Revolt, or rather revolts, is a theme that is timely for the 22e edition of the Correspondances d’Eastman, which opens Friday in a troubling time. A literary concert celebrating an illustrious rebel, the great Jack Kerouac, launches at the end of a week of reflection in the intimate setting of the La Marjolaine theater, in Estrie.
Before becoming, in spite of himself, the “pope of Beat Generation “, the author of On the road was already revolted against his condition as a French-speaking minority in the melting pot American. We now know that the writer, born 102 years ago in Lowell, Massachusetts, to parents of Quebec origin, sought to write his “great American novel” in his mother tongue – the only one he spoke until the age of 6.
It is not for nothing that Quebecers have always been fascinated by Kerouac: they recognize themselves in this “uprooted” man who experienced an identity tear in New England in the last century, where a million Quebecers went into exile to work in textile factories.
Beyond his multiple identities, Kerouac turned his revolt against triumphant capitalism and against postwar American conformism, which led to the proliferation of suburbs and to stultifying work in factories and offices. The little “French-Canadian” from Lowell became one of the most important American authors of the 20th century.e century. He paved the way for the counterculture wave that swept the United States and the rest of the world starting in the 1960s, says Robert Lalonde, one of the artists behind the Kerouac tribute show, presented Friday at 8 p.m.
“There was a fairly strong element of rebellion in Kerouac. The 9 to 5 wasn’t for him!” summarizes Lalonde, seated at a table with his stage partners, singer-songwriters Tomás Jensen and Karèya, in a café in Plateau-Mont-Royal.
The three artists designed the show together What do you think, my little man? inspired by the manuscript On the wayfirst version of the classic On the Roadwritten in the colorful French of 100 years ago in Lowell. Kerouac’s story and poetry, set to music and song, go back to the writer’s French origins canuck.
Joual before joual
Robert Lalonde and his colleagues were blown away by the extraordinary destiny of the Kerouac family—which is also that of the Franco-Americans. Jack’s parents were from the Lower St. Lawrence. Léo-Alcide Kerouac, a distant relative of brother Marie-Victorin (Conrad Kirouac), came from Saint-Hubert-de-Rivière-du-Loup, while Gabrielle-Ange Lévesque (a cousin of René Lévesque) grew up in Saint-Pâcome.
Kerouac’s parents called him Ti-Jean. His real name was Jean-Louis. Even at age 15, he was not entirely comfortable speaking English in Lowell’s Little Canada, where cheap labor from Quebec toiled away six days a week, 12 hours a day.
Quebecers are fascinated by Kerouac, and Kerouac is equally fascinated by his family’s homeland. He has always sought to reconcile his Americanness with his Quebecois heritage, and even his French heritage (his ancestors came from Brittany, which he visited and from which he drew the novel Satori in Paris).
Friday’s show at the Correspondances d’Eastman evokes “the quest for the little Canuck of his Quebec origins,” explains Robert Lalonde. “Jack even invented a language that we could call joual, 10 years before the rise of joual in Quebec,” he adds.
The language written—and spoken—by Kerouac and his compatriots resembles the joual of the Quebec working class in the first half of the last century, with the added bonus of expressions born in American soil. “He wasn’t looking to write in French, he was looking to find a language that was his own, the language of his family,” Robert Lalonde explains.
Kerouac expresses himself truly and simply, in a mixture of everydayness and existential transcendence.
Existential drama
The actor admits that Kerouac’s particular language gave him a hard time. “It’s hard for the potato-chewer” to articulate the words of the great Jack. The following sentences, written by Kerouac in a text that is part of the concert, sum up the existential drama of the Franco-Americans: “I never had a language of my own. […] I am a French Canadian, born in New England. When I am angry I often swear in French. When I dream I often dream in French. When I yell I always yell in French.
Robert Lalonde has always loved Kerouac, whom he considers a major writer even if he has been snubbed by critics. For their part, Tomás Jensen and Karèya have discovered the work of an author they consider fundamentally authentic.
“Kerouac expresses himself truly and simply, in a mixture of everydayness and existential transcendence,” says Karèya. She appreciates this “look that sincerely seeks the meaning of existence, that lives intensely and honestly, according to its perceptions.”
In the Franco-American universe
The genesis of this literary concert took place in stages over the last decade. Robert Lalonde had read an excerpt from Life is a tributea collection of unpublished texts by Kerouac in French, at the book’s launch in 2016. The International Literature Festival then presented an enhanced version of this public reading — Lalonde was accompanied by a jazz pianist.
This time, the author and actor will deliver with his accomplices a real concert punctuated by prose and poetry by Kerouac, on music composed and performed by Tomás Jensen and Karèya. Jensen became known 20 years ago with his group Les faux-monnayeurs — an anniversary tour of the first of four albums is planned for this fall —, while Karèya leads a career between classical singing and contemporary music.
This unlikely trio formed at La Caravane, a café-spectacle in North Hatley, in the Eastern Townships, where the three artists met. Lalonde talked about his public readings of Kerouac, Jensen and Karèya were intrigued, then dove into the world of the Franco-American writer. They are still overwhelmed by it. And they are convinced that the audience will come away moved by their concert.