Q: The assassination of John F. Kennedy in November of 1963 runs through much of the narrative in this novel. It intermingles in a variety of ways with the characters and events you portray. Why does it play such a prominent role in the book?
Bring home Into the D/Ark by David Elias, published by Radiant Press, 2025.
A: The setting for Into the D/ark is a relatively isolated farming community in the early nineteen sixties. With the recent arrival of American network television, the larger world has begun to make its way into the daily lives of the characters living in this insulated folk society. A transmission tower has been erected just across the U.S. border, and suddenly they find themselves able to watch popular American programming on the primitive black and white televisions they have smuggled into their living rooms from the J.C. Penny store just across the border. But then their viewing pleasure is suddenly interrupted by live broadcasts covering the Kennedy assassination and its aftermath. This marks the first time in history that the media covers a news story in this way.
Many of the characters in the book are already traumatized by the events of their own lives, and now they find themselves caught up in this deeply disturbing pervasive narrative streaming at them through their television sets. The favorite shows they use to escape their own suffering are suddenly and repeatedly pre-empted by live coverage of things like Jack Ruby shooting Lee Harvey Oswald at point blank range as he’s led out of the Sherriff’s office in downtown Dallas. Add to this the advent of the idea being put forth at the time by Marshall McLuhan, who coins the phrase “the medium is the message”, and you have the confluence of many streams pouring into a watershed moment in history. And the characters in the novel, barely able to manage their own lives, are caught up in all of it.
David Elias is the author of seven books, most recently The Truth about the Barn: A Voyage of Discovery and Contemplation, published by Great Plains Publications. It was featured in the Winnipeg Free Press as one of the top titles for 2020. His most recent work of fiction is an historical novel, Elizabeth of Bohemia: A Novel about Elizabeth Stuart, the Winter Queen. It was published in 2019 by ECW Press, and was a finalist for The Margaret Lawrence Award for Fiction at The Manitoba Book Awards. His previous works have been up for numerous awards including the McNally Robinson Book of the Year, the Amazon First Novel Award, and The Journey Prize. His short stories, novel excerpts, and poetry have appeared in literary magazines and anthologies across the country, and in addition to writing he spends time as a mentor, creative writing instructor, and editor. He lives in Winnipeg, Canada.