Gallimard, in the Quarto collection, on the initiative of Monique Jean and Monique Bertrand, has just published nine novels by Réjean Ducharme, The swallowing of the swallowed at big words. Nearly 2000 pages accompanied by a chronology, excerpts from his correspondence, photographs, drawings, in many unpublished elements. Enough to breathe new life into the ghost writer who disappeared in 2017. And perhaps encourage young readers to discover a work stuck in the adolescent quest for an absolute in escape.
If his prose displays a disturbing modernity, this author fleeing the spotlight during his lifetime breathed a thousand leagues from our time. In his bubble, the cult of stardom of the artist under interviews in bursts echoed by a rain of “like” was not invited to the table. In Ducharme’s eyes, his private life constituted a smokescreen before his truly eloquent work. In songs and plays as in the novel, this legacy remains the royal road to penetrate his universe.
Another marker of the era: even if the life of a writer always interferes in his writings, the author of the Nose who invokes wrote fiction. A genre in decline today. He drew on his unbridled imagination, woven with mythology and revolt against all the calls to join the ranks of the packs and the powerful, reinvented the language.
Many readers left the Salon du livre de Montréal after having stocked up on books of all kinds. And alongside practical books, cookbooks or treatises on psycho pop, many have purchased works by Quebec writers or writers of various origins. Most often, these were autofiction titles or biographies, which are very popular here as elsewhere. I am assured that some publishers even invite the authors to tell their own story or recount the life of another, or even to transpose a news item rather than to invent. Outside the niches of crime fiction, fantasy and children’s literature still nourished by fables and magic, fictional themes would be less successful.
Autofiction before the letter, a term born in 1977 from the pen of Serge Doubrovsky, has always existed, of course. She gave birth to pearls signed Montaigne, Céline, Proust and other hexagonal beacons. closer to us, The flap by Philippe Lançon has proven to be a model of its kind. In Quebec, in the 19e century, the fascinating writings of Philippe Aubert de Gaspé, Old Canadians and Memoirs, constitute precious testimonies of the period following the Conquest. These books born from reality have opened our literary paths thanks to the storytelling talent of their authors. So much the better !
But it’s all about proportion. Undoubtedly under the influence of social media and reality TV, intimate confidence, nourished by ambient narcissism, has taken precedence in the 21st century.e century on the imagination. And if the repeated shock of hair-raising news hammered into the news caused us to indirectly lose our sense of flight… One thing is certain, we need both literary currents in equal parts.
Many publishers are crumbling under the weight of manuscripts that recount the dramas of the lives of authors who are sometimes beginners, not always having the pen to convey their load of emotions. But even seasoned writers abandon fiction in favor of memoir or biography. As in the cinema, moreover, where special effects productions will soon be isolated to clear imaginary lands. The genre of testimony or biography is often fruitful, on screen as elsewhere. But the observation is clear: we are losing more and more access to dream worlds, populated by incredible adventures or simply projected with fantasy out of context.
With notable exceptions, autofiction particularly appeals to female writers. And giving the Nobel to Annie Ernaux and Goncourt to Brigitte Giraud for live fast, the two Academies offered in 2022, with good reason, its letters of nobility to a very popular genre, although sometimes frowned upon. Yet women also embrace poetry, which straddles all worlds. And, in Quebec, the attribution this week of the Gilles-Corbeil prize to Nicole Brossard, whose lyrical writings are nourished by symbols and rhythm, crowns exploration as much as diving into intimate territory.
In the novel, women writers come from afar and were for a long time very much in the minority. They have a lot to confide in about their experiences, their traumas, their relationship to others. Many authors from minorities share this need to describe their rocky journeys.
But I keep the impression that, when they and they are ready to invent the world rather than constantly undergoing it through their writings, we will see their true liberation take place.