t make a habit of it.  

Yes, we must be considerate of our partner yet be challenging enough to create the edge of conflict and danger required for total engagement. From an early age our parents and guardians taught us not to talk with strangers. We tend not to dance with them neither.   

Collin Piprill, who died at the age of 76, a few days ago was no stranger and almost certainly not much of a dancer. He was, however, a wonderful conversationalist blessed with a sharp acidic wit, intelligence, solid comedic timing, and more than a handful of original ideas. He wasn’t, as one poster commented on social media, a jolly person always in a good mood. Often his moods were darker than a politician’s heart. The first ten minutes or so of conversation would often be a venting period, but he’d always brighten up as the opportunity to interject humor into the proceedings arose.

He knew how to balance a conversation. Like most writers, small talk bothered Collin greatly. He was often not interested in sharing pleasantries. I recall once arriving for our usual meeting and without even greeting the older man simply asking him “what’s the difference between guilt and shame?” Right of the bat an intense discussion comparing the western concept of guilt and the eastern shame phenomenon ensued. It’s rare to find someone who can just pick up a subject and run with it without stamping their identity all over it.  

We first met at the old Hemingway’s on Sukhumvit Soi 14. The bar had recently opened, and Collin (who struck a striking resemblance to Papa during his big game fishing years) sat brandishing a house red wine with his trademark expression fixed somewhere between a snarl or a smile. We sat at the table under the large wall clock. Time ticked away quickly as it does when you're having fun. As the glasses of wine stacked up Collin's expression would switch between one of menacing curiosity and that of boyhood hilarity. 

Collin laughed a lot. Collin believed in the actual existence of a muse in a Greek mythological sense. His favorite books were The Gingerman by J.P Donleavy, Under the Volcano by Malcom Lowry, and Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. A mutual friend Kevin Cummings had set up that first meeting with Collin, and we remained in contact on a regular basis ever since. He bought me a French edition of one of Bukowski's from Paris. I returned this with a copy of The Sopranos by Alan Warner that I had (somehow) had signed in my collection. We were generations apart yet bonded over wine and literature, philosophy, jokes, and stories - he was the kind of man who had good answers to big questions.   

Recently Collin withdrew from social media and we continued our correspondence by email. 

I set up a meeting at the new Hemingway’s restaurant on soi 11 around a month ago. The large man bounded into the bar with his usual swagger. We spoke of new projects – his in literature and mine in film. We were both two writers, as before, waiting for the next lucky break. 

I have neither guilt nor shame, just a little sadness that those big questions will need to be answered by others now. Collin has passed into the writer's lounge in the sky.
Save me a spot right under the clock. 

words: J.D. Strange pictures: Eric Nelson and J.D. Strange.