“He put out some short stories he wrote after work. The last time was twelve years ago ”, we quickly learn about Thomas, one of the main characters of Parallel skies, first novel by Henri Chassé. Funny coincidence (but is it really one?): Twelve years is also roughly the number of years separating the publication of the actor’s previous book, the collection of poetry Storm Chunks (Écrits des forges, 2008), of this first foray into fiction, a sort of crossover between three main figures: Elisabeth, an international specialist in the work of Emily Dickinson, her daughter Geneviève, who survives between her job cashier at the grocery store and the dance floor of her favorite bars, and Thomas, who seems to follow life where it takes it, rather than turning it in its own direction.
“Crack of age / the blood is racing / the steps are damaged // passive angels / settle between the words // little luminous life / close to the abyss”, wrote Henri Chassé in Storm Chunks, which had earned him a nomination for the Governor General’s Awards. Words – a bright little life a stone’s throw from the abyss – which could very well correspond to this Thomas who, after the death of his mother, sells his shares in his vinyl shop and leaves the city to settle in a chalet in Charlevoix , at the river’s edge.
Why did Henri Chassé not publish for so many years? The 62-year-old actor cites the death of his mother, as well as a demanding profession, which has always been generous to him. “But a few years ago, I asked Jennifer, ‘So give me some themes,’” he recalls of his sweetheart, filmmaker Jennifer Alleyn. “At one point, we come out of the Quat’Sous, it was raining, it was cold, and she said to me: ‘I should have put on a hat.’ This phrase will become the first writing commission that his girlfriend will submit to him, as well as the spark plug for the creation of Parallel skies.
“If I speak of Jennifer, it is also because, when I saw Impetus, I was completely stuck, ”he adds of this docufiction feature film that she signed in 2019, in which several trajectories are entangled. “I was completely impressed that it was possible to take all kinds of elements from a story and play with them, to let the narrative take hold, not the other way around. “
After two books of poetry, Henri Chassé thus measures himself for the first time with the challenge of character construction. Report ? “It is as if, with poetry, there was something which descended very deeply, so deeply that it is no longer of the order of the intimate, what you write, that it is no longer something thing that belongs to you. It’s as if poetry was in the common water table, ”observes this regular on boards and the small screen, which we see this fall in After on ICI Télé. “Whereas the fiction, all of a sudden, it shakes things much closer to me. It’s strange, isn’t it? “
Believe in chance
“At the biennial, a video installation deeply disturbed me. It was almost exactly the dream that I had had for months after your disappearance ”, writes Elisabeth to her brother, in a series of punctuating letters. Parallel skies. “The camera entered a small, simply furnished house. A door at the back of the kitchen opened onto a larger, more empty room. At the back, another door led to another even larger room, even more empty than the previous one and so on until a last door opens. “
Here is a dream by which Henri Chassé himself has often been visited. He confides in the process that he has always been fascinated by this capacity that a single life has to contain several existences. A reality to which romantic fiction is perhaps better able to testify than any other form of art. “It’s something that comes back to me often, this idea that suddenly, by opening a single door, you can suddenly be brought back to your past, that chance can completely transform your life and take you into a parallel universe, not in the esoteric sense, but in the sense of parallel life, ”he explains, pointing to some of his characters, who will gradually learn what binds them together. “I have no belief, but I believe in chance. “
By choosing to set his novel between Quebec City and Charlevoix, Henri Chassé also pays oblique homage to a city constituting his imagination – he grew up in the Outaouais, but spent a lot of time in the capital – as well as to Jacques Poulin, a writer dear to his heart. Skies parallels sometimes also resembles a visit to the cultural universe of Henri Chassé, who sows references by quoting Patrice Desbiens or by showing us a painting by Riopelle.
But it is undoubtedly music, more particularly jazz, that Parallel skies famous with the most enthusiasm – his playlist would include tracks from Stan Getz, Chet Baker and the Modern Jazz Quartet. Jazz, behind each of the chapters, acts as an amplifier, giving daily life a density that only it can provide.
“I wanted to promote the idea that you can listen to all kinds of business in life. Someone might find it unbelievable to listen to Johnny Cash and Beethoven, but I have no problem with that, ”argues this ardent music lover. “But there is something in jazz musicians, in the relationship they have with the stories they deploy in their improvisations, by not knowing where they are going, but while responding to a structure … There is a freedom in it that I have always found appealing. A freedom which – Henri Chassé now knows – can also be that of a novelist.