You don’t need to be an oval ball expert to dive into First tryfour-handed novel by Carl Leblanc, writer (ArtifactXYZ, 2012) and filmmaker (Lose Mario2021), and his son, Théo Leblanc, psychology student and aspiring novelist, in which they recount the exploits of the Aigles, the Jean-Eudes college football team.
“It’s not a four-handed novel, but a two-times-two-handed novel,” rectifies Leblanc senior. Very early on, there was this idea that regardless of the backdrop, that beyond the concrete history of football, it is above all a novel that evokes this enormous thing that we are confronted with one day or the other in life: should I believe it or not? »
Narrated by Theo, quarterback, and his proud supporter father Carl, one picking up where the other left off, First try takes us back to 2018, when the Eagles are coveting the Bol d’or. Apart from a few details, the story is true, and the characters we meet there, Jé, Max, Louis, coach Morin, Alice, Sophie, etc., do exist. It is also the real Sophie who launched the idea to her spouse and her son to unite their voices in order to make known their point of view on what they lived. two years before may the pandemic keep them at home.
“I said to Theo, it’s you who starts, remembers Carl Leblanc. When I read the first chapter, I discovered his voice. The voice of his son written, it is not the voice of his son that we know. I got to know Theo a little better as a narrator, as a writer. It’s not a youth novel, but a learning novel which is also for the father because the chapters, we really wrote them each on our side in turn. »
As gifted in the field as in class – in secondary three, his French teacher told him that she wanted to be invited to the launch of his first book, Théo Leblanc still had to be asked from time to time by his father for the following chapters.
“That’s the advantages and disadvantages of working with your father,” says the 20-year-old author. Communication was easier from my room to his office, but the discipline felt less professional. After the first chapter, we made a plan to determine where each chapter began and where it ended. Halfway through, we had the idea of creating a funnel so that the end would be more active. There is more suspense in the final match than in the other matches, so the chapters are shorter. One could not write a game in three sheets and risk losing the reader. »
“It was like a relay race, confirms the one who will publish his sixth book in September (Mirror, Boreal). When we presented the manuscript to Hurtubise, Arnaud Foulon and André Gagnon expected that our voices would be more differentiated between the chapters, that Théo’s voice would be younger. I told Theo I was going to take that as a compliment. Sometimes I told him that I wasn’t sure of certain sentences, but he stuck to his guns and some of these sentences are still there. »
Writers of reality
Throughout the story, both father and son make several references to the war, including the Normandy landings, Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo and the Trojan War.
“The war metaphor is the most popular metaphor in the world of football, because it’s a very ‘contact’ sport, but of course we still used a lot. Basically, football here is a metaphor for life. For me, it is also a novel of friendship. Besides, I didn’t create characters with qualities and flaws; I took my friends that I loved very much and I had to fun to describe them, to talk about their qualities. It made my job easier for my first novel,” explains Théo Leblanc.
Featuring “good guys”, First try is nonetheless populated by formidable enemies, who find their human face once the match is over.
“That’s always what happens in competitions. When the other is different from us, we will hate him until there is no more competition. The stereotypes of discrimination start from there. If I had gotten to know the guys on opposing teams, there are some I would have preferred over my own team. I was already studying psychology when I reworked my chapters in the fall and winter; I didn’t want to change my style of writing to look young, but I had to keep myself a little embarrassed so as not to go too far in this because the narrator is 16 years old. »
“We can invent characters, but reality invents characters,” says Carl Leblanc. The real is an inventor, becoming a writer of the real is already a fine job. There’s a lot of pretension to being a deus ex machine, a writer who will make it all up, but I find there’s intrinsic value in just being writers of the real thing. The real gave us a story and we decided not to keep it to ourselves. Now people will do with it what they want. »
In the epilogue, set in 2020, the Leblancs evoke the beginning of a story in which we are all still immersed, which stole precious moments from young people, rites of passage: “With my father, we wanted this epilogue -the. I borrowed a lot from a text I had written on the mental health of young people in times of a pandemic on the website of the collective We, founded by my sister Alice. It’s a beautiful conclusion to the book, which brings us back to today’s reality and which adds beauty to the story we have experienced. »
Encouraged by his reading of This that we breathe on Tatouine (Del Busso), by Jean-Christophe Réhel, Théo Leblanc claims to want to write other novels. However, the next one will be written solo.
“I could never have written at Theo’s age, I have a lot of admiration for him. There are people at Hurtubise who want him to continue. André Gagnon did some research and the only literary example of a father-son romance he found was that of Stephen King and his son [Sleeping Beauties, Albin Michel, 2018]. In Quebec, this would be a first. I believe Theo must fly on his own. I don’t rule out writing with him later, because I liked it. Maybe I will do it with my grandson,” concludes Carl Leblanc.