Confused by Yves P Pelletier, “this is perhaps what will be read one day in a degradable Bio Cabaret”, launches the most fanciful of RBOs, evoking these evenings during which actors take from the biographies of stars, obviously written in a hurry, their most absurd excerpts. “It would make me very happy, without being silly! »
Posted at 7:15 p.m.
However, it would take a lot of bad faith to subject this book to such a fate, not written in a hurry at all. Yves P Pelletier signs here a first story that we would read with the same joy if its author were called Gaétan Thibodeau, provided that this fictitious Gaétan handles with as much finesse this alloy of luminous sensitivity and gentle derision, which has become the mark of factory of the comedian and filmmaker since The magnets (2004).
This is following an invitation from colleague Chantal Guy to participate in an event during which public figures revealed extracts from their youth diaries – “An invitation that I had to decline because I had no access to my boxes” – that the creator of Monsieur Caron himself engaged in this exercise in intimate archeology.
PHOTO JEAN F. LEBLANC, PROVIDED BY THE PUBLISHING HOUSE
Rock and Belles Oreilles, in 1989
It was after watching the show that I discovered a diary I kept when I was in CEGEP. And I quickly had to stop reading it, because I was moistening my artifact, I was crying from laughing! It was so ridiculous!
Yves P Pelletier
Observation: knowing how to make fun of himself was not yet given to the young man. “I was blown away by my naivety, but also by my seriousness! You see in my tone that I’m trying to be laid back, but the subtext is full of fragility. »
It is to meet this fragile freluquet – “Six feet, one hundred pounds, including ten curly hair, falling on each side of my baby face” – that invites us Confused, in tone somewhere between travelogue, apprenticeship novel and autobiography, although the former lean (as he calls himself on Twitter) essentially only addresses a decade (from 1981 to 1993) of his life. A prosperous decade in discoveries of the world (France, Italy, Poland, Germany, Finland), in difficult mourning (that of his mother and, a fortiori, that of his brother, broke in the prime of life) as well as in love disappointments.
At the age of 20, Yves is about to take off from his Laval prison – the family home – to conquer the French world of comics. An ambition which – alert to the spoiler – will only meet with rebuffs. “I tried to put myself back in the shoes of who I was at the time and to tell things as I lived them”, says the one who confides to having been inspired by the funny books at I by Tina Fey and Pierre Huet. “Having said that, I’m 61, so I wouldn’t have been able to put things the way I do now, with all my wisdom. Yves pronounces the word wisdom making one of those little grimaces with which he punctuates his remarks when he seems afraid of appearing to pontificate.
PHOTO ROBERT MAILLOUX, PRESS ARCHIVES
Yves P Pelletier, on stage in July 1987
Fundamental freedom
One day, in a theater workshop at Cégep, after a performance that provoked a lot of laughter, Yves Pelletier’s teacher dropped his verdict: “You’re just a ham. “He was right, again,” writes the bad student. “But his dismissive remark rang in my ears like a compliment. No. A revelation. I am a ham. »
Four decades later, the author has clearly not ceased to consider everyday life as a vast game, and each annoyance, large or small, as an opportunity to thwart habits and, by the same token, to remember that we are alive. That morning, because the café where we were supposed to chat turns out to be crowded, Yves glances around, walks into a laundry room, then comes out immediately. “There’s a table in the laundry room. Do you mind if we move here instead? “Uh…why not?
Marie-France Bazzo asked me a few years ago in her tempo: ‟What is this little voice that you sometimes take in an interview?” I replied that that voice isn’t someone else, it’s me! My playacting side is a manifestation of my sensitive side, which serves me as a screen or a mask.
Yves P Pelletier
Confused thus testifies to the quest of a boy fed on the adventures of Tintin who, very early on, will place freedom at the top of his aspirations. A freedom he was able to taste thanks to the success of Rock et Belles Oreilles, this group which he agreed to join because the proposal came with a hefty salary of $60 a week.
“For me, freedom is fundamental. And the trip will have enabled him to weigh its value. “What we forget is that collectively, in Canada, no matter who we are, we are in a privileged bubble. We can see it now: there are people trying to cross our border to come and live under our dictatorial regime. [Les mots ‟régime dictatorial” dégoulinent d’ironie.] Me too, there are things that make me indignant [dans les décisions de nos gouvernements], but at some point, you have to stay in touch with reality. Before criticizing the privileges of others, one must consider one’s own. »
Notable teachers
These “stories of chance and coincidence, of waking dreams and intuitive quests”, as he writes, are also, fundamentally, stories of encounters: with his colleagues André, Bruno, Chantal, Guy and Richard, with friends forever crossed during his wanderings, as well as with outstanding teachers. Among them: Pierre Bourgault, Pierre Falardeau, Jean-Claude Labrecque and Pierre Foglia.
I signed up for the course just because Foglia was giving it. And there, I was surprised by his rigor. He had quickly taught us that writing was work, not just anything, and that journalism was screenwriting. You have to tell a story.
Yves P Pelletier
Was he harsh? “As I did things my way, in a very original way, his comments could go from rave one week to ‘Forget what I told you, it’s shit’ the next week. I bet his comments about his former student’s latest work would fall into the first category.
Confused
Yves P Pelletier
VLB editor
232 pages