Akim Gagnon writes as he speaks, in a language peppered with striking and eminently funny images, which follow one another at a pace as frantic as it is impressive.
In the first pages of his second novel, Granby in the past simpleits protagonist, a teenager named Akim Gagnon, alternately compares an impromptu visit from his father to an epic scene from The Good, the Bad and the Uglya delicate conversation about the situation of a “surgeon who has to act urgently so as not to lose his patient” and a difficult parking maneuver with a “husky pulling a sled full of clients from Pied de Cochon”.
“I like to write from an uncomfortable position, and working on metaphors is like sitting on a good bench with a little nail that pricks your ass,” he says, sitting at a table in a karaoke bar in the Village, in Montreal, with a wink. “That’s a good metaphor, huh?” It can be both so corny and so precise, you never know whether to love it or hate it. I try to do a bit of both. There is something funny, pedantic, mansplainer about pushing redundancy like that. But it also makes it possible to bring out an emotion, which links the idea and the image. »
The beauties of autofiction
In Granby in the past simple — a 100% fictional autofiction —, Akim Gagnon reconnects with the character of his first novel, The cigar at the edge of the lips (La Mèche, 2022), to better explain its genesis, this time focusing on his childhood and adolescence in a poor condition mobile home in Granby. “When I reworked my first book, I removed a lot of stuff that happened in the past to focus on the present. But I have a crazy pleasure to dive back into my memories. I feel like old emotions are richer in detail than what is happening to me recently. It gives me the perspective I need to play, to fiddle with a few things without being afraid of betraying someone. »
I like to write from an awkward position, and working with metaphors is like sitting on a good bench with a little nail poking your ass
This story of emancipation would indeed have something to offend sensibilities. The daily life that young Akim shares with his father – a man he adores, but who has a terrible time managing his emotions and acting like an adult – is explosive and unpredictable to say the least. Failing to be able to get out of it, the young man finds refuge in the theater and the cinema, and tries to find his way in an adolescence which oscillates between states of grace and mistrust, tenderness and anxiety, emancipation and fear of abandonment. .
Fortunately, the novelist is not frightened by the tumult and the vulnerability. “I decided to go ahead with my project when I heard that authors become better when their parents die, because they can finally uncover their truth. It makes me sad. It is both disrespectful for the authors and for the parents. I am lucky to have an understanding father, who is privileged to have a look at him at a time when he had trouble seeing himself. It’s all fictionalized, of course, but he received it as I had hoped, as a gift. »
The game of paradoxes
Literature — and the introspection that comes with it — arrived somewhat by chance in the life of Akim Gagnon, who is more associated with the world of cinema and music videos. Author of short films fountainblues (2017) and PUTSCH (2018), he has also collaborated, among others, with his brother Karl Gagnon, alias VioleTT Pi, Klô Pelgag, Ariane Moffatt and Émile Bilodeau.
At 25, he accidentally opens the novel I am a Japanese writer (Boréal, 2008), by Dany Laferrière, which he devours until the last page. “It’s the first book in my adult life that I’ve been able to finish. I didn’t feel like I was being taken for thick. They opened the door to a world that I thought was closed, telling me that with patience and a little listening, I could understand everything. It is in this perspective that I want to write, with short, direct sentences that everyone can appreciate. »
In 2020, when the whole world was put on hold, Akim Gagnon let himself be tempted by the exercise of writing, first to keep his brain active, then to fuel his creative fiber. He never stopped again. “I think I prefer that to the cinema. Even if you’re going to scratch in dark places, there’s a kind of self-benevolence to the writing. There always end up being cracks in which the light enters. »
And since paradoxes inspire him, the writer has chosen, as a nod to the clichés associated with the middle of the book, to write his second novel entirely in the simple past, a verb tense deemed pompous and inaccessible. “My version of the past simple wasn’t exactly Bescherelle—you’d have to talk to the proofreaders about that—but it worked pretty well from the start. The challenge was to render the swear words, to keep the same thought, the simplicity of the text. The past simple can scare or make the book seem good because the author creates distance with the reader. But it can also work, shake, make people laugh. It is both a beautiful barrier and a wide open door. »