quebec literature – Three Percent

“The Faerie Devouring” by Catherine Lalond [Quebec Literature from P.T. Smith]

Chad Post — Thu, 28 Feb 2019 19:00:47 +0000

Before starting this month’s focus on Quebec literature, I asked P.T. Smith to recommend a few books for me to read, since he’s one of the few Americans I know who has read a lot of Quebec literature. But rather than hoard these recommendations or write silly things about them, we decided it would be best if P.T. wrote weekly posts throughout February covering some of his favorite works of Quebec literature ever. You can find his earlier entries��here.

This is my last post for Quebec month at Three Percent. My last Tuesday spending the day on and off writing about a book from Quebec, walking the dog, reading something else, editing at the bar, and going to bed. It’s not a bad Tuesday. I’ll miss Quebec month. I’m also going to end it on a different note. When Chad asked me for recommendations, I gave him three classics, and then the most recent book from the province I’d read. So it’s not a classic. It’s only from 2017 and the translation is from last year. It’s not even a recent read for me anymore. There’s a couple between Chad’s ask and now. But plans can be nice, and I’m sticking with this one. So, what do I have to say about Oana Avasilichioaei’s translation of Catherine Lalond’s ? Plenty, because I both love and I’m lost in it. Love and lost? That might be how I prefer to be.

The original was nominated for the Governor General’s, one of the highest awards in Canadian literature. It was nominated in the poetry category, even though the publisher, Le Quartanier, lists it as a novel, and Book*hug lists their English edition as a novel. The second you open it up, it makes sense why some call it poetry. Most pages have a single block of text, with plenty of white space on all sides. Occasionally, a line breaks off into emptiness before picking up again, that white expanse between asking you to make something of it. Some pages only have a single sentence, or a few words. The only time that the text runs from the top of the page to the bottom, it’s a speech that looks . . . well, a hell of a lot like poetry.

I’m not interested in identifying what label is most useful or most accurate, but I sure am interested in letting you know it playfully, comfortably, floats between identities. This fluidity isn’t just because Lalonde is skillful enough to manage the flow, but it’s the essence of the book, of the sprite at its heart. Most importantly, it means if you want to recommend it to someone who likes novels, tell them it’s a novel, if they prefer poetry, tell them it’s poetry, and if it’s someone who goes on and on about hybrid forms, just put it in their mouth. It’s a slim book, they’ll be fine.

I wanted to review this when it came out, but never managed it. I haven’t been writing much, especially not straightforward, formal reviews where I lay out a way to read the book, some flaws and some failures, make sure to land a not-completely-generic point about the translation, have a conclusion, and edit tightly. I haven’t been all that interested in reading things before they come out to make sure that review is ready to run right around release date. Those are the non-specific reasons I didn’t write about The Faerie Devouring before this. There are loads of excuses particular to this book, coming from its qualities and my inadequacies.

I noted that it’s close to prose poetry. This guy has no idea how to read poetry. See any and all of Chad’s posts on his own failings with poetry. It’s me. More important than that though, Faerie is a painful, wrenching, violent (not in the way you may think), feminine book. And I hesitate to even call it feminine, because it’s not that in any older, traditional meaning of the word, but I don’t know what else to call it. I don’t think Lalonde would disagree, I’m not sure anyone would . . . but I’m a dude trying to talk about a very poetic book that is about a wild, wild, visceral, honest expression of femininity, one that is among many things, a rage against the identity that culture puts on femininity, and eventually an embrace of womanhood specific to one woman. So what in the fuck do I get to write about that?

Okay: plot. A daughter is born. Mother dies in childbirth. Her family is her grandmother and five boys: “John-Jude the adopted eldest, JJ her pride and joy; the brat Peter-Joseph, JJ’s son, JJ, the precocious papa; James the mongoloid, adopted with; her own Luke; and the late-born Matthew.” The novel opens with her birth, “After the clamour of flesh, after the bloody harvest of the mound—liver, spleen, entrails, adorable arteries—the little mound more torn out than pushed, uprooted by the neighbour’s skilled hands.” The first section, the birth, with extended descriptions like that one, faces, bodies, builds up to five words Gramma says, five words spoken after it’s all over, “Fuck. It’s a girl.”

It’s a curse to be a girl, isn’t it? It’s a condemnation to a certain existence. This is a bodily book, relentlessly physical and graphic, and doesn’t a woman’s body come with punishment for being a woman? That’s not rhetorical. Isn’t that a thing many women feel? God I’m out of my element.

I’m convinced I’m not making it up by this though:

Gramma’s waiting for the prophesy, waiting to see the sprite join the military ranks of flesh and fresh fillies: waiting for her to return dried out, old; for her to return erased if not dead, like all women: of shame, rape, anemia, famine, TB, Pythia, family, restraint, embarrassment, hate, silence, dead from stitching, breastfeeding, ass-wiping, dead at the bottom of the lake, foot caught in the trap, ring on the finger—living dead like all the others all the same. Dead from living. Like all women.

Lalonde isn’t always that direct. Instead, like the title suggests, she takes the language of the fairy tale. But does she make it hers. Early on, the girl’s name is basically lost: “even lets her suck cow milk off her callused fingers. Nipples are for the rich. Rock-a-bye baby slurps the taste of hair dung and soil, then gets the runs of jaundice. Three times she gets it, and the sprite toughs it out. The sprite—the name sticks.”

I’ll come back to this novel as a fairy tale, but as much as this straddles, or moves between, prose and poetry, it does the same for other boundaries between genres. The family lives a rural life, seemingly devoid of any organization except the wrath of Gramma: school, work, law, hardly exist. In it’s own distinct way, the book is also an idyll:

It drags on, disharmony for a quackgrass orchestra, while the rest work on napping or rock skipping. The sprite loses interest, fidgets, knots, braids, plaits fragile grass effigies, amulets with dandelion faces and green-wheat arms. The redhead catches ladybugs for her, squishing them to make eyes.

It’s a vicious and nasty book, and god I love it.

Anything I could say about Faerie Devouring is better served by the book itself.

Best description of Gramma? “Gramma slurps with pleasure when it’s Ass Lake chowder night, and in her devouring, her lips soften, her face loses its ravenous wicked faerie godmother look.” That’s an entire page, by the way.

What does a happy family look like? “The six-headed monster scampers around, turns into a tornado, a wild herd, a caterpillar of linked legs: the spritely papoose bareback on the mongoloid, the brat behind putting on airs, the older ones jumping over the hurdle, turning a sharp corner.”

It’s a coming-of-age novel: “She’s thirteen, the sprite, and her first rootword rings clear, her first word, her true love. No. No. Who will be will know, who will know will see and what I’ll be will wart.”

Do I need to quote anything else to show that this is an insane, unique book? That to write it takes a passionate author, wild, brilliant, and free, and that the translator must be all those things too?

It’s almost dull that I like this book as much as I do, cause I’m a sucker. I’m a sucker for books as visceral as this one. Literary work that has piss, shit, vomit, sex, masturbation, and blood? I’m almost certainly game. An all-time favorite quote for me is from Zündel’s Exit: “That’s life, my life anyway, chains, falls, scrapes, and I’m afraid I pissed myself as well.” But often, it’s old hat. Here, it’s new. It’s a woman’s body and mind that has all this going on. It’s different. #readwomen. Not because it’s a moral good, but because I don’t want the same thing again and again and again.

“She pisses standing up to see herself flow, yellow streams her odour has changed.” “And fucking? Another story. A story of no more rump or gristle, only shitting or finding something to feed the mouth and the belly. The sprite comes, makes them come and returns to the chaos, like backwash.” “the sprite, force-fed with memories, the return of sensations, masturbates frantically all at once, as quietly as possible, standing up against the closed door of the boy’s room, comes immediately, comes with the solar speed of the solitary orgasm that remains one of her great, great secrets.”

Masturbation seems like a fine place to end. I could go on. But I can’t. No bit does it justice. Fragments entice, but the whole is another thing. The whole is something that as a dude, I’m not sure I can grasp, but I can work towards it. Something in my will fail Faerie Devouring. I’m okay with that. I can love it anyway. I do. You will? If you do, if you don’t, I want to hear from you. This is chick lit for the insane, intense, intelligent, angry, raging against the world literary crowd? I might get yelled at for that, I think, but in a good way.

My final other recommendations. For another book I couldn’t grasp because it’s abstracted out of my reach, another book that is strange and metaphorical (it’s set in a giant structure where families live in cells?) but also grounded and physical and intense: Karoline Georges’s��Under the Stone. Hey! Lalonde blurbed it. It’s translated by Jacob Homel, which brings me to How to Make Love to a Negro Without Getting Tired, Dany LaFerrière’s novel, translated by David Homel, Jacob’s father. I haven’t read it yet, not even started it, but it’s next for me. He’s Haitian-Canadian. Or Haitian-Quebecois. Cultures within cultures. I’m eager to dive in.

Coach House Books & Marie-Claire Blais [2018 Redux]

Chad Post — Tue, 26 Feb 2019 18:00:21 +0000

I’ve really, really enjoyed Quebec Month here at Three Percent. I had the chance to read the Catherine Leroux book I’ve been wanting to read, encountered some other really great books and presses I probably would’ve missed if I hadn’t forced this on myself, and got to run a few really cool interviews and excerpts. On top of that, P. T. Smith has expanded my to-read bookshelves with Next Episode, a horror book about a nunnery, Go Figure����Ի���鲹��Բ��.��

Based on Twitter (never reliable!), it seems like people are liking this new Three Percent focus (especially the interviews), and personally, I’m much happier reading a bunch of great books from a particular place than I was when trying to read and write about recently published translations every week. Too much mediocrity that gets lauded for being new, in my opinion. It’s hard���Դǳ��to want to dig into—and criticize—the book industry when you’re watching sausage turn into gold. It’s probably for the best to just read in a bubble than to try and engage with the hipster websites and all the over-the-top exaggerated praise for every new book.

This is my new life mantra: If you want to avoid being depressed, stop paying attention to most everything.

The one author who I���徱��’��get to, but desperately wanted to was Marie-Claire Blais. I’ve been recommended her books from one friend or another for more than fifteen years now, and . . . I own a few. Although��A Season in the Life of Emmanuel��is frequently referred to has her most beloved book, I really wanted to read part of her ten-volume (?!) series called����Ǿ��ڲ��(Thirsts). Wikipedia blows at delineating which of her books are part of this series and which aren’t, but I bought a few from House of Anansi (another Canadian press we never featured properly because time) and really hoped to read�� this month.

I don’t care what’s cool, I like all these covers. Like the one for��Rebecca, Born in the Maelstrom:

��Thunder and Light:

And, last but not least,��Augustino and the Choir of Destruction:

As I said last week, I am a sucker for trilogies and the like, and far too often, male authors with long literary series (*cough* KNAUSGAARD *cough*) get tons of media play, but women with equally ambitious projects (Dorothy Richardson, Doris Lessing, Marie-Claire Blais) are ignored. I’m as guilty of this as anyone; see the fact that I’m going to dedicate March to losing my mind over Uwe Johnson’s��Anniversaries, but have yet to read Marguerite Young’s��or Gertrude Stein’s��The Making of Americans.

This needs to be rectified.

And I want to start with Blais.

Her books sound so up my alley . . . Here’s the copy from��These Festive Nights:

Originally published in 1995 under the title��Soifs, the first novel in Marie-Claire Blais’ masterful series won the Governor General’s Award for French Fiction and was hailed by critics around the world as a tour de force, comparing Blais to such literary greats as Virginia Woolf, Dante, Sophocles, and Shakespeare. In this dazzling rendering,��These Festive Nights, celebrated translator Sheila Fischman brings Blais’ novel to life for English-speaking readers.

A sun-drenched paradise in the Gulf of Mexico surrounded by the glimmering blue sea; Renata is convalescing on this island poised between two worlds: between great wealth and extreme poverty, between the past and an uncertain future, between the beauty of the world and the horrors of history.

During her time here, Renata becomes tormented by thirst—for justice, for pleasure, for intoxication—while all around her, festivities are going on in joint celebration of the birth of baby Vincent and the end of the twentieth century. Over the course of three days and three nights a flock of characters assembles: wealthy, poor, writers, artists facing their own mortality, children immersed in innocent games, young men dying of AIDS, refugees, the Ku Klux Klan—an entire spectrum of humanity is depicted in the grip of doubt and suffering. In this swirling, baroque fresco, Marie-Claire Blais captures the essence of our apocalyptic age, rendering it in powerfully evocative prose.

Also, this 300-page novel might be just one sentence? (Or, like, three sentences?) How in the world��haven’t��I read this?

OK, it might not happen in April or May, but before the fall, I will dedicate a month to reading all of her books from this series that have been translated into English. And separate from writing for this website, I’ll��finally��read Young’s masterpiece AND Doris Lessing’s��Children of Violence��series.

And maybe this project will give me a chance to finally interview Sheila Fischman . . . Who WAS profiled in��! (Thanks Jeffrey Zuckerman!)

All of that above, and the acknowledgement of this disparity in coverage and general respect has me a bit bummed out. I��love��long books. I’m planning on spending upwards of eight months reading��Against the Day��slowly but surely via audiobook, Kindle, and a treadmill. (When you run a half marathon for��fun, at the gym, alone, and get through less than 6% of a book, you know it’s gonna be a��commitment.)

That all said, Michigan State beat Michigan on Sunday (even with two of their best players sidelined), and I’ve totally come to terms with my lost files (if anyone wants to try and hack a “inprogress” “sparsebundle” TimeMachine backup file, let me know and I’ll give it to you and you can be an Open Letter superhero), and want to ease back into writing things that are more than just cheerleader-type posts for interesting books.

Not that I don’t want to write about good books, but there��have to be��more creative ways to talk about literature. Like how . . .

Which, actually, speaking of Sam, his recent article on a “” might actually speak to this whole Quebec focus����Ի��everything else I always wring my hands over when it comes to non-profit publishing. But let’s get to that in a minute. First: Let’s get our murder on.

��by Grégoire Courtois, translated from the French by Rhonda Mullins (Coach House Books)

I’m tempted to title this post “Seven Highs of Guilty Pleasures,” but I don’t think I actually want to try and come up with seven things about this book that would justify such a title. My take on this book—which is pretty good, but definitely isn’t high literature—is this: The first 30 pages are funnier than I expected and left me yearning for some killing.

Which sounds dark! But��The Laws of the Skies��declares its intention from the very first page, leaving the reader with a very clear idea of what’s going to happen:

The moms and dads had said goodbye to them through the school bus windows. Some of the children were crying as they waved goodbye, and others were chattering with each other as if they had never had parents. It was the first time any of them would be away from their home, their bed, and their blankie. [. . .]

And there you have it.

The children were on their way.

They would never return.

Cool, cool! Perfect book for a camping trip!

This is the sort of book that I enjoyed while I was reading it (I guess? I skimmed a bit and felt like it was all too obvious from moment to moment), but that I have almost nothing to say about it as soon as I set it aside.

Looking through my tagged pages in my galley, there’s nothing that I marked that wasn’t just a plot point.��Enzo brains the teacher. Some ill-defined kid falls down a hill and bleeds out. A bunch of random kids eat poison berries and puke till they die.��

Cool. Cool.

The best part, in my opinion, is when Sondra’s husband shows up drunk to drive sick Natalie home. Which isn’t funny, except. His section is all about how excited he is that his wife and kid are gone for the weekend so that he can finally drink some whiskey in peace and quiet and jack it. And then, of course, his wife calls and asks for a favor. MARRIAGE CIRCA 2019.

Also, the scene with Natalie shitting her brains out from some sort of flu is pretty solid. And kind of funny, since it’s related from the viewpoint of a few kids who think her expulsive ass is a ghost.

Guilty. Pleasure.

Also, spoiler alert, Sondra’s (Sandra’s? I’m not looking this up, sorry) husband kills himself and Natalie when, in a drunken moment that, honestly, reads a bit more like he’s tripping balls than drunk, he thinks she’s a porn star he’s seen on the Internets and decides to molest her. They crash into a lake and drown. That is this book. For 145 pages.

Which sounds pretty great? Except it’s a bit too telegraphed—Enzo kills a snail early on in sadistic fashion, just like he tries to kill everyone else—and the only real hook to keep the reader going is the idea that��everyone��is going to die. How will��that��happen?

On a scale of 1 to 10 I give this a score of NETFLIX TUESDAY. Not good enough to spend a Friday night on, but if you’re like, “hey, it’s Tuesday and I need to be entertained . . .��The Laws of the Skies��is streaming in book form. LET’S DO THIS.”

Instead of writing any more about��The Laws of the Skies��(which, again, isn’t bad, just not my favorite), I’m going to follow my initial lead and highlight each of the��seven��books written by women from Quebec that Rhonda Mullins has translated for Coach House. I’ve read none of these, and instead of pretending, I’m just going to go with posting the CHB copy and a comment/joke. (Including the Sam Miller inspired one alluded to above.)

But let’s start with Rhonda Mullins herself.

Rhonda Mullins is a writer and translator living in Montréal. She received the 2015 Governor General’s Literary Award for��Twenty-One Cardinals, her translation of Jocelyne Saucier’s��Les héritiers de la mine.��And the Birds Rained Down, her translation of Jocelyne Saucier’s��Il pleuvait des oiseaux, was a CBC Canada Reads Selection. It was also shortlisted for the Governor General’s Literary Award, as were her translations of Élise Turcotte’s Guyana��and Hervé Fischer’s��The Decline of the Hollywood Empire.

Since her Wikipedia page doesn’t include a total number of translated titles, I’m going to assume that one of these two statements are true: 1) She’s translated a ton of stuff since 2010 or 2) she has a notably high hit-rate for translating books that are finalists for major prizes.

Here’s a bit from an interview with Sara from Brazos:

Sara:��I just wanted to start off by asking you about translating in general. We’re huge proponents of literature in translation, so I’m sure our customers would want to know what led you to the field of translation to begin with.

Rhonda Mullins: I kind of fell ass-backwards into it. I love hearing translators talk about how they got into it, because for so many of them it’s just a series of coincidences and circumstances. In my case, I was working as a marketing writer in tech, in an environment just before the bubble, so this is a very volatile environment. At some point, after the last company I was with closed down, I thought okay, enough of this, I’m going to work as a writer. I won’t lay��myself��off! I started writing, freelance, and somebody called me to do translation one day. So, financial motivation made me say yes. So I thought, I’d better study this. I went back to school and did a certificate in translation. From there, commercial to literary. It really has been . . . I feel very fortunate I really enjoy what I do and yet it wasn’t really by design.

Weirdly, this is the most normal story for translators. I know that I literally work for an institution that wants to help standardize the study of literary translation as a field and profession, but I kind of prefer this serendipitous way of becoming a translator. Not to mention, the best literary translators aren’t necessarily the ones who did��classwork, but who worked with smart mentors and/or editors and have a knack for language that likely comes from reading a ton. By which I mean: COME TO THE U OF R FOR OUR MALTS PROGRAM. (Seriously, you should. Especially since you can get some academic chops while working with really, really great editors who know of translation.)

Anyway: Kudos to Rhonda Mullins for translating so many interesting sounding books, mostly for Coach House. Which, although Coach House is Toronto-based, is doing an amazing job bringing out Canadian authors in translation. There’s a healthy scene up there—one that we (meaning Americans) don’t pay enough attention to. And when we do, it’s all economically inflected in a weird, anti-meritocracy sort of way.

��by Anne-Renée Caillé, translated from the French by RHONDA MULLINS

A small-town embalmer’s daughter lifts the shroud on the fascinating minutiae of dealing with the dead. Imagine rubbing shoulders with the dead for most of your life. As she picks the brain of her father for the most gruesome and thought-provoking secrets of his embalming career—from the drowned boy whose organs were eaten by eels to how to inject just the right amount of colour into a corpse’s skin for that blushing look—the narrator must look her parents’ deaths, and her relationship with them, straight in the eye.

Yeah, no, this isn’t a Chad book. The longer I can go without facing mortality, the better. I’m not sure how I watched��Six Feet Under without losing my shit completely. I guess when you’re younger you really don’t count down the years . . .��If I watch three TV shows a year, and live 20 more years, that’s 60 total shows before I never have a conscious thought again. So, should I watch��Game of Thrones��or��The Good Place?

Speaking of losing one’s shit, I think I’m totally over this CBD craze. This might be a Rochester thing (?), but we don’t need every restaurant in town adding CBD to cocktails and vegan appetizers. I’d like my morning smoothie straight, thank you very much. Also? This feels like total bullshit. CBD feels like the Amway of anxiety treatments. If I’m gonna take the weed to feel better, I want to��feel��it, if you now what I’m saying. Go big or go home!

��by Julie Demers, translated by RHONDA MULLINS

Another book on my desk at work that I wish I had read!

It’s 1944, and a little village in rural Quebec sits quietly beside an aging mountain and an angry river. The air tastes of kelp, and the wind keeps knocking over the cross. Beside that river an eleven-year-old girl lives with her parents. Her mother is very sad, and her father has vanished because he can’t bear to look at his own daughter. You see, this little girl has suddenly sprouted a full beard.

And so her mother has shut the curtains and locked the girl inside to keep her safe from the townspeople, the Boots, who think there’s something wrong with a bearded little girl. And when they come for her, she escapes into the wintry night . . .

What was Quebec up to in 1944 as WWII was raging? Weird things involving kelp.

It’s going to take a few entires to make sense of my larger, weirder idea, so let’s start here.

In a normal publisher-agent/author transaction, the publisher tries to offer an amount of money that 1) won’t cripple them from making other deals, 2) is the lowest possible amount the author/agent will accept, and 3) has a positive sales + funding : advance + other variable costs + fixed costs ratio.

This is stupidly elementary. And no matter what anyone says in their mission, these things rule all indie and nonprofit presses. You don’t offer a $15,000 advance for a book that will cost $8,000 to have translated, $6,000 to print, when you have other fixed costs of $16,000 per book if you think that you’ll make, at most, $16,000 in sales (2,000 units at $16 a pop, disregarding distribution costs but including bookstore discounts) and $12,000 in other funding. Under those circumstances you’d lose $17,000.

Let’s put aside the idea that nonprofits serve a higher purpose for the moment. And let’s put aside the idea that presses have traditionally operated under a system by which 90% of their titles LOSE money, but one makes a TON. Instead let’s just let ride this simple economic truth for a second.

If you have to spend $16,000 (fixed costs) + $8,000 (translation)+ $X (advance) + $6,000 to print and that has to be < or = to $Y (sales) + $Z (funding) and you think the right side of the equation is $28,000 on average? . . . Ugh. Math.

Spoiler: Doesn’t work out! If $16,000 is fixed, as is $8,000, and $X (print costs) are $1.5/unit sold, and solve for Y (advance) with $16,000 in sales and $12,000 in funding? Then $24,000 + x + $3,500 = $28,000. Which means your advance is $500. And given a 7.5% royalty rate on list price of sales? You’ll owe more and lose money.

Which voices are still muffled because of these economics? WAY TOO MANY.

��by Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette, translated from the French by RHONDA MULLINS

If you’re a regular Three Percent (TP? 3%?) reader, you’ll know Suzanne.��It’s come up like three four times already.

Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette never knew her mother’s mother. Curious to understand why her grandmother, Suzanne, a sometime painter and poet associated with Les Automatistes, a movement of dissident artists that included Paul-Émile Borduas, abandoned her husband and young family, Barbeau-Lavalette hired a private detective to piece together Suzanne’s life.

Suzanne, winner of the Prix des libraires du Québec and a bestseller in French, is a fictionalized account of Suzanne’s life over eighty-five years, from Montreal to New York to Brussels, from lover to lover, through an abortion, alcoholism, Buddhism, and an asylum. It takes readers through the Great Depression, Québec’s Quiet Revolution, women’s liberation, and the American civil rights movement, offering a portrait of a volatile, fascinating woman on the margins of history. And it’s a granddaughter’s search for a past for herself, for understanding and forgiveness.

This weekend, we KONMARI’D the crap out of our apartment. I have seen exactly zero episodes of her show and will, literally, never read her books, but the idea of throwing things away is logical and appealing. TMI here, but my mom (especially) is a “clean” hoarder (like, she keeps old toys and expired cans of beans, but animals don’t nest inside my childhood home; I didn’t grow up in a 100% full-on trash heap), and as a result, I tend to save things that I know are garbage, because why not.

I also used to own midwestern-sized houses, but post-divorce, that is much more difficult. (Less said here, the better. But there are stories and STORIES.)

Anyway, I threw away three garbage bags of clothes, and my daughter KONMARI’D like four bags of crap from her room, and another five from her brother’s. Best moment? Yelling KONMARI!!!!!!!! every time I threw something away. KONMARI! That piece of scrap paper is CANCELLED. De-cluttering is fun if you can gamify it with a meaningless slogan that you’re totally misapplying in a very ignorant way.

by Élise Tucotte,��translated by RHONDA MULLINS

Nominated for the 2014 Governor General’s Literary Award for Translation

All sorts of things can happen, no matter what road you take, and I never forget that. Death in particular can never be forgotten. Since Rudi’s death, I have tried to anticipate and dodge obstacles like an Olympic skier. My agile imagination glides between the little red flags with ease. Philippe’s imagination is both inï¬nite and inflexible. It’s a dangerous combination. He stays planted on the ground while looking down over reality. Between us, we do a good job of ï¬lling the realm of the possible.��

I figured I shouldn’t tell him the news: your hairdresser hanged herself in her salon.

Ana and her son, Philippe, are grieving the loss of Philippe’s father when Philippe’s hairstylist, Kimi, dies in an apparent suicide. Driven by a force she doesn’t understand, Ana starts digging into Kimi’s past in Guyana in 1978, which leads to nested tales of north and south, past and present, and to the Jonestown Massacre. A stunning translation of a masterpiece by one of Quebec’s most important novelists.

I’m pretty sure (?) that “ï¬”��is a typo, but I kind of hope not. What if someone published a book that was initially completely understandable, but chapter by chapter morphed into a cryptogram? That would be amazing. And would win ZERO Governor’s Awards.

(I just asked Google Home Dot thing to explain this, but what is a Governor General? Also, Hey Google was of zero help. Surprise!)

��by Jocelyne Saucier, translated by RHONDA MULLINS

Winner of the 2015 Governor General’s Literary Award for French-to-English Translation

An abandoned mine. A large family driven by honour. And a source of pain, buried deep in the ground.

We’re nothing like other families. We are self-made. We are an essence unto ourselves, unique and dissonant, the only members of our species. Livers of humdrum lives who flitted around us got their wings burned. We’re not mean, but we can bare our teeth. People didn’t hang around when a band of Cardinals made its presence known.

With twenty-one kids, the Cardinal family is a force of nature. And now, after not being in the same room for decades, they’re congregating to celebrate their father, a prospector who discovered the zinc mine their now-deserted hometown in northern Quebec was built around. But as the siblings tell the tales of their feral childhood, we discover that AngÃ¨le, the only Cardinal with a penchant for happiness, has gone missing—although everyone has pretended not to notice for years. Why the silence? What secrets does the mine hold?

How well do books by Quebecois writers sell in the U.S.? What about the UK? I have no knowledge of what these numbers are, but given the paucity of coverage here—and in the UK?—for anyone who��isn’t Anakana Schofield (who is incredibly AWESOME), I’m guessing it’s modest. Let’s revisit our dumb, simple equation as if we were running an imaginary publishing house based in Rosdniw, a suburb of Windsor.

We’re interested in a great Quebec book that will sell 700 copies in Canada, 1,000 in America, and will have the translation paid for in full by the government if we use a Canadian-based translator.

Let’s pause here for another cover.

��by Dominique Fortier, translated by RHONDA MULLINS

A 15th-century portrait painter, grieving the sudden death of his lover, takes refuge at the monastery at Mont Saint-Michel, an island off the coast of France. He haunts the halls until a monk assigns him the task of copying a manuscript—though he is illiterate. His work slowly heals him and continues the tradition that had, centuries earlier, grown the monastery’s library into a beautiful city of books, all under the shadow of the invention of the printing press.

So, let’s say that there’s a Quebec book out there that is wicked good (WICKED BETTER THAN HEY-HO!), and an American press wants to publish it. This is such an interesting game theory moment! Let’s run some numbers.

Using all the figures above, a Canadian press, who is going to get all of the translation paid for, plus other Canadian government subsidies, can transform this:

$16,000 (fixed costs) + $8,000 (translation)+ $X (advance) + $1.5 per unit sold and that has to be < or = to $Y (sales) + $Z (funding)

Into this

$16,000 (fixed costs) + $8,000 (translation)+ $X (advance)��+ $1.5 per unit sold and that has to be < or = to $Y (sales) + $16,000 (funding)

I’m making this up, but given the conversations I’ve had, having half the fixed costs and all the translation costs paid by grants seems reasonable. If you can then sell 2,000 copies at $16 list price (with normal 50% bookstore discount plus 28% distributor fees), you can offer up to $5,000 to the translator and still break even. That’s a more than solid advance for a translation!

��by Jocelyne Saucier, translated by RHONDA MULLINS

A CBC Canada Reads 2015 Selection!

Finalist for the 2013 Governor General’s Literary Award for French-to-English Translation

Deep in a Northern Ontario forest live Tom and Charlie, two octogenarians determined to live out the rest of their lives on their own terms: free of all ties and responsibilities, their only connection to civilization two pot farmers who bring them whatever they can’t eke out for themselves. But their solitude is disrupted by the arrival of two women. The first is a photographer searching for survivors of a series of catastrophic fires nearly a century earlier; the second is an elderly escapee from a psychiatric institution. The little hideaway in the woods will never be the same. Originally published in French, And the Birds Rained Down, the recipient of several prestigious prizes, including the Prix de Cinq Continents de la Francophonie, is a haunting meditation on aging and self-determination.

OK, OK. Let’s run these numbers backward. If a U.S.-BASED PUBLISHER thought that they could sell a bunch of copies of an average Quebec title (aka, one not a finalist for the Governor General’s Award), what should they do?

And here’s the Sam Miller of it all: Offer one more dollar than the Canadian press would. Outbid them by nothing more than the cost of a Big Mac and the aspirational goal that a U.S.-based press will help a book play better with American audiences. If you can do that, and then sell 500 more copies, because you can get placement at Target and nothing matters and nothing makes sense, you could make a profit.

The most frustrating thing about being a small publisher is when someone of near-comparable size steals your authors. It’s one thing if Penguin Random House were to come along and offer $100,000 for a book that you can only pay $3,500 for, but it’s another when you get outbid by $500 by a press with similar stature and/or means of distribution.

And that’s what gets to me in thinking about Quebec literature in the U.S. If a U.S.-based press started a line of Quebecois fiction, it’s fairly likely that they could generate at least��some��additional interest among American readers. (Basing this in part on a quote from a panel at sales conference some years back about how difficult it is getting books from Canadian presses into bookstores. This shouldn’t be the case!) But they would be totally screwing over the work that Canadian presses like the ones we’ve been featuring have been doing for years.

A similar thing applies when talking about who translates these books. Canadian presses get funding��if��they use Canadian-based translators. Would the translation community in the U.S. be more enthusiastic about Quebec literature if translators more commonly known among American booksellers and enthusiasts were the ones translating these?

I don’t want any of this to be true, but it’s so astonishing how little attention these books seem to get here, and I can’t quite wrap my mind around it. We’re living in a golden age of international literature, where prejudices about translation are breaking down left and right, so why not pick up a few books from our northern neighbors and see what Quebec writers have to offer?

“Next Episode” by Hubert Aquin [Quebec Literature from P.T. Smith]

Chad Post — Thu, 21 Feb 2019 22:02:17 +0000

In 1964, Hubert Aquin was arrested on charges of illegal possession of a firearm, the and apparently police he was a revolutionary. While held in a psychiatric hospital in Montreal for four months, he wrote . The narrator of Next Episode is a man held in a psychiatric hospital in Montreal, writing a first-person spy thriller about a man from Montreal who is a political revolutionary. It’s a short, strange book. It’s philosophical, it’s absurdly rambly, another book where the narrator is chasing, chasing his thoughts, desperate to order them, language running itself away from him. In the beginning, the narrator in the hospital attempting to write and the narrator in Geneva battle for space. The first fights to give life, to find a way to free himself in some form, and eventually it becomes almost a straightforward quickly-paced, tense thriller, at times.

I wrote about Aquin for back when I first read him, taking on both Next Episode and . I remember nothing of what I wrote, and my past self is always an ignorant moron wholly unaware of what he’s writing, so I refuse to revisit it. If you want, .

Last week, in my P.S. note, I acknowledged Sheila Fischman as the GOAT when it comes to translators from Quebec. Guess who translated the version of Next Episode I’m familiar with? There’s an earlier translation, but I’ll stick with hers. I also should have noted that while she didn’t translate Kamouraska, she did much of Hébert’s other work that has made it to English.

This is a little bit of a different recommendation than my posts on Ducharme and Hébert. Aquin is classic too, but a little less central, from my outside viewpoint. A little more of a literary oddball. If Ducharme’s image is the myth of the recluse Aquin’s has the myth of the rebel and the suicide: he killed himself at forty-seven. He was expressly political, unlike those two . . . I think. In the 60s, when he was arrested, he was a member of the Quebec liberation movement, though not the more radical FLQ (Quebec Liberation Front). Infinite Jest may play the idea of Quebec liberation as a joke, but in the 60s and culminating in the October Crisis in 1970, it was not.

I do something a little bit, a little slightly but not totally, dishonest with this novel. I recommend it to anyone who likes Jean-Patrick Manchette. It’s a little dishonest because if anyone ever takes me up on it, in the early pages—when it’s mostly a possibly insane man obsessed with revolution, independence, language, and love is writing about trying write a novel while barely maintaining a line of thought—they’re going to be confused to all hell as what I was going on about:

Real novels I leave to the real novelists. As for me, I flatly refuse to bring algebra into my invention. Condemned to a certain ontological incoherence, I take my stand. I’m even turning it into a system with an immediate application that I decree. Infinite I shall be, in my own way and in the literal sense. I won’t a system I create for the sole purpose of never leaving it.

Yet . . . most of the people I know who like Manchette would also like Next Episode. There are similarities. I’m not completely misleading them. The people I know are also the type to be drawn in by the oddities, the madness, of Next Episode. And when the thriller takes off, they’ll see the Manchette. In my head, there are maps of literature, and Aquin and Manchette share an open border. Along that border violence and the political are a conjoined part of life, or at least a place sympathetic to the possibility of violence as a political path for the underdog, the one confined by those with power.

Early on, our narrator is trying to figure out how to write this thriller. What sentences should be like, what the plot should be, who the characters are:

As quickly as I can, I eliminate any behavior that would give my secret agent too much merit: he’s neither a Sphinx nor a highly perceptive Tarzan, neither God not the Holy Ghost; he musn’t be so logical that the plot need not be or, on the other hand, so lucid that I can complicate everything else and cook up some story that makes no sense, that when all’s said and done would only be understood by some bungling oaf with a gun who doesn’t share his thoughts with anyone.

As he struggles, moving back and forth from the psychiatric institute to the plot, the propulsive madness of his language overlaps the two. The narrator exists both as the spy and as the man in the hospital. Aquin is having fun, I need to be clear. He’s mad and wild and angry but he’s having fun.

The spy is given a mission by another invention of the narrator, a man named Hamidou Diop. He is to find and kill a man who may have (there is no certainty here) cut off the FLQ’s Swiss bank account. After meeting with K, the revolutionary’s lover, this book’s version of the femme fatale, he acquires a car, and flies off on mountain roads. On his way, the language of the writer and the spy overlap:

Time passes and I take forever to cross the Col des Mosses. Each turn surprises me in third gear when I should have already started to gear down; each sentence disconcerts me. I burn words, stages, memories, and I keep freeing myself from the tracery of this interpolated night. The event that’s already too far ahead of me will unfold shortly . . .

Aquin is having fun. It’s his fun. It’s weird. It matters. It’s sincere. It’s not like this book is laugh out loud funny, but man: “I needed to think up a quick retort, and since I no longer had a weapon to draw, I’d have to empty my dialectical magazine on this stranger who was standing between me and the daylight.”

Next Episode is a thriller, but also, somehow, nothing really happens. It’s a book of passionate desire for action, a raging need to attack the world, change it, free the individual from confinement, and free a nation under the rule of another nation. It’s also a book of confusion, of paralysis and impossibility, anxious desire for action but absolutely inability to act. Identity doesn’t work. Our revolutionary is kidnapped, he escapes, he kidnaps his kidnapper, he escapes. At no point is he sure that the other man is indeed his target, they go so far as to tell each other the same lies, or one lies and the other mirrors with truth. Even when our revolutionary breaks into his enemies’ house to wait for him, with the aim of finally killing him, he’s uncertain about everything.

I’m going on and on, aren’t I? This is a . . . unique book? It’s somehow stranger than I remember. It’s a love story, but the identity of that lover, K., is another identity without certainty. The love too is political:

What triumph there was in that night! What violent and sweet foretaste of the national revolution was unfolding on that narrow bed awash in colours and our two bodies naked, blazing, united in their rhythmic madness. Again tonight my lips hold the damp taste of your boundless kisses.

It’s simultaneously a political allegory and blatantly straightforward that its protagonist is a violent political separatist working for Quebec independence from Canada. At times, when our man from Montreal is walking around Geneva, being idle and paranoid, it’s the novel of a flâneur. It’s a novel about writing a novel. It’s a goddamned Quebec book. Its entire attitude, it is Quebec:

Within myself, explosive and depressed, an entire nation grovels historically and recounts its lost childhood in bursts of stammered words and scriptural raving, and then, under the dark shock of lucidity, suddenly begins to weep at the enormity of the disaster, at the nearly sublime scope of its failure.

P.S.: It’s impossible for me to not tag in Alain Farah’s Ravenscrag, translated by Lazer Lederhendler (which I reviewed for ). Another novel with blended narratives, this time in two time periods. It’s about MK-Ultra. (Isn’t that enough of a pitch? It is for me.) It’s about the absolutely insane experiments actually done by a doctor at McGill. It also features another version of Next Episode’s Hamidou Diop. Jason Freure wrote about this revival of Diop for the . Read Boundary too, by Andrée Michaud in Donald Winkler’s translation. A much more straightforward literary crime novel set in the woods on the border between Quebec and Maine. A book I thought was pretty good when I read it . . . and months later I realized was more than that and I need to read more Michaud. And Donald Winkler? He’s not only married to Sheila Fischman, but contends with her for that GOAT title.

“Aphelia” by Mikella Nicol [Excerpt]

Chad Post — Wed, 20 Feb 2019 18:00:07 +0000

Following on this morning’s interview with Dimitri Nasrallah, below you’ll find an excerpt from����by Mikella Nicol, translated from the French by��Lesley Trites, and forthcoming from Véhicule Press/Esplanade Books.��

The night I met Mia, I was drinking with Louis at the bar. We were joking with the bartender, who was serving me discounted beer along with the occasional penetrating stare. I was waiting to see if he would try to kiss me, and whether this time I’d let it happen. Louis was fanning himself with a menu. He wiped away the pearl of sweat forming on his upper lip and signalled to the bartender that we’d take two more beers. The night was unfolding in its usual way. The guys and I talked loudly and clinked our glasses together in a toast, happy to have left another week behind. I reached up to free my face from my hair, which was soaked to the roots. The alcohol quickly went to my head.

The onslaught of hot summer days had made me feverish. We were bogged down in an unnaturally infernal May. The humidity in the air would blur your vision and veil the horizon in haze. I didn’t remember the springs of my childhood being so harsh. They were already talking about humidex records on the news, and I would wake up each morning to sheets slick with sweat. It was a summer that would become legendary, syncopated by the buzz of fans and the familiar moan of fire truck sirens.

Louis and I were in the habit of frequenting this bar on Fridays. We called it our bar, like we said our park, a way of legitimizing our loitering, of appropriating some territory to forget all that we didn’t dare conquer. We would sit at the counter, on the same stools, under the glow of the hanging lamps. The swivelling seats allowed us to see who was coming and going. Old regulars mixed with young people in search of cheap booze in this tavern tucked in an alleyway. When we went outside to stretch our legs, the bartender took the opportunity for a break and joined us. We would pass through a dark corridor with several rooms reserved for employees. Through a half-open door, we could catch a glimpse of the owner reprimanding an employee or a couple kissing before we emerged into the alley. The bartender would wink at me, no doubt hoping that Louis wouldn’t follow us. He never talked about his girlfriend, and he shot me these perfect smiles that caught the light of the street lamps. The guys would light their cigarettes while leaning against the wall.

I took a long swig of my beer while spinning around on my stool and found myself facing Mia, who appeared out of the darkness. I had never seen her before. She looked straight into my eyes and smiled before passing, dispensing her perfume behind her as though handing flowers out to beggars. The scent would rival that of the overly ripe buds that had bloomed so vigorously on fluorescent lawns that week, of the white lilacs and rose clover covering the grass in front of low-rent apartment buildings. She sat down at her table without bothering to cross her legs. The bottle I had wedged between my thighs cooled my crotch and dampened my skirt. Louis and the bartender’s voices were unsuccessfully trying to reach me; meanwhile, I managed to contain myself, as though I hadn’t just weathered a storm.

A fresh beer slid down the counter behind my back. I became vaguely conscious of an exchange of money between the two guys, and then peals of laughter broke me out of my stupor. When I turned around, the bartender was pouring more liquor into the almost-full glass of a girl who was already too drunk. Everyone was clapping.

I watched Mia on the sly and tried to find something to say to her. Maybe I could compliment her pretty shirt. After a few beers, it didn’t seem impossible. I examined the three people she was with. I didn’t recognize them. New people would sometimes show up at the bar—it did happen—but they never came back. The guy and the brunette looked like a couple. The other girl was leaning nonchalantly back in her chair, her legs stretched out in front of her. She wasn’t talking much and yawned occasionally. Mia was sitting up straight and smiled when our eyes met. The lighting was creating an auburn halo around her hair. She drank often, taking small sips and refilling her glass. I smiled back at her. Her movements were causing butterflies in my stomach. Louis understood what was happening to me, at least in part, and he didn’t like it.

“I’m going to the bathroom,” I told him. He sighed and shook his head.

“This time, you’ve seriously outdone yourself,” he replied, but I ignored him.

I stopped at Mia’s table, putting my hand on the back of her chair and leaning toward her to murmur something—my name. My fluid gestures and the ease with which I made witty remarks disgusted and fascinated me at once. She’d known I would come over. Our bodies both tensed when I sat down near her. Conversations were floating all around us, but I was incapable of focusing on any of them. They didn’t interest me. Everyone else was only distracting me from Mia. I wanted to talk to her until the night disappeared.

Translation by Lesley Trites. To be published April 2019 by Esplanade Fiction Originally published as ��é�� in 2017 by Cheval d’août.

Interview with Dimitri Nasrallah of Esplanade Books

Chad Post — Wed, 20 Feb 2019 15:00:45 +0000

Continuing our month-long series of Quebec literature, below you’ll find an interview with Dimitri Nasrallah, writer, translator, and editor of , the fiction imprint of Véhicule Press. Later this afternoon we’ll be running an excerpt from one of their forthcoming titles.��

Chad W. Post: I want to ask you about all the��different things you do—write, translate,��edit—but it’s probably best to start with something really simple:��Could you introduce yourself and say a bit about Esplanade Fiction?

Dimitri Nasrallah: Well, I suppose the best way to begin with a question that broad is to say that I’m a writer first and foremost, that was my reason for moving to Montreal in the first place, seventeen years ago. Without digging too much deeper than that, in 2011 I published my second novel, , with Esplanade Fiction, and that’s where my longstanding relationship with Véhicule Press and publishers Simon Dardick and Nancy Marrelli began. Then two years later, I received a called from Simon, inviting me to become the fiction editor of Esplanade.

Esplanade had been in existence for a decade by that point, under the helm of its originating editor, Andrew Steinmetz, publishing one to two books per year. The imprint had had some successes along the way, most notably debuts by , , and . The final book that Andrew had worked on was Guillaume Morissette’s debut novel, , which ended up becoming one of the imprint’s biggest sellers. Given that book’s success, a first decade in the pocket, and a new editor at the helm, it seemed like a good moment to change things up.

Following a series of discussions about the direction of the imprint, some important changes were implemented. The number of books per year jumped to four, so that the catalogue could have more consistent visibility. Also, I felt we were missing an opportunity, as a Montreal-based publisher, to take advantage of our cultural proximity to the French publishing scene and translate an exciting new generation of writers. At that point, all that work was being left to publishers outside Quebec–House of Anansi, Biblioasis, Talonbooks, Coach House, Book*hug. Now of course there’s QC Fiction and Linda Leith who both have translation programs. But at the time, the terrain was barren and I thought we could bring a different vantage point to it, and that it would carry greater meaning in the province’s cultural circles for an Anglo publisher to cross the divide and begin promoting the works of Francophone writers. So we dedicated half the catalogue to translations.

It was also quite important for me–and for Simon and Nancy–to feature a more diverse offering of writers. The problem with Quebec’s historic divide along language lines is that for generations every other cultural dynamic, especially those of minorities, gets pushed to the bottom of the conversation in favour of perpetuating the notion of “two solitudes”.

I also have a special place in my heart for short books. So when you mix all those ideas together, you get something of the reasoning behind what Esplanade has represented for the last five years.

CWP: I read on the��“Ģ��ý Us” page that you took over as the editor of Esplanade at the end of 2013, inheriting a line that was��already a decade old. At the same time, you had two books out (Blackbodying����Ի��Niko), and had just been��longlisted for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. What made you want to take over as editor? How did this impact your writing career? Were there any immediate challenges that surprised you?

DN: I’ve always taken a very piece-meal approach to life in Montreal. I moved here because, back in the early 2000s, it was still a very cheap place to live, and I could largely avoid have to work a full-time job. And so from my mid-20s on, I’ve grown into this lifestyle of working on projects to support my writing. Many of those projects ended up being in either the literary and music communities, so by the time Simon asked me to become editor at Esplanade, I already had a track record in Montreal as someone who was involved in a lot of projects, was connected to a lot of different scenes, and who had done a lot of writing about books along the way.

For me, the invitation felt like an opportunity to make a different kind of impact. Anyone who knows me will tell you that I have strong opinions, especially when it comes to most things cultural. To be able to communicate a perspective from an institutional platform such as Véhicule Press, well it just seemed like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

I’d say it’s had a positive impact on my writing career. One could argue that I’d have more time for writing if I wasn’t an editor, or if I didn’t start translating, but then the same can be said of having a family or any of the other million things I end up doing. I guess I’m always more satisfied at the end of the day if I’m in the thick of it. In any case, editing pollinates my own writing and gives me the opportunity to working on the complex questions that novels pose at a depth and concentration that few other writers have access to. Most writers will be made to feel isolated by their writing at some point in their lives–the space one craves can also cut them off from the world, and no amount of tweeting will remedy that.

Editing an imprint comes with many challenges, of course. I don’t think I was ready for the amount of work and delicate communication that goes into cultivating and editing the novels of other writers. But it does grant insights into one’s own process, and when you see the results of the work filter out into the world, it’s all worth it.

CWP: How would you describe the type of books that Esplanade publishes?

DN: I like to think that Esplanade titles are off in left field, doing their own thing. I appreciate writers who combine a sense of imaginative risk and aesthetic discipline. Simon and I share an affinity for the storied publication runs of houses like New Directions or Grove, publishers who for a time seemed to be working outside literary tradition but adding to it at the same time. I’m not terribly concerned by whatever trendy cultural conversation is going on at any given time, but that’s not to say that I’m not aware of how culture arises and its historical patterns. I do find it worthwhile to aim to put books out there that offer a new conversation, even though it may take some time for readers to figure what that conversation is and how the book fits.

CWPL One of the first Esplanade authors I came across was Éric Plamondon, whose “1984 Trilogy” you’re translating. Is this your first major translation project? What drew��you to��Plamondon’s trilogy? How has the experience been for you?

DN: Plamondon is my first major translation project, and a trilogy no less! But I spent about a decade beforehand translating cultural documents from French to English, as I built up my literary skills. It was a bit of a leap into the deep end, but then again so is every other worthwhile project I’ve taken on. For me, Plamondon’s writing is so diametrically opposed to my own that I feel I’m allowed to use muscles that my own writing would never even imagine having. It speaks to a formalist mentality that isn’t present in my work. But if I’m to be honest, I can see how the 1984 Trilogy’s approach began to find its way into my last novel, (2018). That cross-pollination of aesthetics is, for me, the best part of literature and culture.

I have a great deal of respect for translations; they were a formidable part of my literary education. I’ve always been intrinsically drawn to novelists who have taken the time to translate another author, to make that writer part of their own work. A translation is a unique offering within a novelist’s catalogue.

CWP: For any readers unfamiliar with��your list, which 3-4 titles would you recommend starting with?

DN: I’ll stick to the translations given the tenor of this interview . . .

Mikella Nicol’s (translated by Lesley Trites) [Ed Note: See excerpt.]

Genevieve Pettersen’s (translated by Neil Smith)

Juliana Leveillé-Trudel’s (translated by Anita Anand) [Ed. Note: YES.]

David Bouchet’s (translated by Claire Holden Rothman)

And of course

CWP: Is there anything in particular that you think sets Quebec literature��apart from other world literatures? And on a related note, is��there anything in particular you’re looking for when you acquire a book for Esplanade?��

DN: Quebec literature takes imaginative and aesthetic risks, pulling in strands from both the English and French literatures of the world. Though historically it was quite the opposite and much of what was heralded here was quite culturally insular and inward-looking, that has change over the course of the past generation. My preference is for those new voices who are well-informed with what the rest of the world is up to, and who aren’t afraid to pull in aspects of those approaches into the traditional concept of a Quebecois novel. Those tend to be the features I look for when acquiring books for Esplanade.

CWP: What’s next for the press? Do you have a vision of where Esplanade will be in five years?��

DN: Five years is a long time to predict. ��One thing I’ve learned while editing is that you shouldn’t try to work more than 18 months in advance. Cultural tides can shift pretty quickly and it’s important to leave yourself open to working with the moment. Also, titles tend to do better when there’s an element of freshness about them. Mikella Nicol’s Aphelia is one such book I’m looking forward to seeing out in the world this spring. I’m also quite proud to be working on new fiction by poet and sound composer Kaie Kellough, due out in the fall.

Most projects that I want take years of investment. For example, I’m very excited about publishing a new translation of L’Avalée des avalés, Réjean Ducharme’s classic debut, in 2020.�� I chased the rights to that for well over a year. The book was published in 1966, and the only English translation that ever came out was in the UK, by Barbara Bray in 1968.�� It was early on in her translation career, and she ended up focusing in another direction afterward. The book did not sell well and disappeared. It hasn’t been available in English for over 50 years, and has never been available in Canada. Madeleine Stratford is translating it as I type.

Véhicule Press/Esplanade Fiction & BookThug/Book*Hug [P.T. Smith Redux]

Chad Post — Tue, 19 Feb 2019 18:00:25 +0000

This really is the P. T. Smith-inspired post. As you likely know, Patrick has been writing weekly posts for Three Percent this month about some of his favorite works of Quebec literature. (See this post and this one.) He’s one of the few Americans I know (maybe the only one?) who is deep into Quebec lit, so deep in fact that he’s already stated that if he beats me at the next ALTA Publishing Battle (an annual occurrence in which I challenge ALTA translators to some dumb game—mechanical bull riding, air hockey, cage dancing, Geeks Who Drink trivia—and the first to beat me gets to do a book with Open Letter) we have to do a Quebec title of his choosing.

Spoiler: No one ever beats me.

But I’m tempted to throw it this year! As I’ve been discovering all month, there are a number of interesting presses bringing Quebec literature into English, but given the quality of these books, the wealth of untranslated and out-of-print titles, and the fact that it might be worth immersing oneself in Canadian culture given the possibility that in 2020, we’re, once again, all going to be wanting to move north of the border—given all of this, it seems like a good time to add to the list of countries we’ve published from.

Which brings me to . I only really became aware of Véhicule (and their fiction imprint, ) thanks to P. T. They have sent a few books our way in the past (most notably, the Éric Plamondon book), but not all of their translations are distributed in the U.S., and given how many books pass over my desk . . . it’s hard to stay on top of everything.

(Also, that’s kind of a lie. All those books that come in? They’re stacked around my office. And the main Open Letter office. In boxes in the packing room. On my “to review” shelves. There are crannies of our space that I’m not even aware exist because they’re packed with books. We have more books in our office than 90% of Americans read it their lifetime. AND I LOVE IT. BRING THEM ALL ON.)

On Wednesday, we’ll be running an interview with , author, translator of Éric Plamondon, and editor of Esplanade. But as a bit of a prelude, I thought I’d give a bit of background on yet another Canadian press y’all might be interested in.

The “” page on their site gives a rundown of the press’s physical history—and an overview of key employees—but this bit from their latest catalog is a pretty powerful summary of what they’re up to:

We’ve been ruminating on the number 45 for good reason lately—it’s our 45th anniversary. But a more significant number is 494, the number of books we’ve published since 1973. Great poetry, challenging fiction, and essential non-fiction from writers across Canada, with a focus on the literature of Quebec.

It’s always nice to encounter an indie press older than you are . . .

Outside of an assumption that the Canadian government has screwed First Nations communities over the course of history—although maybe not as bad as the American government?—I know next to nothing about this aspect of Canadian life. Which is the main reason I picked up��by Juliana Léveillé-Trudel, translated from the French by Anita Anand, to read for this post. It’s new, it’s written by a woman, and it’s about a very different part of Quebec than what I’ve been reading and writing about so far.

This book is shockingly powerful. Even if you can more or less guess the situation of the area that Léveillé-Trudel writes about—poor, alcoholic, somewhat self-destructive, ignored by the government, taken advantage of by the private mining industry, yet beautiful and filled with humans who deserve more and deserve to have their voices heard—reading it is viscerally intense.

The first narrative, “Eva,” is about the sudden disappearance of the narrator’s friend. For years, the narrator has, like��Léveillé-Trudel herself, been going to the northern part of Quebec (Salluit in the case of��Nirliit) over the summer months to work with the people there.

We are the new white missionaries. We preach healthy living. Don’t smoke, don’t drink, don’t take drugs, don’t eat fast food, eat more fruit and veggies, get eight hours of sleep every night, go to bed early, exercise, don’t skip school or work, don’t litter, slow down when you’re driving your quads, wear a life vest when you’re in your boats, keep your firearms out of the reach of children, practice safe sex, don’t swear, say please and thank you when you ask for something, vaccinate your children and sterilize your dogs. You must find us incredibly irritating.

This particular summer, the narrator gets off the plane and Eva isn’t there. Why? Well, we find out one page later from Eva’s former co-worker that, “He threw your body in the water, your fragile little body into the dark, rocky waters of the Hudson Strait.” The rest of this section of the novel is simultaneously an exploration of the community of Salluit and an investigation to identify who the “he” was who tossed Eva’s body into the water and why.

Detailing the boom-and-bust cycle of life in Salluit (which reminds me a bit of��Gesell Dome), the way the money from the mines is immediately spent on TVs and four-wheelers, and $200 10oz bottles of vodka (shit is��expensive��up north) leaving wives and children and everyone malnourished, ill-prepared for the future; detailing the way in which violence permeates��everything��and how life is lost so casually, either at the hands of a jealous man or at one’s own hands (there was a rash of teen suicides in the area for a while), or thanks to that dangerous combination of drunkenness and treacherous weather conditions; detailing how hopeless everything seems as pricey new condos are built for non-natives to inhabit, worksites populated by southerners working up there for the money and the beautiful women. It’s bleak, it’s emotional, and it ends with Eva’s death feeling like a statistic in the most gut-punch way possible.

That section, which is more-or-less a first-person account of a white woman recognizing her place in this particular community that she’s absolutely in love with—for its timelessness, its self-sufficiency, its children who are raised by the community, its resilience—and its historic struggles, transforms in part two (“Elijah”) into a much more fictionalized narrative about a heartbreaking love-triangle.

Elijah is Eva’s son. He’s married to Maata, whose daughter Cecilia is maybe Elijah’s. She works in the cafeteria for the construction workers, where she meets and falls in love with Felix, a heart-broken divorced man from Quebec City who would really rather be able to win back his ex-wife. Given this set-up, you already know things are not going to go well. But as a reader, having just read an 80-page description of daily life in this part of the world . . . It’s like the first half of the book provides the landscape necessary for allowing this personal tragedy to have the largest impact.

It would be weird to read only the second half of this book. The emotions at play are totally universal, and in a different setting, with a few tweaks, this could be a Lifetime movie. But after being immersed in this particular community—not to mention the way in which this love story is told in parallel with a hot shot rapper’s failed attempt to find a new life in Montreal—the book embraces a sort of localness that puts it in conversation with other stories of this type, rather than being subsumed by pre-existing narrative tropes.

She knew. She knew that every spring you hear your mother’s voice scream louder than the roar of the ice. She knew that this year you would get into your canoe again with painful impatience. She knew that you would disappear for a few days to look for ghosts until you came back to your senses. She knew and yet she turned her back on you, during the spring thaw; she was nibbling on another man’s neck. And you, you saw thousands of women floating between the blocks of ice, like every year when the banks of the fjord crumble, but for the first time, Maata wasn’t there with you.

If I had had the time, I would’ve also read both Éric Plamondon books in preparation for this post. These are the first two volumes of the��1984 Trilogy��and man, I’m a sucker for trilogies. (There is a month of these posts that I’ve been planning for a while now, but can’t enact until a third volume of a trilogy I’m not ready to name yet comes out. For whatever silly reason, trilogies appeal to twelve-year-old Chad, who read all the comic books and checked out any book from the library that held the promise of several more connected volumes. That ongoingness . . . the soap opera of it all is so addictive to me.) Furthermore, and I’m not lying in the least, I’ve had��on my shelf at home for months and months now, initially because I was going to give it to Brian Wood (Two Month Review��co-host, author of��forthcoming from BOA Editions), but then hedging that because I think I might want to read it first . . . It’s about Johnny Weissmuller (1904-1984), who is mostly known for playing Tarzan, but led a pretty wild life.

The main reason I wanted to give it to Brian? Well, he’s writing an absurdist novel about Las Vegas (I won’t say more right now), and when this came in, I randomly opened the book to Chapter 40: Jungle Hut, Inc.

At the beginning of 1969, an idea that had been kicking around for a while in Johnny’s head takes shape. He gives it a name: Jungle Hut, Inc. He hopes to branch it out into four ventures: Jungle Hut restaurants, Johnny Weissmuller fruits and vegetable markets, Johnny Weissmuller’s Safari Hut gift shops, and the Johnny Weissmuller Ungawa Club Lounges. But apart from a few health-product shops in Los Angeles, St. Louis and Chicago, the multinational effort crashes before taking off.

In 1973, Johnny Weissmuller hits rock bottom. [. . .]

After the galas and official openings of municipal pools, Johnny takes a job as a host at Caesars Palace. At the time, it’s the biggest hotel in Las Vegas, but he’s only there to do minor walk-on appearances. He’s there to get people chattering: “Did you see that? That was Tarzan who said hello and gave us our menus. Imagine that, at Caesars Palace they can afford to pay the one, the true, the only Tarzan!”

People don’t know that Weissmuller is ruined. They don’t know that he played Jungle Jim all those years just to pay rent. He has nothing to look forward to ahead of him. He’s at Caesars not to amuse himself, but to survive.

Anyway, there’s a bit more about this in tomorrow’s interview, so stay tuned. And hopefully we’ll write more about this before the third Plamondon volume comes out.

If you thought that Véhicule Press bit was the only P. T. Smith action you were going to get in this post then you’re probably not a regular reader . . .

Last week, P. T.��wrote about Anne Herbert’s��Kamouraska.��Here’s his summary:

Kamouraska��is based on a true story. In the early nineteenth century, Elisabeth d’Aulnières married Antoine Tassy, well-off, land-owning man, “squire” of Kamouraska. He’s awful to her. She falls in love with an American doctor and murders Tassy. Later, she remarries. Years later, many, many children later, that husband is dying, and it’s time for Elisabeth to turn towards her memories, confess her past to herself. The movements from past to the present and back can happen quickly, though as the novel goes on, the story of her life with Tassy becomes more and more linear, more consistently told. At first she is afraid to go there, to think of the horrors she lived through, and the horror she inflicted, not only murdering Tassy.

Cool, cool. Sounds like a good book! Even with this hokey-ass cover, I’m planning on reading it at some point. Honestly.

Especially since our library has the mass-market version. If only it were a trilogy! Then it would be appealing to all my nostalgias. (I’m kind of over nostalgia again.��Twin Peaks: The Return��is the best art ever about nostalgia—and the best TV show ever—and really reworked my own desires about wanting to go back to a different time . . . It raised some really interesting questions about the relationship between artist, monumental artwork, and fan expectations. Which is something I expected, in part, from��Go Ahead in the Rain, a really fine book about��A Tribe Called Quest, but one that was maybe too wedded to historical fact, too loose in structure, and too lacking in a compelling through-line. It’s a good book, but one that left me less interested in the words and much more interested in playing the Tribe catalog on infinite repeat. Which is maybe the point?)

But forget����ǳܰ��첹—which, by the way, sounds way too Russian to play in 2019 America—let’s talk about��Children of the Black Sabbath, which Patrick tweeted about over the weekend:

One of the greatest horror novels you’ve never read, Hébert’s dualistic perception of existence is seen in Children of the Black Sabbath, set in Quebec in 1944, with flashbacks to the preceding decade. Satanic rituals in an isolated mountainous area and religious ceremonies performed in the Convent of the Precious Blood are juxtaposed by means of narrative shifts. Witchcraft, demonic possession, exorcism, and satanic initiation find their corollaries in prayers, dedication to God, Mass, and initiation into cloistered life. Children of the Black Sabbath is unsettling in its depiction of sordid sexual initiation in the world of sorcerers and deceit within the walls of the convent. As do many of Hébert’s other works, this novel probes the traditional conception of reality, suggesting the existence of another world that is dark and powerful.

The hell?! This sounds absolutely wild. And, assuming Hérbert swerves more lit than pulp, this could be amazing . . . I’m interlibrary loaning it as I type . . .

Which reminds me—and here we go, off-the-rails once again, right on schedule at 2,365 words—to mention that Google Home sucks. I got a free little mini Google speaker thing from Spotify (no idea why) a few months ago, and so far, I’ve figured out three things:

When I say “Hey Google,” it responds about as often as my kids. But when my wife says, “Hey Google,” it’s totally on point and ready to do whatever she asks. Most mornings I can be found in a bath towel screaming “GOOGLE. GOO-GLLLLEEEE. PLAY PAVEMENT.” [silence] “GOOOGLE. HEY. HEY. GOD DAMN IT. GOOOOOOOOOGLLLLLLLEEEEEE.”
It’s good for playing music from Spotify—if you control it as a speaker from your phone.
It sort of gives you the weather. If you’re my wife and ask it for “current weather in Rochester” then you get useful info. If you say, “hey! Hey Google! The weather!” it’ll tell you about global warming and Scottsdale, AZ.

Patrick really wanted me to write about Book*Hug this month, but I just couldn’t get around to it properly. How can I keep up with MLB Trade Rumors, our books, my class, working out, drinking, going to concerts (last week it was El Ten Eleven, who is one of my favorites, and I got Car Seat Headrest tickets for June and can die happy in July), and watching college and NBA basketball, and . . . oh, yeah, having a nearly-one-year-old who is funny as can be and happy in a way that I hope he’ll never forget, AND reading all the books I want to read? I already barely sleep . . .

Anyway, this is long AF, but here’s BookThug/Book*Hug’s mission:

Book*hug (formerly BookThug)��is a radically optimistic Canadian independent literary press working at the forefront of contemporary book culture. Our mandate is to publish innovative and contemporary books of literary fiction, literary nonfiction, poetry, literature in translation, and drama.

Celebrating adventures in literary publishing since 2004, Book*hug’s mission is to publish emerging and established literary writers whose work meaningfully contributes to and reflects contemporary Canadian culture and society. We seek to acquire books that are bold, innovative and take risks; work that feels necessary and urgent. We believe in writing that challenges and pushes at the boundaries of cultural expectations.

Book*hug Press has made an impressive mark on the Canadian literary landscape in a relatively short span of time. This was helped by a promise we made early on to remain open to change and be adaptable to the changing needs of the culture to which the press contributes. As such, our books are known for making significant contributions to contemporary Canadian literary culture.

We are deeply committed to building a more inclusive CanLit by publishing culturally diverse voices whose work has been historically underrepresented in the publishing landscape. We strongly support feminist writing. When acquiring manuscripts we carefully consider questions such as: whose voices are missing and who are the storytellers that we need most right now? We aim to ensure ensure that our catalogue is reflective of an inclusive and multicultural Canada. We especially welcome work by Indigenous writers, writers of colour, writers from the LGBTQ2S+ community, deaf and disabled writers, as well as women and women-identifying authors.

We support our literary writers through attentive editing and by facilitating dialogue about the spaces and traditions they work within. We help grow their readership through strategic publicity and marketing campaigns. We publish our books in various formats (print, electronic, audio) and distribute them through as many channels as possible. We also produce elegant and attractive editions with careful attention paid to the aesthetics of design.

Since we already reviewed��Mama’s Boy��a while back—a book those shitty-ass Three Percenters will not appreciate, and yes, I am calling out your lame-ass militia because every one of you who clicks on this ensures that my Three Percent Googles higher than your website:

Chad: HEY GOOGLE

Google: Good evening, Chad, you do not have to yell. How can I assist you?

Chad: WHO IS THE MOST POPULAR THREE PERCENT

Google: I am not sure I understand.

Chad: HEY GOOGLE GOOGLE THREE PERCENT.

Google: Three divided by . . .

Chad: HEY GOOGLE GO EFF YOURSELF.

Google: I don’t appreciate your sentiment, but I respect your viewpoint.

Chad: God dammit. Ok. OK. HEY GOOGLE, WHAT IS THE TOP RESULT FOR “THREE PERCENT”?

Google: Let me Google that for you . . .

Chad: . . .

Google: . . . there seems to be a problem. Try again in a few moments.

Chad: DAMN DAMN GOD DAMN.

Google: Oh dear.

Chad:��HEY GOOGLE . . . HEY. HEY GOOGLE. WHAT’S UP? GOOGLE. HEY GOOGLE. WHAT . . . IS THE . . . TOP . . . TOP . . . RESULT FOR . . .”THREE PERCENT”?

Google: Let me search . . . Three Percent at the URochester.

Chad: SUUUUCCCCKKKKK ITTTTT!!!!

Google: Oh dear!

You have no idea how hard my mornings are. Anyway, since we reviewed��Mama’s Boy, I figured I would read this book from Book*Hug. But I didn’t. But I think , deserves attention!

Tess and Jude live in small-town Quebec and spend their time travelling all across North America—using Google maps—which provides them the luxury of adventure while remaining in the comfort of their own home. But Tess and Jude are dreamers, and their online adventures eventually give rise to a desire to actually travel somewhere. They settle on Bird in Hand, Pennsylvania, and begin scheming to raise the cash they’ll need for the trip.

After a series of hilarious ideas that never pan out, they turn to a local experimental author (who has a major crush on Tess) and convince him to apply for an arts council grant on their behalf. But when they actually receive the grant money, can they pull it all together for a real adventure?

Funny, smart and wonderfully human,��Document 1��is a tragicomic tale of two dreamers and their quest for adventure, as well as a satirical take on the world of arts and letters.

Hey, Book*Hug? Next time around, I want to interview you first. And, you know what? Every book you send us this year, we will review. Like, a real review. HOLD ME TO THIS.

But for the handful who are still here, I’ve been thinking a lot about how I order my work life. As you know, my computer was lost/stolen/unintentionally taken in ABQ at Winter Institute, and I’ve been rebuilding my life. Rebuilding the entire subscribers database. Recalculating our monthly sales reports. Redoing our NEA grant (which, ugh, I’m already getting so much heat for since our grant last year was a��reduction��whereas a few years ago, we were equal with Coffee House) from scratch. Calculating overdue royalty statements. I’m totally zen about most everything else that was lost—all my essays, all the letters to subscribers, all my strategic plans . . .

And the thing is—to complain for a second, just one, give me this, please—I was backing up my files��daily. But. And a big old FUCK YOU APPLE but—my last Time Machine backup didn’t complete properly. Was I notified of this? Nope. Would I ever have known about it if I hadn’t have had to rely on��that��particular back up? Nah.

But Apple, because they are “geniuses,” created a system by which your computer is backed up daily, BUT, if the final backup is never finished? All files are inaccessible. Game over. You lose everything.

Yes, I know it’s dumb.

Yep, many people are trying to hack (by request) into the 300 GB file on our server that is “inaccessible.”

If you want to try and solve the puzzle—email me. Until then . . . DIE APPLE.

But, right, yes, I’ve been thinking about ordering my work-life priorities. It’s like work triage. I get 200+ emails a day, which aren’t even necessarily related to my main job . . . So I . . . well, “HEY GOOGLE! HOW SHOULD I PRIORITIZE MY EMAILS?”

Emails about receiving money from wealthy donors, or leads on wealthy donors. Or donors of any kind.
Emails about sales of books. Book clubs, bookstore selections, booksellers who love our books, individuals who want to order things.
Invitations to trips abroad. Probably would be higher, but I haven’t replaced my passport yet, so this option is subconsciously stressful. If someone tries to leave the U.S. with my passport, they will be arrested. That’s baller. NCIS THAT MOFO.
Invitations to speak on panels. Because, let’s be honest, I like that attention. Who doesn’t? Invite me to interview someone on a stage, or, really, just give me a microphone, and I’ll answer you.
Formal communications from the URochester. My greatest fear is losing my job. Any “Subject: Security for Chad W. Post” email is being OPENED.
Literary gossip. Because, c’mon. Who doesn’t want to hear some random shit about the latest L—- S—-.
Submissions. There are so many . . . And they’re all so good . . . HEY GOOGLE! GOOGLE. HEY HEY. TELL ME WHICH BOOKS TO PUBLISH. “I’m sorry but we live in a digital age run by algorithms . . .”

Kamouraska by Anne Hébert [Quebec Literature from P.T.]

Chad Post — Thu, 14 Feb 2019 15:30:05 +0000

It’s rare that I reread anything. There’re far too much sitting on my shelves and piled in stacks on my floor. I also hardly remember any details of things I’ve read. I can tell you something about why I liked a book, but not enough. I started in on my reread of Anne Hébert’s classic Kamouraska (translated by Norman Shapiro), planning on getting just far enough into it to have things to write here . . . but I don’t want to put it down, despite being in the middle of other books that I’m enjoying (like one Chad mentioned last week, Laurence Leduc-Primeau’s , from QC Fiction and translated by Natalia Hero). I want to finish it because it’s gorgeous, it’s a bit frightening, and if you’re willing to let it, it’ll break your heart and punch you in the gut. If you let it. If you do the work.

If someone was asked to name the top five “important,” “classic,” and “literary” writers from Quebec, they’d go “What? From where?” But if you asked someone from Quebec, along with Ducharme, they’d almost certainly name Anne Hébert. is her most famous, and most widely available in English. What’s the pitch on this one besides just calling it classic? House of Anansi’s copy tells us it “is the timeless story of one woman’s destructive commitment to ideal love.” That does nothing for me. If anything, it turns me off. Timeless? Ideal love? Ehhhhh. A quote from Canadian Forum compares her to Proust, Joyce, Kafka, and Sarraute. Jesus. As a combination, it’s more meaningless than my Joyce/Salinger comparison for Ducharme last week. Oh, the other quote throws out Brontë. I actually like Brontë (Charlotte, I assume), but that’s not really a selling point anymore.

The first thing I tell people about the book is that the voice switches between third and first person, where initially third is dominate, but the first takes over, more and more, though third never disappears completely. That’s interesting, right? It’s no gimmick, not a thing where the voice switches between sections, but intricate movement, changing mid-paragraph, the voice of a woman confronting her past, a woman judging herself and others, a woman who detaches from her multiple selves, because they exist for others, because others act on and create those names and identities, but somewhere beyond all that is an “I” that is for her, for her most sincere connections, and from there she can try and understand what she has done and what others too. Because this is a patient book, one where Hébert is masterfully in control of pacing, the clearest she states it comes well into the book, once you’ve already found your grounding:

It’s not the unrelenting light. No, it’s this terrible stillness. This distance that ought to be comforting me, this sense of detachment. It’s worse than all the rest. Seeing yourself as someone else. Pretending to be objective. Not feeling that you and that young bride are one and the same.

More concretely: Kamouraska is based on a true story. In the early nineteenth century, Elisabeth d’Aulnières married Antoine Tassy, well-off, land-owning man, “squire” of Kamouraska. He’s awful to her. She falls in love with an American doctor and murders Tassy. Later, she remarries. Years later, many, many children later, that husband is dying, and it’s time for Elisabeth to turn towards her memories, confess her past to herself. The movements from pasts to the present and back can happen quickly, though as the novel goes on, the story of her life with Tassy becomes more and more linear, more consistently told. At first she is afraid to go there, to think of the horrors she lived through, and the horror she inflicted, not only murdering Tassy.

The memories burst through her present contemplation of death, triggered by little thoughts and little moments. There are multiple pasts, the time before her marriage, when her aunts molded her into a “proper lady” in Catholic Quebec, the early days of meeting her husband, the time after his death, and most persistently, the time of her trial for his murder. It’s the trial that most frequently forces its way to her consciousness, so much so that she speaks defenses of herself to a nameless judge, sometimes defenses of actions well after and not involving the murder.

At times the movements are hard to follow, much as third- and first-person perspective overlap, so do pasts and presents. The more she contemplates that life before, the more comfortable she becomes there, or maybe she’s not comfortable, but it becomes more and more difficult to escape, more necessary to reside in:

That time. That one time. A certain time of my life, moved back to, into like an empty shell. Enclosing me again. With the sharp little click of an oyster snapping shut. I’m forcing myself to live within this narrow space. I’m settling into the house on Rue Augusta. I’m breathing its rarefied air, an air I’ve already breathed before. I’m taking the steps I’ve already taken. There is no Madame Rolland. Not anymore. I’m Elisabeth d’Aulnières, the wife of Antoine Tassy. I’m pining away. Dying, dying. I’m waiting for someone to come and save me. I’m nineteen years old . . .

Spoiler: no one saves her. Why would someone save her? Sure, a lover comes along, but is she saved? Or is she just condemned to a different form of punishment? I don’t fully remember the end, but with a hundred pages to go on the reread, and given the state Elisabeth was in when I stopped to write this, I’m pretty sure it’s the latter.

Kamouraska is a cruel book. That’s one of the things I admire about it. It’s also a compassionate book. It’s haunting. Elisabeth d’Aulnières married an awful man when she was a child. He cheats on her openly, he abuses her. He rapes her. And like a proper lady of the time, like a woman raised in religious Quebec, she’s meant to let him, because what’s marital rape, right? So she kills him. She doesn’t regret this, but she still lives with guilt. She feels for her younger, broken self. But she also feels for this man who was tormented, who was not only violent towards her, but towards himself. The doctor who she loves, he’s not an innocent either. There are no innocents, not the other women involved with her husband, not her husband, not herself. Maybe her new husband, but probably not, after all, she birthed him many children, and was that a choice? But every single person enacts cruelty. Every single person her narrative aggresses towards, and boy does it come at people, she also opens her heart to. Which itself causes her pain.

It’s a beautiful book. It’s a feminist book. It’s at times a difficult book, because of the prose, because of the emotions at stake. It’s accessible because of that heart, because in the end it wants to connect, Elisabeth wants to have her voice heard, needs to have it heard. It’s a Quebecois book. The deep religiosity of the region is inescapable for her. Read it for all of these reasons. It does things you haven’t seen before, I promise you, and how many books do that?

Now, the final factor in why I picked this book? Because it touches on my home, on Vermont. That I’m so close to Quebec is only one of the reasons I’ve tried to read so much from the province. When the books cross into my land, it touches me a little.

Find my love, at the end of the earth. In Burlington. Burlington. The United States.

P.S. I’ve got two others for you. First: another book where I think the perspective of the voice is more of a reason to read than any plot description: Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette’s , translated by Rhonda Mullins. A finalist for last year’s BTBA (Peter McCambridge wrote the Why This Book Should Win post), this book is about a relationship between a woman and her grandmother . . . but it’s written in second person, to the grandmother, about her life. It does wonderful things with that. It’s also another portrayal of just how intensely Catholicism ran Quebec life, until rather recently. Second: Marie-Claire Blais’s , translated by arguably the GOAT translator of Quebec lit: Sheila Fischman. I force it in here because like the jacket copy of Kamouraska compares it to Brontë “but modern in style and explicitness,” except way, way, more accurately, let’s say that These Festive Nights is Woolf, but modern in style and explicitness.

Biblioasis [Catherine Leroux Redux]

Chad Post — Tue, 12 Feb 2019 18:00:21 +0000

Last December, when I was working on this post about Quebec fiction, I came up with the idea of having themed months running throughout 2019. Which is why January was all about Spain, February about Quebec, and March about Uwe Johnson’s��Anniversaries.��(Which might kill me and/or lead me into an insane rabbit-hole of increasingly esoteric posts about my mental state while reading such a gigantic book.)

Anyway, once I had this idea for structuring my weekly posts, I immediately wanted to schedule a month for Canadian publishers. Partially because I like a lot of them—and they get next to no play in the U.S.—but mainly because I wanted an excuse to read , translated from the French by Lazer Lederhendler and published by . And thank god I did. Over the past two months, she’s become one of my favorite contemporary writers. And I curse myself for not having read these books earlier . . .

Similar to what I did last week for��QC Fiction, I want to highlight all of the Quebec titles that Biblioasis has published as part of their “.” (Which, you should all know, contains a number of non-Quebec authors as well. Definitely worth checking out!) But, because I’m struggling through some insane anxiety right now (I have a new computer, which is glorious, but we’re having trouble accessing the 1/18/2019 backup that contains literally��everything��that I need, which is . . . breathe, breathe, deep breath), I’m not sure how many smart things I’m going to say. Instead, I’m probably going to rely on Biblioasis’s descriptions and random thoughts . . .

I definitely want to start with��The Party Wall��though, about which, I do have some thoughts. First off: GO BUY THIS BOOK AND��.��I really should’ve read this back in 2016 when it was first published in English—and was a —or, if not then, at least last spring before I went and met Catherine Leroux as part of a special event at the Toronto Public Library celebrating the special��. (Which was co-edited by Leroux and Madeleine Thien.) Then again, maybe I was meant to wait until now, because reading this over the past three days has been as gratifying as any literary experience I’ve had over the past couple years.

The Party Wall��is the sort of book that I don’t want to spoil, which would absolutely happen if I went into too much detail about why exactly I like it . . . But here goes: This novel is made up of four different stories, each featuring a pair of characters. “Madeleine and Madeleine” is about a woman who finds out that she’s a chimera, containing two distinct sets of DNA, as if she basically encompassed her twin while in utero. “Ariel and Marie” features a very charismatic Canadian politician whose life is utterly derailed by information about his birth mother. “Simon and Carmen” revolves around the death of their mother and secret revelations about their father.

Each of those storylines appear twice in the book, whereas the fourth, “Monette and Angie,” occurs between every other chapter (seven times in total) and tells the story of two girls in Savannah, Georgia who walk to a grocery store to get candy.

So far, I’m sure this sounds like a rather conventional, if not a bit disjointed, novel. Which is pretty accurate. Each of these sections is utterly captivating, building its own particular world and conflicts, fleshing out its characters and raising the stakes over and over in a way that would make most conventional novelists really jealous. The theme of identity and one’s ancestors ties all of these pieces together, and, to be honest, the book would work��pretty well��if that were its only unifying structure.��Instead, Leroux takes things to a masterful new level, linking together all of these stories in ways that are tricky to delineate, are generally unexpected, and that reward close readers.

Again, I can’t go into too much more detail without somewhat ruining the mental thrill of uncovering the underlying structure to this novel. Which is exactly what I liked about��Madame Victoria��as well. I’m a sucker for interesting structures, for books with a sort of architecture. It’s one of the things I love about Thomas Pynchon and Richard Powers and William Faulkner, and that has me dreaming about Leroux’s next novel (which Biblioasis publisher Dan Wells told me a bit about already). I find these sort of books to be so much more gratifying than titles that play it safe and stick to a more straightforward, easy-to-follow approach. (A statement that will surprise exactly no one.)

It’s tricky to pull out a single paragraph to share here, so instead, here’s a bit from an interview the ABA did with Leroux when they selected��The Party Wall��as an Indies Introduce book. (I can’t envision a better response to sell this book to me than this one.)

Valerie Welbourn: In��The Party Wall, there are many stories, characters, and layers that eventually connect. Was it difficult keeping so many threads going in your head?

Catherine Leroux:��It would have been impossible to manage in my head. I created different tools to help me keep track — timelines, character summaries, a diamond-shaped graph, and esoteric calculations involving ages, specific dates, world events, and the future. And I’m terrible at math.

There are nine other works of Quebec literature in the Biblioasis International Translation Series, including��, forthcoming in May of 2019. Here’s the jacket copy:

It’s winter in Montreal, 2002, when a graphic design student’s gambling addiction starts to drag him under. In debt to the metal band that’s commissioned him to draw their album cover and ensnared in lies to his friends and his cousin, he takes the first job that promises a paycheck: dishwasher at La Trattoria, a high-end restaurant, where he finds himself thrust, on his first night, into roiling world of characters. A magnificent, hyperrealist debut, with a soundtrack by Iron Maiden,��The Dishwasher��plunges us into a world in which—for better or for worse—everyone depends on each other.

Iron Maiden, eh? That’s a curious choice.

Although the vast majority of titles that Biblioasis publishes in the series are works of fiction, they have brought out two poetry collections, both by Robert Melançon:��, translated by Donald McGrath and, translated by Judith Cowen.��

I don’t know much about poetry, and nothing about Melançon, but a cursory glance of his Wikipedia page points out that he won the Governor’s General Award on two occasions: in 1979 for French language poetry or drama, and in 1990 for English to French translation. There’s something really impressive about that . . .

If you’d like to check out Melançon’s poetry, Biblioasis posted by him back some time ago. Here’s one of them:

A VOICE HEARD IN A DREAM, UPON AWAKENING

“Your days will pass, one by one,

words in a breathless sentence strung

together without punctuation, your actions,

those thoughts that come at such a cost,

won’t follow you, but if they do

it will be as perpetually vain regrets, little

will it matter, very little, whether you

betray or remain faithful, because each will

come to you in turn, everything will

be lost as if you’d been dreaming, it’s like

a dream, the disorder of an old man’s life

that comes back at the end, you’ll descend

into lower depths you don’t suspect are there,

you’ll be seized, at times, by an unfathomable joy

before the expanse that evening will open up

where the streets run out; impassive, the world

will continue on its course, flowers

that will fade in autumn will come, snow

that’ll melt like snow in the sun, each day

will bring with it the History you’ll throw out

with the newspaper, with your boredom, you’ll

have friendships that you’ll lose, love you’ll see

falling away from you, that you’ll try

in vain to hold onto, everything will be

given to you, everything taken away,

everything will come, everything pass away

like this night I’ve pulled you from, now go.”

��by Samuel Archibald, translated from the French by Donald Winkler��is a book that Tom Roberge has talked up on the Three Percent Podcast, and which is the only (?) Quebecois book from Biblioasis to make the Best Translated Book Award longlist. As a result, it got a “Why This Book Should Win” entry a few years back:

Arvida��is a collection of stories named after a town named after the American industrialist Arthur Vining Davis, who underwrote its construction around an aluminum smelting plant over the course of an astonishing 135 days back in 1927. As a child born to this far-flung outpost in Saguenay, Quebec, Archibald’s world was a tapestry of tales of madness, misfits, domesticated bears, and a Yeti-like cougar prowling the woods. The fact that Arvida was quickly absorbed by a neighboring town and exists, in a sense, solely as a memory only reinforces Archibald’s fascination with the mythic dimension of these private and shared histories. As he observed in an interview with the Canadian press, “growing up in a place that is so remote it’s on the edge or outside history, you never have any history except for the stories you told each other.”

There are two kinds of spaces in the narrative world of��Arvida: the vast, unknowable ones of the Canadian wilderness, and the claustrophobic, unknowable ones of the home.

Archibald excels in the latter, filling domestic spaces with the minor chords (and occasional bloodcurdling screech) of gothic horror. Yet for all the attic rattlings and mythical predators that abound in this narrative world, there is nothing more frightening than the interactions among its inhabitants, or their behavior when left to indulge in isolation. As Bryan Demchinsky observed in the Montreal Gazette, “there’s a dark, hard presence in the stories, sometimes wry, sometimes muted, but always lurking” . . . most menacingly, perhaps, among armchairs and embroidered tablecloths.

(P.T. Smith)

One interesting thing about��Mauricio Segura, whose , translated by Dawn M. Cornelio, came out in 2010, is that he’s originally from Chile. Which likely informs this book that’s about the Cote-de-Negre area of Montreal, home to a lot of immigrants, including “Marcelo, the sensitive son of Chilean refugees, and Cleo, a shy boy from Haiti, [who] find friendship on the track, winning a major relay race together.” This sounds like a really interesting multicultural novel—one that probably would get a ton more attention if it had been released today.

It’s nice that Biblioasis tends to do multiple titles by the authors they include in this series. That’s something a lot of small presses aspire to, but aren’t always willing/able to pull off. Ondjaki, Mia Couto, Mauricio Segura, Catherine Leroux,�� and Robert Melançon all have multiple titles on this list.��, translated from the French by Donald Winkler��is based on jazz pianist . So rather than come up with something interesting to say about this book, let’s just hear some music.

And yes, I��had��to choose the most BuzzFeed of all available videos. It’s one of the nine times I’ve pulled that trick this year.

One more from��Mauricio Segura!��Eucalyptus, translated from the French by Donald Winkler. Although it’s stuck here in the middle, this is the final book from the International Translation Series that I’m writing about. I made it! (Sort of. There’s a bonus section below all of this for the true fans who want their weekly dose of nonsense.)

That said, I don’t have it in me to write up anything about this book. I’m sure it’s interesting. Dan has great taste. (Which reminds me that one of the��only files I’m currently able to access from my old computer is the shitty manuscript I wrote in Marfa and sent to Dan and thought I deleted forever. Of course that was immediately downloaded to my desktop, whereas I’m still trying to get access to the complete list of current subscribers. UGH. This is giving me an ulcer and my first heart attack.��Technology hates me.)

What I’m stuck on, mentally, right now, is whether this is my favorite—or least favorite—cover from this set of titles. I don’t like the earliest covers in this series, and some (Boundary����Ի��Arvida) are a bit too muted, color-wise, for my taste . . . I think��Madame Victoria��is my favorite. It looks like the cover of an indie rock album by a band whose lead singer I would fall in love with at a show.

For worse,��by Andrée A. Michaud, translated from the French by Donald Winkler��is testament to the U.S.’s general indifference to books from Canada . . . Here’s what��Kirkus��had to say about this book in their *starred* review:

Boundary, an Edenic summer destination for families both American and French-Canadian, is haunted by the story of a trapper named Pete Landry, whose obsession with a local woman ended in tragedy. Years later, in 1967, Landry’s legend lives on, and when two young women are savagely murdered, the vacationers fear that his ghost may still roam the woods and lakeshore. Chief Inspector Michaud, however, called in to investigate the crimes, knows that he is seeking flesh-and-blood evil. Can he and his officers uncover the truth before another girl dies? This is a novel about liminal spaces and liminal time: much of the action occurs in the evening and at night, and even the year in which it’s set bridges the innocence and tumult of the 1960s. [. . .]��Spellbinding. This novel is no light read, and beneath its layers lies a vision profoundly rewarding, beautiful, and tragic.

Given this, how many other reviews would you expect to find among U.S. magazines, newspapers, websites? Well, the answer is three.��,��, ��Ի��.��That’s a bummer. Maybe the book is just OK, but I get the feeling if it had come out from a U.S. nonprofit, there would’ve been more online love . . .

I know shockingly little about��Larry Tremblay. I remember coming across his plays years and years ago, but he has four novels translated into English, including��, translated from the French by Sheila Fischman,��and something called��The Obese Christ.��Which, based on the title alone, is up my alley.

And although we call all agree Wikipedia is Wikipedia, this is intriguing:

Many of his plays focus on characters confronting psychological trauma. In��Le Déclic du destin, a character progressively loses body parts; in��The Dragonfly of Chicoutimi, the central character recovers from��aphasia��only to learn that while recovering his ability to speak he has lost his native language; and in��La Hache��a university professor is driven insane by his obsession with ideological purity in literature.

I need to do a better job paying attention to drama in translation. And international authors in general. It’s easy to feel like you know a lot by knowing a bit more than most people; then you realize how large the World Republic of Letters really is. (Or could be.)

Also: Sheila Fischman. I’m certain I’ve mentioned this before, but she’s translated almost 150 Quebec novels over her career, and has been nominated fourteen times for the��Governor General’s Award��for Translation. (Although only won it once?! Is she the Susan Lucci of Quebec translation?)

I feel like someone should publish a book about Fischman’s life and works, but so far, the best I can find is .

Some thirty years ago when I wrote my first translation there was none of this. The novel, with the oddly–to me at the time–bilingual title��La Guerre, Yes Sir! was published by the then young House of Anansi, after the translation I had done as a personal exercise had made the rounds of a number of other houses. I wanted to kiss the feet of Dennis Lee and Dave Godfrey for recognizing that it was an important book. And they wanted to pay me! Two hundred and fifty dollars! I did not want to accept it, this was a small, newborn publisher after all, but I was talked into it and spent the money on a pale blue suede coat. The sixties still had a few years to go . . . [. . .]

And now, thirty-odd years later, I’ve translated something like 150 books, or 138, I haven’t counted recently the books that now fill two complete shelves, plus overflow. I’ve had the tremendous pleasure of introducing some of my favourite writers to a broader readership–the English-speaking world. In most cases I have been the one who approached a publisher–with Lise Bissonnette, Christiane Frenette, François Gravel, Gaétan Soucy and Élise Turcotte and in particular, of Jacques Poulin. In some cases the publisher was won over instantly, in other cases–such as Poulin–it took years of patient wheedling. This aspect of my work never seems like work because I consider what I am doing to be a logical extension of my enthusiasm for a book or a writer. [. . .]

Still, literary translation does not always enjoy a comfortable seat at the literary table. This is due partly to ignorance of just what it is that we do and how we do it, partly to a misguided notion that being obliged to read a work in translation betrays a reader’s ignorance, so that translation is perceived as something shameful, an activity to be hidden or camouflaged. How many times have you heard someone say apologetically that she has “only” read a book in translation? As if every reader must have a profound knowledge and understanding of all the written languages in the world . . . This is particularly true in Canada, for other reasons that are perhaps political or at least socio-political. Should all Canadians be bilingual in French and English? Who knows? Maybe.

Someone out there with talent and connections should write long-form profiles on Sheila Fischman and Drenka Willen. Make it happen.

BONUS SECTION

��by Mark Kingwell��is not the best book about baseball out there, but if you like memoirs about the game, about being a fan, about why baseball is the best, then this book is definitely for you. (Also, Kingwell is smart as fuck.) Now let’s talk about me. Here are my questions for the 2019 baseball season:

Who will have a higher WAR/Annual Salary—Machado or Harper? (I bet Machado, because I think Harper is good, lucky, inconsistent, and an average defender.)
Will Goldschmidt lead the Cardinals to the playoffs and,
��if so, will he win the NL MVP? (Yes, those are the two least analytically-minded questions I could come up with.)
In 2018, league-wide, there were more strikeouts (41,207) than hits (41,018)—will that gap (189) increase or decrease?
DH for both leagues? YES YES YES PLEASE. I’LL MOLLY BLOOM ALL OVER THAT RULE CHANGE.
Will Hunter Pence bat .320? (NO. Sorry not-sorry for that callback.)
Given that bullpens are dumb and rarely track from one year to the next, which team will have the greatest improvement from 2018 to 2019? Will Andrew Miller () be part of this bullpen?
��How many teams will employ an “opener” in the first month of the season? How many in September/October?
Will the Cubs miss the postseason again? And if so, how much am I allowed to celebrate without being an asshole?

Read the “copy” to by Lucy Ellmann. I want to assume wrote this (it’s not the same as the UK version) and I wish I could stop writing these posts long enough to read this 728-page book. So my jam. (I’m re-reading/reading��Against the Day, which is a billion pages long, so hopefully I can make this my summer enjoyment read.) I would quote it here, but it’s one sentence, which is like Zone, but English and Man Booker eligible, so, advantage Ellmann, I hope you beat��everyone and fuck I am way too anxious to let this post end.

“Go Figure” by Réjean Ducharme [Quebec Literature from P.T.]

Chad Post — Thu, 07 Feb 2019 16:00:08 +0000

Before starting this month’s focus on Quebec literature, I asked P.T. Smith to recommend a few books for me to read, since he’s one of the few Americans I know who has read a lot of Quebec literature. But rather than hoard these recommendations or write silly things about this, we decided it would be best if P.T. wrote a weekly post throughout February covering some of his favorite works of Quebec literature ever. First up is a book that’s beloved by .��

A few weeks ago, Chad asked me for four books to read for his month of Quebec literature. I over-thought it, as I do. Do I go with ones I love most? Older books or recent releases? Do I make sure to have a variety of publishers, of both the original French and the translation? Am I balancing the gender of the author and the translators? Am I using these rhetorical questions as a delaying tactic to begin actually writing? Yes. They were real questions though, and in the end I threw them all out by coming up with a simple structure: three books that are classics in Quebec but which are criminally unknown in the U.S. (and ignored in English Canada, but I’m not here to go on about the Two Solitudes), plus the thing I’d read most recently. I gave the list to Chad, he seemed happy . . . then weeks later he came back to me saying he’s got too much to read and can I write about them myself. So, here I am, continuing this pretense that I’m some half-expert on Quebecois literature, despite having no French, but hey, I live near Quebec and sometimes I go there and sit at a dinner table with friends patiently waiting for the next time they switch to English for my benefit.

Let’s start with a book by the god of Quebec lit, Réjean Ducharme. He’s hard to come by in English now, with books not yet translated, books out of print, books in need of a new translation, but Talonbooks has two translations by Will Browning, and . Of the two, I probably prefer Go Figure. The dumbest thing I could say about Ducharme, and so the thing that would probably help sell some books, is that he’s like the French-Canadian cross of James Joyce and J. D. Salinger. It’s hyperbolic nonsense that in the end doesn’t really hold, like most comparisons of the kind, but also like those comparisons, there’s truth in it. Ducharme was a genius with wordplay, with puns, with language slipping all over the place, not quite meaning what you’d think, not quite holding but always moving forward towards something new. The narrator of Go Figure, Rémi, is halfway brilliantly in control of his language, and halfway someone just barely following the madness of their distractions and obsessions.

The easy, obvious part of the Salinger comparison is that Ducharme eschewed celebrity, was a “recluse,” and had stopped publishing fiction well before his death in August of 2017. But it cuts deeper than that. Children, the wildness of children, features prominently in both Go Figure and Miss Take. There is something like innocence in their behavior, but not in a way that suggests purity or goodness. Instead it is fierce, untamed pursuit of life that society does not approve of, a clash that leads to pain, torment. There is no idealization of the children not yet tamed by the world, but Ducharme is indeed on their side. As Rémi says of his child friend at one point: “With that, she left, completely disgusted by a preaching moralizer who was despoiling her.”

Have I preambled enough? Should I actually write about Go Figure now? Before I start my look into Go Figure, if you prefer someone who knows much more than I do, look to Dimitri Nasrallah’s article in .

I’m trying to follow in Chad’s style a little here. This isn’t a review, it’s scattered thoughts about a book I haven’t finish rereading, and I’m probably going to start drinking at some point while writing this. Or maybe while editing, whichever. It’s all okay though, so long as I convince a couple of you to get this book. Or convince enough of you to clamor for Ducharme so much that some publisher gets him back in print, gets new translations out in the world. Okay, done hesitating.

Go Figure has a plot: a young couple, Rémi and Mammy, are utterly broken by the miscarriage of twin daughters. Isolated from each other, Mammy goes to travel Europe with a beautiful seductress while Rémi renovates a mess of a home in rural Quebec. There’s a community around him, many women, some men, and of course, a child. Fannie is Rémi’s closest companion, a replacement for his dead daughters and for his wife. Rémi narrates his relationships with his new friends, their parties together, their struggles and their pleasures. He is isolated, deeply, deeply alone, but also already intimately connected with the people in the village, because that is life, right? Isolation and connection both utterly inescapable. He details the work he’s doing on his house, his successes and failures as a guy from Montreal trying to make it in the country. (Of the local hardware dealer: “he has a knack for deflating the swelled-headed fugitives from Montreal.”) But most of all, he speaks to Mammy and to her companion. He longs for them. He doesn’t know how to be live with out without them, or with their adventure abroad, but he will.

So that’s the plot. But good luck finding it. Rémi isn’t narrating for the reader, he’s speaking to and for himself, chasing his language and his thoughts and god knows where they’ll take him at any moment. Go Figure is, yes, a difficult book. Straightforward things get caught up in the language, in the twists of Rémi’s mind so that you lose track of what is happening, who he’s on about at the moment, who is doing what, and you only have the twisting path of language to follow. Rémi himself knows this: “I don’t know what I’m saying anymore. I’ve lost the thread. Even the fabric of speech no longer holds water, no longer sustains us.”

And yet . . . this isn’t all language game, isn’t a fall towards nonsense: it’s the way this hurt man’s mind functions, how it expresses his life. Ducharme is a master of style, but his writing is deeply, deeply emotional, his characters are complex humans trying to make it in a world that doesn’t root for anyone: “As cannibals go, we are quite peculiar: we only eat the ones we love and only their very best, and when we’re done, we dab our lips with a handkerchief.”

Go Figure is funny, too. In all sorts of ways. Sometimes it’s silly, quick: “a caper designed to lead Fannie into temptation, but deliver her from ladders.” The jokes are compulsive, and a challenge to translate (some of them I have no idea how Browning did it, would love to know how creative he got), barely holding to sense: “I didn’t wait to be asked twice, I perched her on my shoulders, and I have no idea what impression she gave me yet again—whether I was happy to have her, or unpappy she wasn’t mine.” Unhappy, unpappy, it’s silly, it’s funny, but goddamn if it isn’t heartbreaking too, coming from this man who lost two daughters. Are these slips even under Rémi’s control? “I’ve metaphorically put all our eggs in one casket.”

For me, beyond the insane intelligence of this book and of Browning’s translation, beyond the raw beating heart, the almost miraculous stretches of compassion towards each and every character, beyond the joy in the possibilities of language, what I love most is that it’s filthy as fuck. Rémi is obsessed with the sexual. The sexual is inescapable, it’s in every character, including the children (child are wild beings, remember?). Sex is everywhere, in conversations, in touches, in Rémi’s thoughts, in other’s thoughts, in movement, and of course, in language. I live for filthy lines, for filthy jokes, so here: “What’s the use of all that, apart from tiptoeing through the twolips.”

It’s a line of dialogue thrown out between Rémi and one of the locals, a woman. The whole passage is a perfect example of how this book goes. It’s part description of them working on the house, part weird exchange. I could quote the whole thing, but I’d rather end on a passage showing the beauty Ducharme is capable of. Most of the time, the book is a prayer towards Mammy, towards woman Rémi loves more than anything, obsesses over, but who is a distant as a loved one can be. That’s where most of the pain and beauty resides. (For it always comes back to you, you who are my law, who hold the mirror, from the side that is betrayed, from the other side of the gulf widened by every betrayal.) But the presence of Fannie, that child who is friend, source of joy, source of pain, stand in for lost children and lost wife, is a close second. Regarding Fannie:

She was sent to get me, and it’s urgent. She takes me by the hand. I let myself be led. How can you resist—her fingers are so slim, so delicate; it’s beyond human. We’re taken by grace and put back in our place, in the inferior realm to which we ascend while growing up. We’re nothing but organs and infections, she’s nothing but art. We moan and groan, she’s lost in reverie. We have eateries, sculleries, histories, breweries, Tuileries, therapies to treat ourselves, therapists to hold us hostage and demand higher ransom. She has nothing, she is all she has.��

So that’s Go Figure, the way I see it after reading it years ago and rereading the first seventy-five pages.

I don’t know folks. Read Ducharme. Read , then read . Look for them in used bookstores, buy them online, whatever. He’s a master. I want you to read him. Quebecers want you to. Norm fuckin’ Macdonald wants you to, seriously. I made those comparisons cause that’s what we do in this lit world . . . but the man stands alone. This isn’t just some of the best literature from a small province of Canada, but some of the best you can find anywhere.

PS: I want to end all of these with additional recommendations, connected somehow to the book I’m focused on. Two contemporary story collections, and , translated by Pablo Strauss and Donald Winkler, respectively, contain stories that call to mind Go Figure. They’re vastly different in most ways, but still, Archibald’s “House Bound” and Bock’s “The Worm” and “The Call” all contain the seed that is a man, a little broken, moving into a home, working on the home, with some fractured relationship with his wife. Ducharme is under-read, but he’s not forgotten.

Prague by Madue Veilleux [Excerpt]

Chad Post — Wed, 06 Feb 2019 18:00:19 +0000

I wanted to learn how to live alone. I’d never done it. I’d always taken elaborate care to avoid solitude. I’d been single for two months over ten years. Almost never slept alone. I’d built relationships just to have someone, and I’d had sex for the same reason.

At that point, I thought I had to choose between my marriage and my novel. I had to totally commit to one or the other. The novel demanded I go further, be alone, always more alone. And I had nothing else, only writing could still save my skin. If I kept trying to write the book without making any compromises in my life, the story would fall flat. Another banal record of heartbreak. Why did I believe so strongly that I needed to write? Why was it so important? Because it was saving me. That verb again. It was important because it took over everything. Because it forced me to ruin myself for a better story. Maybe that was cheating. But I was the one making the rules. I was the queen here in the country of my novel.

I told Guillaume I needed to be alone. A first step. We agreed on a few days. He went to his parents’ place. It wasn’t enough. I wanted to move, to find an empty room, live there with nothing but a mattress on the floor, a rug, my computer, headphones and a bookshelf. I’d leave him everything else. I saw it as a test. I would break myself into pieces. I knew I wouldn’t be able to do it, wouldn’t be able to face myself. A disaster. I scoured apartment listings. I looked for white walls. A clean bathtub. I talked it over with Guillaume. We cried in each other’s arms. It was the first time we’d touched in weeks. I couldn’t believe we’d reached this point.

The book was going to be about an open marriage, but it was turning into something else. It ended up being about I don’t know quite what anymore. Ģ��ý the torment of no longer loving someone who’d saved me, who could make me happy, who loved me, whom I loved. Ģ��ý no longer loving that person and loving someone else, someone imperfect, a stranger. No longer loving the man I wanted to love forever. Or dare I write it: no longer loving the man I had wanted to love forever.

Guillaume in Paris, 2012. He’d left at the beginning of October. The first, I think. He’d walked me to the bus stop. I had to work, hadn’t managed to get the day off. I looked at him standing at the corner, knowing the days ahead would be hard. I came home that night to an empty apartment.

A few days earlier I’d written: “In six days, you’ll be on a plane. I’ll close the door behind you, set up a space to write and finally try to finish my novel. I’ll tie my hands to the keyboard, chain my body to the chair. I’ll only get up to attend to basic functions. I’ll hope to reach a state of vertigo, total isolation, and I’ll be able to let the idea flow free. I will live and breathe the book.” I’d written those lines in the future, likely already knowing that things wouldn’t go that way. I did write a lot those months we were apart, but mostly I’d wandered, written about longing, neglected my novel.

“If it weren’t for the cat, I’d have already gone to my mother’s. Even though the cat wakes me up at night with her extra claw clacking on the floor, her obsession with nudging things off my desk. I’m surprised at myself for being mean to her. I love that little cat. She looks after me. You’re one of the few who know I can’t sleep with the lights off, can’t close the bedroom door. Without you here, the room seems to go on forever. It’s a kind of inverse claustrophobia, where the space keeps expanding and I get lost.”

I’d gotten through the months without him, my friends there to hold me up.

He showed up at the house around twenty to six. He rang the bell. I buzzed him in. He came upstairs, probably in the elevator, and knocked. I opened the door. I looked at him. I sat on the bench to give him time to take off his shoes. He said: I won’t stay long.

We went into the office. I offered him a beer. He said no. He got up to go to the bathroom. I finished writing an email while he was gone. He came back, petted the cat. She liked him, had never bitten him. I took it as a sign. I trusted her instincts, could rely on them. He came over and sat next to me, and while he looked for music on the computer I unbuckled his belt, unzipped his pants.

I put my shirt back on and cuddled in close to him. I said: you let me get close to you because you weren’t afraid I’d get attached, because I’m married. But now, if I leave my husband, are you going to pull away? I’m afraid of not seeing you anymore. I’m being as honest as I can be. I know you don’t want a relationship. We could keep seeing each other according to the rules, once a week.

I’ve forgotten the rest of the conversation. It’s a flaw of mine, throwing out questions without listening to the answers. The answers must have been vague. Ambiguous. Hesitation, then an “I don’t know.” We kissed in the hall. He said: you’re good for me.

I said: you’re good for me too.

He left, and I slept alone that night.

The further I got in the novel, the more urgent it became for me to make a radical change in my life. For the moment, I didn’t see that change coming. I didn’t want the book to be a blip in my emotional development. A writerly experiment with misery. I had to be fully and truly committed. If I wanted to put writing at the centre of my existence, I had to go all the way. Solitude was the only possible answer. The act that would ask the most of me. I thought about what Annie Ernaux says in L’écriture comme un couteau: “I also resisted diving into the writing of The Frozen Woman. I suspected that, consciously or not, I was endangering my personal life, that when I finished the book I would be separated from my husband. Which is what happened.”

Thinking so hard about the relationships in my life could only lead me to cast doubt on everything, on my marriage, myself. I was slipping. I wanted to slip.

I was alone in the canal, hair down to my feet and full of shells and dead leaves, seaweed under my arms. My breasts bare. I was singing “Wicked Game” à la Pipilotti Rist. But there was no one to hear me. Ten past ten, no moon. I was waiting for him, reviewing everything I had to say to him, most of it trivial. Would he come? Did he want me? An emotionally dependent mermaid. Only able to find happiness in another. I polished myself, scrubbed my skin until it glistened. I wanted to become that precious thing he’d want to keep forever.

by Maude Veilleux. Translated by Aleshia Jensen and Aimee Wall. Forthcoming in translation from QC Fiction, June 2019.