In Quebec, this year, May 14 was to be nothing more than a big party.
Posted at 7:00 p.m.
After two years of pandemic, the mask was finally lowering its back in the face of life, Quebecers could finally detect a smile on the few intriguing looks that had appeared in their daily lives since March 2020. They could even start to observe around them again and recognize the tunes of an era that we thought was over.
In the future, many Quebecers will remember the date of May 14 as the date of the return to normality. The writer François Blais chose this day to renounce life.
If the suicide of the 49-year-old Quebec novelist was reported discreetly in the press, it shocked his readers and the literary community too.
It is because, as in many societies, the figure of the writer seems misunderstood in Quebec.
Generally, the look that one carries towards the place of the writer is exaggeratedly romantic. The writer is this being who hovers and wanders, this being who is not worth taking quite seriously since he has not completely turned his back on childhood. It’s true, the writer spends his time inventing stories, playing with words or with characters. Basically, the writer is lucky, can allow himself to be a little nonchalant, because he doesn’t punch his hours, works in the morning or at night—it’s up to him to choose.
It’s true that we could ask him how he’s doing once in a while, but we shouldn’t kidding. The writer is in no danger. In another era, he could still turn his pencil against him, but today he works at a desk, behind a computer, when it’s not actually in his bed sheltered by a block of cement, the anger of a boss or a burn-out. The writer is likeable, deep down, the writer is cute. Come to think of it, it makes us think of that aunt, that friend or that cousin who writes on occasion, when it suits her. That’s it, the writer is just anybody.
All of this, however, is nothing but a myth.
Writers don’t take it easy and don’t write just for fun. They do not belong to that species which practices calligraphy, as the Jewish author Samuel Joseph Agnon said more or less. It’s because writers probe the moods of the world and are on the side of misfortune, dared to add Michel Houellebecq.
Whatever the romantics think, when a writer ends his life, it should always be an opportunity to remember that writing is a painful and exhausting adventure that has more in common with sacrifice than with pleasure. . It’s not repeated enough, but the overwhelming majority of writers don’t make a living from writing. François Blais, whose novels have nevertheless circulated in several secondary schools, worked at night as a janitor in a shopping center to make ends meet. As for the writers who are lucky enough to make a living from their pen, they don’t have it easy for all that. For all writers, writing is a constant commitment, a work of observation that one never suspends. To write is to accept a life in the service of an ideal, a sleepless life, an absurd life even sometimes.
With Hubert Aquin, Dédé Fortin, Nelly Arcan and François Blais — to name but a few — writing seemed like a playful adventure all their lives until their sudden death made us realize that writing only show no mercy. She always takes everything from the writer. If he consents—and it is often in this sacrifice that he finds the only happiness of his existence—to offer himself entirely to her, it is because, contrary to what we too often imagine, the writer don’t write for him. The writer works primarily for others. And it is this heavy responsibility that is sometimes too heavy to bear.
May the memory of François Blais be honored in this way.