François Blais is no more, but his stories and words, kept alive by the fire of his clear-sighted humor and his inexhaustible imagination, still burn brightly. These days, the release of a new album, The ghost who wanted to existeven adds new sparks.
With a title like that, one can imagine that many will try to make a connection between the writer’s tragic destiny and the quest for this ghost. Our era has this incorrigible mania of looking everywhere for autofiction. It would be a good thing to avoid this misunderstanding, especially since it led to significant excesses following the publication of the novel, also posthumous, The boy with the feet upside down (Fides, 2022).
So let’s organize our thoughts in the vein of fiction, especially since this ghost does not exist. Literally. “Like all non-existent entities, the ghost inhabited the Great Nowhere”, this immense kingdom where everything that does not exist coexists: sasquatches, zombies, but also ropalouk and zyrbit. “What is a glacould? It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t exist.”
The trouble with this non-existence is that everything that the real world invents disappears immediately from the Great Nowhere. Over time, the ghost had to give up the ice cream he loved so much, the bicycle, which he changed for a less practical “grazonde”, and his stamp collection, replaced without enthusiasm by “a collection of franippes”. We can therefore understand where his desire for life comes from: “Everything that is fun exists, so I want to exist, too.”
His existential quest, already intoxicating by the abundance of the universe in which it is set, and playful, by the originality that founds it, then takes the form of an epic, where the adventures invite themselves into the great silent laughter of François Blais. The fall, astral and jubilant, finally offers a tasty snub to the shadow that has been weighed down on the writer’s legacy.
A delayed birth
The album was supposed to be released much earlier, but after the earthquake of François Blais’ death, his family expressed to Nadine Robert, editor and president of Comme des géants, the wish that Iris Boudreau, a friend, be the illustrator. This was not the planned scenario, but the delicate request had, among other good reasons, the merit of putting a little love in this darkness. The thing was heard.
Iris Boudreau herself has a unique sense of humor, which she has offered in collaboration with Zviane and Élise Gravel, among others. She is also, ironically, co-author of The list of things that exist (La pastèque, 2018). Here, his crazy universes, his expressive characters and his palette full of contrasts embody with aplomb and fanfare this kingdom that should not exist, this pulsating desire for color and wonder.
What a feat. By inviting us to take up Alice’s mirror and contemplate from a new angle the wonders within reach of life, François Blais reminds us of magic. That of literature, which we sometimes forget through utilitarian works, but also that of existence itself: “Existing is a privilege and not a right.” And so, through this little ghost, the irrepressible desire to live becomes audacity. And triumphs.