Paul Quarrington

Novelist Paul Quarrington began writing in part to pass the time during his life as a touring musician. ("Baby and the Blues" was a 1980 Canadian number one for his soft-rock duo Quarrington Worthy). Although antic comic novels like Home Game quickly surpassed his minor musical fame, Quarrington's fifth novel, Whale Music, cemented his reputation; the tragicomic tale of a Brian Wilson-like hermit genius won the 1989 Governor General's Award for Fiction and was adapted into a cult-favorite 1994 film. The Toronto native often wrote about specifically Canadian subjects: the irascible hockey legend who narrates the bawdily hilarious King Leary is based in part on real-life Toronto Maple Leafs superstar Francis "King" Clancy. But Quarrington was by no means a narrow-minded provincialist, and his other novels explored a wide variety of settings, characters and emotional moods: The Spirit Cabinet examines the sleazy demimonde of Las Vegas magicians, the near-apocalyptic Galveston (published as Storm Chasers in the U.S.) takes place during a Caribbean hurricane, and another career high point, Civilization and Its Part in My Downfall, playfully recreates wildly libidinous Hollywood circa 1920. In 2009, Quarrington announced that he had been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer; he died at home in Toronto on January 21, 2010.