Your book is called La sirène et le pendule : Attirance et esthétique en traduction littéraire. Could you explain the title?

The siren, for me, represents attraction: the object of an attraction that is unattainable, and is attractive for that very reason. In the introduction of the book I discuss this Romantic notion of the beautiful as ultimately unattainable.

The pendulum is another image that represents the back-and-forth we’ve seen through history, between very literal translations and very free ones. It’s a pendulum that never stops swinging.

And where would you say we are today? Have we found a happy balance somewhere in the middle?

I’d say there have been times, recently, when we’ve reacted and swung too far toward literal translations. You can still find remnants of that movement. I’ve seen translations where, under the pretext of respect, we end up with texts so literal they can be almost incomprehensible.

Is there an element of convenience in this? Yes, it may be respectful, but it’s also the easiest, least time-consuming way to translate.

Most people who have espoused this approach have done so after long and serious reflection. I don’t think they’re just trying to save time. It’s really out of respect for the original text. There was a true movement of extremely literal literary translation that went way too far in my view, a highly cerebral approach that ignores the effect of the final translation. These translators followed an intellectual principle, but they weren’t very concerned with the effect the final product has on the reader, whether it’s readable or not.

La sirène et le pendule was published twenty years ago now. Have your ideas changed?

No, on the fundamental questions – the effect, attraction, and the author – my ideas haven’t really changed. I’ve noticed in various forums that people can be resistant to the notion of “translating the author.” It’s not fashionable these days, especially in literary studies where since thinkers like Barthes, Ricoeur, Derrida, and Foucault, we like to think that the author is dead, and the text is sovereign. As a translator I find that idea absurd. It may serve us well in theory, but as translators we are practitioners, even if we’re informed by theory. And as a translator I translate an author, first of all.

“Translating an author” for me means much more than just knowing the author’s life. Where is the author from? An Argentine author is not a Chilean author, and that means the language is different, the historical references, the political reality… I need to know exactly where the author is from: what country, what city. When they lived. Because the same text written by someone else is not the same text.

When I translated three books by Juan Carlos Onetti, which was formative for me, I had to keep in mind that Onetti was a friend of Sabato, Borges, Arlt – important Southern Cone writers. Knowing this helps us better understand the type of metaphors he uses, references, irony, his games, the way he plays with language; you understand that he read French writers, especially Camus and Sartre. All this is indispensable.

Is it a question of putting yourself into the author’s head?

You need to understand all the author’s influences, because that’s the only way the effect of the author’s text can be understood.

Above all, and I learned this from Onetti, you have to understand the work at a structural level. If you have an unreliable narrator you make connections between the examples where the narrator proves unreliable, and above all you don’t reveal things that aren’t meant to be revealed. That would destroy the author’s games, and makes the novel completely uninteresting. But to do that you have to know who Onetti is, know that he likes to play games, know where he’s coming from. He’s not the only rioplatense writer of the time playing with us in this way; they were all doing it.

And in the book you are clear that you don’t mean getting to know the author personally. You say this is at best pointless, at worst dangerous.

If there are ambiguities in the book, my role is to preserve, not elucidate them… There are times when it may be useful to ask the author about small details. But on principle I feel it’s best not to. With Onetti this was true. When I met him he was a seriously unpleasant. We’re talking about a man who spent the last five years of his life in bed, though he wasn’t disabled. He just didn’t see the point in getting up.

I went to meet him, in Madrid, to ask him some questions. “Señor Onetti, on this page in your book there’s a Señor Bidar, and then later there’s a Señor Billar; Bidar, Billar. Is that intentional?” “None of my characters play pool,” (billar) he said. “Not play, I said, the character is named Sr. Billar.” “There’s no character with that name,” he said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

So I called Christian Bourgois, the publisher in Paris, and asked them to fix the error. And when I got to Paris to collect my payment for the translation I went to the publishing house and Christian Bourgois said he had a four page letter from Onetti, in Spanish, could you translate it for me. I started reading it to him, this four-page letter. “Dear Mr. Bourgois, Your young Canadian translator, whose strange last name I have unfortunately forgotten, murdered one of my characters…” The letter was a classic Onettian reverie: “Let us hope that as long as this translator lives he is haunted by the ghost of my character…”

I translated the letter for Mr. Bourgois, and explained how I had been to see the author, asked him the question, and more.

“C’est pas mal quand même, comme histoire,” he answered. “It could be a short story.”

Onetti was trying to tell me to figure out what he was up to and leave him alone. And since then that’s been my policy with the writers I translate.

When others translate my own [fiction] writing, I try to do the same. If there’s a glaring mistake I’ll fix it. But I’m always a little worried that by fixing one thing I may break something else.

As an author you have to be careful to avoid destroying the work. The work belongs to the translator. As an author, by intervening I take the chance of damaging something structural, and the structure belongs to the translator.

You distinguish clearly between the author as creator of the work, and the person who wrote the work.

I realize that my idea – on the one hand the author is central, but on the other it’s best not to ask questions – isn’t widespread in Canada. When I’ve spent time at the Banff International Literary Translation Centre it went against what everyone else believed – but I continue to believe this, wholeheartedly.

The translator has greater autonomy in this view, it seems.

Yes. Translations belong to the translator. No one else can understand the work they are creating, as a whole.

Does that mean sometimes accepting a translation that may be further from the original?

Yes. In my Onetti text there may be 15 examples demonstrating that the narrator is not credible. We don’t have to reproduce all 15 exactly. What counts is that the reader understands what’s going on.

All that matters in the end is that the overall degree of humour, or irony, or what have you, is reproduced.

Which is why you talk about the “effect” of the translation.

Yes. When I’m teaching and we do a side-by-side comparison of a few pages of an original and its translation, I warn my students that it’s a totally artificial exercise. It’s easy to find problems, infelicities. We have to remember that we may find the solutions further on. It’s the work as a whole that counts.

So in a jury situation, for example, I like to start by reading 25 pages of the translation, and then 25 pages of the original, to give me the time to see what the translator is doing. Too many people are too eager to point out mistakes, to say “didn’t you see this here, this is wrong.” That’s not what interests me. The overall feeling is much more important.

Let’s talk about the idea of attraction. Could you explain the concept as it applies to translation, as you use it in your book?

I was struck by this idea. It’s not one we hear every day: instead we seem very focused on the idea of skill, competence – perhaps we don’t think enough about the idea of attraction, of loving the book. It sounds almost amateurish, in the best sense of the word.

In the academic world it can be a tough idea to defend. But whenever I talk about it people are interested. We can’t ignore the practical side of things, we have to keep two feet on the ground. But in an ideal world we can strive for this 19^th Century, Romantic ideal of attraction.

There are examples of translators who are so totally attracted they’ll dedicate their lives to a single author. Like Richard Zenith, with Pessoa.

Antonio Tabucchi also, with Pessoa. He didn’t only translate: he also said that his own original writing is an attempt to reproduce Pessoa.

You can see that there is a metaphor at play here that is almost erotic. But there are lots of ways to reproduce a work: you could write a play, retell the story to your neighbour, write a new work inspired by the original.

It’s a modest profession. You aren’t in it for glory. You are working so that others can experience the same attraction you felt. And that’s why attraction drives translation, reaches beyond debates about literal versus literary translation.

The logical, Cartesian side of your personality doesn’t balk at this this notion of attraction?

I’ve been teaching translation for twenty years and I haven’t changed my mind. I still believe in the centrality of attraction. My students are surprised sometimes, but I do my best to explain, how attraction can drive you to want to reproduce the effect of the original. I believe it works.

If you set out to reproduce an effect that truly marked you, that hit you hard, that seduced you (to use a metaphor), there is a good chance that your translation will be better. You can still do a fine job translating a text you like less, approaching it as a technical task. But when you are attracted there’s another layer.

Your book contains a fascinating discussion of the relationship between enigma, doubt, and beauty.

Beauty is at the origin of attraction – we’re attracted to that which we find beautiful – and we often find beautiful that which is enigmatic and inaccessible. By possessing the thing you find beautiful, you compromise its beauty, in a sense. It loses something. For the beautiful to remain as beautiful, you can’t have it. Because once you have it, there’s nothing left to desire.

I’m also interested in the enigmatic side. Because as I said earlier, we shouldn’t elucidate the text’s ambiguities when we translate, but rather reproduce them.

Do you think these notions can apply to non-literary translation as well?

It’s not exactly the same thing, but even in non-literary translation there’s always an author somewhere. If you have a press release you still have to take into account who wrote it, who its intended audience is, etc. There are different definitions of literary texts; one way to look at is that any text that has multiple layers of meaning can be approached as a literary text.

You’ve been teaching translation for a long time. How does theory connect to practice in your teaching?

I think theory is useful. You have people who translate with no theoretical scaffolding. And you have the other extreme, theorists who never translate. I am always surprised, at international conferences say, when I ask a colleague who has made an interesting presentation: “What is it you translate?” And the answer is “I don’t.” How can you have a theory of translation when you’ve never done it?

I believe my theory applies to most types of texts. A legal text, for example, will often be purposely written to leave the widest possible room for interpretation, with intentional ambiguity. And medical writing is very rich in metaphor – sometimes to soften the facts of the matter, sometimes just to make it more pleasant, make the writing richer.

I think attraction can be the base, even if it’s less strong in a non-literary text. It remains the starting point for everything – the enigma, the mystery, reproducing the author’s text – it all grows out of attraction. ≈

 

Did you have any previous translation experience before Sweet Affliction?

No, nothing. I’d never done literary translation. I had done a few things for magazines, one for a magzine on gynecology, a bit for Liberté, some Stephen Harper quotations. That kind of thing.

What about theoretical background, some kind of base in translation theory?

No. I read a lot of English-language writing, and that made me ask a lot of questions about translation, about what it means to translate. But that was out of personal interest.

 As you were translating, did you have a sense that your translation was fairly bold. That you were going a little further than other translators might?

No, I didn’t.

I might be wrong, but that’s my feeling.

Could you give me an example?

Like in English you have “he said” or “she said” throughout the dialogue. In French we can cut them out more easily. I usually left them in. On the other hand, with certain adaptations, cultural references, I didn’t really think twice about it. Because it’s a book from Montreal, stories set in and about Montreal, I took liberties. And there are a lot of very Jewish references as well, that I couldn’t just leave unexplained.

Let’s look at one, from the story “Maitland.” I liked how you slid in an explanation of what Gefilte fish is before it appeared, something Anna Leventhal didn’t feel she had to do for an English-language reader. Here’s the English.

On Frieda’s left was Sophie, a coworker of Rachel’s. Sophie leaned over the gefilte fish and took a sniff, then turned down the corners of her mouth.

“Mais, c’est quoi ça?” she said.

“Pickled fish,” Frieda said. She heaped hot pink, toxic-looking horseradish on her own slice, then quartered it.

“I don’t understand how you can eat that.”

“It’s kind of an acquired taste, Rachel said.

But in your translation, you explained what it was before the character asks “What is it?” Then you name it, and then you slide in the English/Yiddish name, “Gefilte fish”:

À la gauche de Frieda, il y avait Sophie, une collègue de travail de Rachel. Sophie s’est penché au dessus de la carpe farcie et l’a reniflée; les coins de ses lèvres se sont tortillés.

- Mais, c’est quoi ça?

- Du poisson mariné, a dit Frieda. Gefilte fish.

That’s very subtle, and well done. Did you struggle with it, or did it just come naturally?

That’s exactly the type of passage I struggled with a lot. It was hard, and I remember that the copy editor cut out “Gefilte fish.” But I wanted to keep it in. Because in my head, that’s what the character, Frieda, would say. A French-speaking Jewish Montrealer might say that, Gefilte fish, while speaking French.

This brings me to a bit of a delicate question about your translation. Because you have your characters speaking very Québécois French, but they’re mostly anglophone Montrealers. In “Maitland” in particular I wonder if that gave you pause, if you were worried about making the anglo characters more Québécois than they are in the stories?

It’s interesting you bring up “Maitland”, it’s the most multicultural story I think. It’s a family gathering, a Seder, there are francophones, there are anglophones, both Jewish and non-Jewish, and it’s a sort of melting pot. And it’s true that in my translation everyone talks in the same way. But that’s true in the English too. And when I spoke to Anna Leventhal about that question generally, she said that, in her head, her characters weren’t necessarily speaking English (though they are on the page).

In a lot of the stories there are francophones, and it’s Montreal, I imagine that conversations must flip between the two languages. But in “Maitland,” when I read it in English, I felt more strongly that the francophones are a minority. Let’s look at a passage that immediately follows the one with the Gefilte fish.

She was a pretty, delicate-faced girl in an asymmetrical shirt, the kind you found at a boutique stocked with local designers who use a lot of gingham and paisley. She would be the target audience for these boutiques, Frieda thought –  middle-class quirky, retro without the mildew and the pit-stains. Nostalgic for the pre-Quiet Revolution days. A lover of ornamental buttons.

I guess here and in a few other bits we feel a specific point-of-view, an anglophone character’s view of a francophone character, a view of certain differences between them that is personal, but cultural too. Did you think about that, worry about how to render that?

In that type of thing I was really focused on moving the text from one language to another. It was sentence by sentence. I was trying to capture the tone, and especially the idea behind. As for that kind of cultural question, I didn’t really take it that far. Didn’t really ask myself that question.

Another example of your handling of the translation I liked was in “Horseman Pass By,” the two characters are speaking on the phone—

I inverted it. I liked how it came out.

In English, the two characters use French; in French they use English:

“Don’t forget about me.
“Jamais.”

————

-Pense à moi.
-Always.

Was that your first idea?

Yeah. But in the same story there was a passage, an Annie Dillard reference…

Which one?

Here, look at this:

“You know how it is. Another day, another dollar.”

“Fourteen hours on showshoes and wish you had a pie?” She completes the Dillard quotation for him.

Wow. Plus it’s not really a famous Dillard quote, just a throwaway sentence from one of her books.

And Anna Leventhal must have thought her readers wouldn’t pick up on it, so she built the reference right into the sentence.

Probably. So I wasn’t really able to save that one.

-Oui, plus ça change plus c’est pareil.

Elle complète leur phrase pour lui.

-C’était du gâteau, mais t’aurais aimé ça que ça soit de la tarte.

“Another day, another dollar”: It’s super hard to translate, as an expression.

Really? There must be an equivalent.

I know exactly what it means, but… Nothing comes to mind.

It’s a pretty Protestant idea I guess. Let’s stick with the cultural references a bit. There’s a great passage in “Moving Day” where Lynnie is explaining the concept of a mix tape to future generations. In English the reference is to a group called The Brooks. I don’t know them. You? Are they real?

I don’t know if they’re real. That would be Anna’s style. There’s another group…

That you replaced with a real group…

No. The real group is Les Georges Leningrad. I put Les Georges Stalingrad. I felt like Anna was making a reference to someone, so I wanted it to be at least rooted in reality.

Right. So back to the mix tape passage.

Lynnie imagines herself explaining the phenomenon to a blurry group of children gathered around a hearth. “So this was how people in the olden days would tell each other they were special?” one would ask. “Yes,” Lynnie would answer, “but you had to be careful. You couldn’t be too obvious about it.” “Why not?” another would pipe up, a girl with chestnut ringlets who looked a lot like Lynnie’s sister. “Well,” Lynnie would tell her, “let’s pretend Uncle Sebastian gave me a tape where the first song is the one by The Brooks, the one that goes Hey hey baby you’re just a little girl, hey hey baby c’mon and rule my world. Des that make Seb a cool guy or a douchebag?” And together all the little children would chorus “DOUCHEBAG!”

And here’s the French:

Lynnie s’imagine en train d’expliquer le phénomène à un groupe d’enfants un peu flou, réuni autour d’un foyer.
-Fait que c’était comme ça que les gens, dans ton temps, ils se disaient qu’ils étaient intéressés? demanderait l’un d’eux.
-Oui, répondrait Lynnie, mais fallait que tu fasses attention. Fallait pas que ça soit trop évident.
-Pourquoi? S’exclamerait une autre, une fille avec des boucles noisettes qui ressemblerait beaucoup à la soeur de Lynnie.
-Bon, lui expliquerait Lynnie, supposons que Sébastien vient de me donner une cassette qui commence avec la chanson d’Éric Lapointe, celle qui dit viens-tu danser un beau grand slow collé? Est-ce que ça fait de Seb un gars plutôt cool ou un méchant Gino?
Et tous ensemble, les enfants s’écrieraient, en choeur, «GINO»!

Why Gino, not douchebag, like in the original?

Because douchebag is a real anglicism! We use it all the time in French. But Gino is a more French word, but from the 90s. It’s disappearing now in French because everything is douchebag, douchebag, douchebag

Yeah, it’s a popular word.

So I have an Éric Lapointe song. Except it’s actually a Richard Desjardins song.

Oops.

But Éric Lapointe covered it. He’s the one who ginoed it out.

But still, you have anglo-Montrealers listening to Éric Lapointe. You weren’t afraid of doing that?

In this case I had to, to make the joke work.

I’m not asking because I think you made a bad choice. I really enjoyed this aspect of your translation. But it seems to me that many, maybe most translators, faced with the same choice, would choose to kill the joke before changing the reference. And I want to congratulate you for what you did, you said, “No. We’re keeping the joke. We’re going to make it work.”

Yeah. I wanted to find a joke that is somehow equivalent, in French. But in the book I’m translating now I wouldn’t take as much liberty. My feeling is that in Sweet Affliction, while it’s true that a lot of the characters are anglo Montrealers, there’s a sort of Quebec vibe…  shared references.

But La vie la vie!?! [A Radio-Canada TV drama from the early 2000s, watched by a character in the story “Helga Volga.”] That show with the crazy video editing, and split-screen montages?

Yeah but… that was the only one. When the character wanted to listen to Ideas on CBC, I kept it. What was the English?

A show I don’t know. Other People’s Lives.

The title fits though, right?

It definitely felt like you had a lot of fun slipping in little jokes.

Yeah. But you know, it’s been done before in Quebec. There’s a precedent for this kind of translation.

Yeah?

Yeah. Slap Shot. The hockey movie. Have you seen the French-language version?

No.

OK, you need to understand that for you guys, Slap Shot is just a B or C movie, that people have kind of forgotten, a bad movie with Paul Newman. But here in Quebec it’s a very important film, a classic of Quebec cinema, because it was one of the few films dubbed in Quebec French, real Quebec French. I’m not talking just the accent. It was like “Tabarnak hostie viens-t-en icitte mon crisse de gros chien sale je vais t’en crisser une mon hostie!” The lips don’t fit with the words coming out at all!

So on TV. They always understood the importance of adapting.

Yeah. The Simpsons is a really good example. When you watch in Quebec it’s like there’s this distance, and a rapprochement, at the same time. I don’t know if it’s the same in France, but… In Quebec we’re in Springfield. In the States. You know you’re there. But the voices are Québécois. And sometimes, on the radio or TV or whatever, there’ll be a reference to Quebec. They’ll talk about the Champlain Bridge, for example.

They had fun with it.

Yeah. They, like I said, they still took us away, to another world, but at the same time there was a certain familiarity.

And I feel you were doing the same thing in your translation. One example was in “Moving Day,” the character says “typical Pepsi racist.”

Translated as “on se croirait à Hérouxville.” And by referring to Hérouxville, I think you’re giving the French-language reader a similar experience as the English-language reader had. It’s an automatic cognitive leap. It brings up, right away, the Bouchard Taylor commission, a whole bunch of things that haven’t been dealt with yet. It touches a lot of nerves.

Did you have an idea before you started, or develop one along the way, an idea that everything had to work at the same speed, the same rhythm?

No. It really depended on the reference. Some were easy, and I left them identical. Some were harder. And there were a lot of Jewish references. I didn’t want to change those. It didn’t bother me as much if anglophone characters felt more like francophones, but I didn’t want to take away their Jewishness.

What is something that was very hard to translate, but you were pleased with your solution in the end?

In “Frenching the Eagle,” we don’t realize that it’s a woman talking until quite late in the story. She’s in prison. Women’s prison. And she’s speaking in the third person plural, “we,”  meaning “us women.” In English it’s a lot easier to conceal that from the reader, but in French we have subject-verb agreement, and so when she talks I have to add the endings, which would give it away.

What did you do?

It was hard! In the first three paragraphs I had to find passive forms, to avoid conjugating verbs. And I think I nailed it. I was able to retain the ambiguity until later in the story, and it was hard. I’m proud of how that came out.

Also in the first story, you had “Hadassa arms.” Which I translated as “gras de Bingo.” It was an adaptation, and I had to cast around, I asked all kinds of people. “What do you call that fat on certain people’s arms?” Some people call it “gras de Bye-Bye,” because it jiggles when you wave.

I like that approach, asking other people for help. As translators we don’t do that enough. We spend hours searching in dictionaries, and don’t even think to ask our friends.

It was the girl who works at the coffee shop who gave me that. She said that in her family they called it “gras de Bingo.”

So, moral of the story: when you’re stuck, ask the girl at the coffee shop.

Exactly. Then there are things that feel like they were just meant to be translated. Like there’s a pun on a protest sign: Asbestos = Asworstos. And it only took me a second or two. Amiante = Enemiante.

It works.

Yeah sometimes the pun works in both languages. And life is good.

On a more practical level, how long did it take you to translate? Did you have a system?

Three months. I just worked on it every day. Two hours a day, sometimes three or four. Read the book, and just keep on rereading and rereading. After that, I just took it one sentence at a time. But translating a book of short stories is totally different than translating a novel. Because in a novel, when you work on it over time, in many different sessions, it makes me slightly afraid of changing the voice. Whereas in a book of short stories it’s normal to change voice. You’re supposed to.

A different challenge, then.

Absolutely. It’s a huge challenge, translating a novel. The one I’m doing now is 300 pages [Waiting for the Man, by Arjun Basu, also for Marchand de feuilles]. Keeping a cohesive voice all the way through is a challenge. It’s harder to translate than short stories.

I’m interested in the idea of “what people really say.” Translators are always arguing over it, saying “no one says that.” But there’s little agreement. Did you ever have doubts about taking how you talk, how you and your friends talk, as a standard?

No. That’s just what I did, tried to make it reflect, as much as possible, how I talk, how my friends talk.

That’s what I felt. It reminds me of how my friends talk as well.

It’s subtle differences. You don’t say “donc,” you say “fait que.”

“Comon” [a francisized version of “come on”]. “Pis. Lots of “pis” [a colloquial "and" or "then"].

We had to cut out a few “pis.”

Really? There’s still a lot left in.

Yeah, Mélanie Vincelette [publisher of Le marchand de feuilles] had me take out a few. But in English, you’re less afraid of repetition, of saying and, and, and… And the fact is that in French we never say “et” for “and.” I never use the word “et.”

Like “nous.”

Never, man.

I learned French in school, in B.C.: je, tu, nous, vous. Then I moved to Quebec and there’s no “nous”!

Yeah. It’s only for expressions like “viens avec nous.”

Or “Nous, on…

Nous on aime ça.

How many times did you read the original.

Once, just as a reader. Then I read it as I translated. Then I reread my translation. I never reread Sweet Affliction, but I feel like I know it inside-out. The book’s lovely architecture, the way the stories fit together: I think I understand that. I spent a lot of time analyzing it.

And did you figure out the connections as you read? A lot of stuff you didn’t see the first time round?

I think we’re supposed to be confused.

Every time I read the book – twice in English, some of the stories a few more times, and once, one and a half times in French – I discover new connections I didn’t see at first. It’s one of the great qualities of Sweet Affliction.

It’s a complicated timeline. Some of the stories are in the future, like “Moving Day.” We have Abby and Marcus, perhaps we could take them as the main “present.” And later we have stories narrated by their kids. The timeline is very confusing, but it doesn’t get in the way of enjoying the stories.

While you were working on the book, did you get a lot of feedback from the author?

Anna answered questions for me. Explained references. But she doesn’t read French enough to look at my translation and say “that doesn’t work,” for example.

Do you feel like Douce détresse is “your” book?

It’s a tough question. I don’t feel like it’s my book. But I’m just as stressed, and nervous, about its reception as if it were mine. Maybe even more. Because when I translate, I feel like what I’m being asked to do is put my talent to work, for someone else. Sort of like a homage.

You have written a book of short stories, and now you’ve translated one. How do the two processes compare? What are the challenges of each?

In terms of actually producing it, the process is totally different. I’d say translation is like creation, but without the stress. Everything is already there! It’s just your intelligence, your work… that’s what’s so nice about it.

What do you mean, “for someone else”?

For Anna. For the author. The author created their book, and you can bring it to another audience, bring attention to it. It’s sweet. And right now, in Quebec, it feels like there’s momentum building, something happening in Quebec literature, in terms of dialogue between English and French-language writing

Can you give me some examples. There’s Sweet Affliction/Douce détresse.

Véhicle press [through its Esplanade Books imprint, edited by Dmitri Nasrallah] is bringing out several books from Le Quartanier. House of Anansi is publishing Alain Farah.

There are lots of great translations coming out.

It’s like there’s new momentum. I think it happens once every generation. Maybe it’s because I’m involved personally, but it does feel as if there’s a lot happening right now. And the two language communities are interested in each other. You can see it at Drawn and Quarterly, and Le Quartanier translating Jacob Wren. Mélanie Vincelette, at Le marchand de feuilles, who wants to start releasing more translations. Boréal.

Alto in Quebec City.

Yeah, it definitely feels like there’s something happening right now. And it transcends politics. ≈

 

 

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The Discreet Charm of François Blais

an essay by Anne-Marie Genest *

 

I don’t want to go shouting it from the rooftops but it has to be said: Mitia and I are going off the rails a bit. It was hard to be sure at first. We were just taking baby steps in the wrong direction, like when you would set out walking on a crust of snow and then, by the time you figure out you’ve gone far enough and you’re coming to the point of no return, you’d turn around and run right back. We were getting further away, sure, but we never actually lost sight of the track. And then one day it was like, fuck, we can’t even hear the train any more. We started off telling ourselves the emperor wasn’t really naked, his toga was just kind of moth-eaten. Then it was more like, ok, the emperor may have no toga on, but at least he’s wearing clean underwear, common decency prevails and what have you. In the end we had to face facts: that bastard was running around with his dick hanging out! Since then we pretend to look away, like everyone else, but it’s all kind of a joke. We devise ever more elaborate compliments for the emperor’s outfit, lay it on real thick. The emperor has no sense of humour so he accepts our compliments as his due, and we’re all nudge-nudge, wink-wink. It’s pretty fun, actually. This is serious, by the way. Our entire life is built around this joke, and it’s all an exercise in futility. Our entire life is an exercise in futility.

The above excerpt from François Blais’ Nous autres ça compte pas is as representative a slice of his fictional world as you’re liable to find. His humour, style, love of literary references, and typical protagonists – an asocial couple who seem to act more like siblings than lovers – all are there, rendered in Blais’ signature style, a disarmingly casual voice that rarely fails to addresses the reader directly.

And I’m going to ask you, dear reader, to permit me a small aside before we cut to the heart of the matter. Know that I too plan to address you frankly, without a trace of formality. We may not have grown up playing tag together but trust me, there’s no better way to get to the bottom of our subject today. Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it soon enough, and we’ll soon be better acquainted. It’s the only way I have to handle the stress of painting a portrait of an author I so dearly admire. Believe me, it’s intimidating. When you’ve read every one of his books and loved them all with all your heart, loved them to the point where you want to take out a pen and dot every “i” with a little heart, it is hard to shake the unnerving impression that the author is reading over your shoulder. It can be paralyzing. But, if you are lucky, and the author is François Blais – a man who didn’t balk at starting one of his novels with the opening sentence of À la recherche du temps perdu – you can be forgiven for taking a few liberties, borrowing a few tricks.

Now, gentle reader, let me introduce you to our author, François Blais. He hails from Grand-Mère, Quebec, a town in the Mauricie that merged with Shawinigan in 2002, and the setting of most of his novels. By the author’s own admission this felicitous fact derives more from his intimate knowledge of the locale than from any particular dramatic potential. (Look it up; you’ll see he’s not lying.)

Since 2006 François Blais has published eight novels in as many years. Eight in eight years, I hear you say, that’s a lot. To which I can only reply that at the beginning of every new publishing season, when you feel like you are going to drown in a sea of masterpieces, must-reads, page-turners, and sensations, the thought of a new Blais is like a rubber duck-shaped buoy promising to keep us afloat, our heads above water, promising us that, once we’ve finished our homework, we will be free, at last, to go out and play.

On paper our author may appear to be wholly without shame (to wit, the preface of Sam where he engages in odious emotional blackmail with the Académie des lettres du Québec, defying them to give him the Prix Ringuet award for the year’s outstanding work of fiction). But in public François Blais is terribly shy. Written interviews invariably note the author’s wish to answer questions by email rather than in person. At talks and bookstore appearances he has shown such aptitude for the monosyllable that he is well on his way to becoming the national champion. One might well succumb to the temptation of drawing connections between Mr. Blais and his characters, but I hear you, reader, crying foul, and you’re right: the text is sovereign, let’s keep the author separate from his work. To the novels.

As we have said, François Blais takes perverse pleasure in creating stories centered on fantastically asocial characters. Iphigénie crawls under the windows to avoid her “friends’” invitations (Iphigénie en Haute-Ville); Mitia and Arsène move to a cabin deep in the woods (Nous autres ça compte pas); Pavel and Molie opt for a nocturnal lifesytle to keep contact with other people to a strict minimum (La nuit des morts-vivants). Blais’ characters may be capable of social interaction with select members of the human race – their families, a few friends and neighbours, bartenders – but they show a marked preference for observation over participation. Though we are rarely told outright it feels as though they are in their late twenties. They bear improbable names from the annals of literature and make their living working shitty jobs or collecting social assistance. Perfectly lucid if a touch pessimistic, they know relationships don’t last, our clothing is sewn by Bangladeshi children, and we all inevitably end up hating our jobs. They choose self-deprecation over cynicism and pass their time reading Schopenhauer, or Joyce, or watching horror movies. Their solitude is occasionally interrupted to take long walks, play video games, and return from fact-finding missions on the internet with impressive and utterly useless stores of knowledge.

Now, reader, you may well be asking just what kind of story such “special” characters are wont to get wrapped up in (and I know you, you’re saying “special” to be polite, like your mom who said your ugly haircut was “interesting”). Well, let me enlighten you with a few plotlines. In Iphigénie en haute ville, a young man on a drunken night out inadvertently memorizes the phone number written in the bathroom stall at the bar and decides, one uneventful night, to dial it to see if anyone answers.  In Vie d’Anne-Sophie Bonenfant, a young author, charmed by one of his readers, decides to write her biography as a means of seducing her with his literary prowess. In Document 1 Tess and Jude decide to stop travelling on the internet and take a real-life trip, and figure getting a grant for their travel narrative is the most likely means of funding it. In Sam, the narrator finds a diary in a box of discarded books and tries to gather clues as to the author’s identity, persuaded she must be the woman of his destiny. For those considering a foray into literary criticism, I can only recommend a closer look at François Blais’ endings. Or his narrators: often more than one in a single book, coming and going for a page or so, just long enough to tell us a story or throw us a little off course. Always Blais is in control, toying with his readers, pulling our strings so gently that we think we’re the ones doing the legwork.

Picture, dear reader, a train: the train of Quebec Literature. There’s Dany Laferrière, Michel Tremblay, and Marie Laberge sitting pretty in first class. In the rear the cars are crammed with unknown writers trying to hold onto their seats. And there’s François Blais. He’s not quite a popular writer, or some kind of freak, but he’s an underdog, and a superhero, with a whole car to himself. It may appear to be going off the rails, but look more closely and you’ll see that he has found another, gleaming track all of his own. ≈

* The original version of this essay appeared, in French, in Cousins de personne. Used by permission. Translated by Pablo Strauss.

   

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