Getting Bored by Serge Bouchard | The Press

“It’s strange to imagine two books by Serge Bouchard being produced without him,” says Jean-Philippe Pleau. I seem to have heard him say throughout the process: “It’s better to be good.” Did you feel the same?

— Yes, a little superego told me: “Don’t waste my book!” », replies Mark Fortier.

We laugh, but all three of us are moved to see the covers of Serge Bouchard’s last two titles, fresh from the printer and published more than a year after his death on May 11, 2021. The Black Spruce Prayer is a collection of his texts read on the radio program It’s crazy…, which he co-hosted with Jean-Philippe Pleau, who wrote the preface. Many listeners claimed them, it seems, even during his lifetime, just after hearing them on the radio.

Listening to Serge Bouchard makes you want to have it not too far away, in your library, to be able to come back to it.

They were Americathe highly anticipated third book in the series Remarkable forgotten, is the last book on which the anthropologist worked, while he was going through the terrible ordeal of the cancer of his wife, Marie-Christine Lévesque, who finally won. If she could not participate in the writing of this third volume, her name is on the cover, because Remarkable forgotten was a joint project that, from the start, was announced as a trilogy.

This gave They made Americaabout the unsung heroines of North American history, They ran Americaon these wood runners who fascinated Serge Bouchard so much, and this They were America, very important to him, devoted to Aboriginal people, one of his great passions. The publisher Mark Fortier had to finish this manuscript alone after the death of its author. He had no choice, readers kept asking when the last book in this hugely popular trilogy was finally coming out.

Because yes, despite the immense grief of the loss of his lover, Serge Bouchard continued to write, it is a lot what kept him alive, we are convinced of it. He himself had health problems, so he had offered to read his texts for the radio from his hospital bed, which he did not have time to do.

These two books are in a way a miracle, and a gift for its readers, who can thus prolong the dialogue a little and hear this reassuring voice in their head. But we miss his view of the world, this will come up constantly throughout our conversation. It is not soon that we will be able to fill the void he left, this gift he had for making us think in the midst of the tumult of opinions.

“I think that for him, the ease of simplistic thinking was never required, notes Jean-Philippe Pleau. Everything was always more complex than what was presented as a portrait. I have the impression that he wanted to put the spot on the blind spots of thought, of life. And that is a place that still remains to be occupied, there is no one who has replaced it. »

“Serge was someone who was for the amplification of meaning, not for stunting it,” continues Mark Fortier. So the semantic richness of words was precious to him. »

Jean-Philippe Pleau remembers that he and Serge often used an expression by Mathieu Bélisle, “the terminus of thought”. “For Serge, there was no terminus of thought, he had never arrived somewhere, never been satisfied. » Mark Fortier thinks rather that « each satisfaction called for something else in him. He knew there was always something to create. He liked to create meaning. »

What is evident in They were Americawhose shape is inspired by the superb memory of fire by Eduardo Galeano. In a succession of short texts that open onto broad perspectives, we discover what America could have been, according to Serge Bouchard, who adopts the point of view of the beach and the trees that saw the Cartiers, Champlains and Colombs arrive. …

The Grace of Doubt

If I wanted to bring together Jean-Philippe Pleau and Mark Fortier, it is not only to talk about these two books which appear almost at the same time, but above all because they have known the man well in recent years, more especially Jean-Philippe, who was a spiritual son for Serge Bouchard. They have plenty of stories to tell about him. For example, his childhood obsession with very French-Canadian junk food (the Mae West in particular). “You can’t get the guy from Pointe-aux-Trembles out,” says Jean-Philippe, who recalls Bouchard’s humble origins.

On the fact that he liked to stop time, by parking in front of the house of Jean-Philippe who was going to join him with a coffee in the car, just to chat. “And he always said it wasn’t as good as a coffee from truck stop. Her genius titles, like “The Loneliness of the Cherry Inside the Cherry Blossom.” His groupie side of Vladimir Jankélévitch, whom he quoted all the time, a philosopher I would probably never have read without Serge Bouchard.

He also had that fine weakness of the greats, which was to doubt his talent as a writer, regardless of his long experience of the pen.

“This doubt made him really write, believes Jean-Philippe Pleau. Until the very end, he never took it for granted. He sent me the copies of the editorials he threw away, to prove to me that they were no good, which I never believed. It was always good Serge Bouchard, he could have rolled on his reputation, but he didn’t do that. »

On the smart side

Rubbing shoulders with someone like Serge Bouchard must necessarily transform us. What is his most important intellectual legacy, for them, intimately? “He was running after the beauty of things,” says Mark Fortier. It was not a mannerism with him. It wasn’t forced, and all the art is there, because it wasn’t a method that he applied mechanically, it was his way of seeing the world and creating it. He had a way of being on the side of intelligence and intelligent understanding of who we are and what history is, which he said should never be used to tear us apart. A way of doing things that is accessible, enjoyable and creative, which for me is a way forward. »

“He taught me that everyone has a story to tell,” adds Jean-Philippe Pleau. That all stories, big or small, can say something about the world. For a long time, I thought that the stories told to the “I” had no value. On the contrary, throughout his career, Serge has gone from the particular to the universal. When he talks about his love of Mae West, he also talks about the culture of industrialized food, and modernity. I was ashamed of my origins for a long time and Serge said to me: “Just change your perspective on it, try to see the beauty and the richness of the world in there.” »

“Since history is a lie, reminds Mark Fortier, you might as well choose the most beautiful fables. So reading They were America and The Black Spruce Prayer, I chose to believe that Santa Claus came by early this year. And he had the head of Serge Bouchard.

They Were America: Remarkable Forgottenvolume 3

Serge Bouchard and Marie-Christine Lévesque

Lux

276 pages
In bookshop

The Black Spruce Prayer

Serge Bouchard

boreal

224 pages
In bookshop