A literary tour on the occasion of the 100and birthday of Jack Kerouac. Our second stop follows in the footsteps of other giants of Franco-American literature.
Renée Cormier proudly points to the neon sign announcing the great hall of the Center for Young Adults at the Leominster, Massachusetts, public library. This is where she has worked as a librarian for years after a first career in social work. The center is named after his father, Robert E. Cormier.
“The neon reproduces the signature of his library card,” she explains. My father was a very big reader and he subscribed here all his life. »
Robert Cormier (1925-2000) was also a fabulous Franco-American author. He was born in French Hill, the “little Canada” of Leominster, three years after the star of Franco-American letters Jack Kerouac, of Lowell, a town located further east, about forty kilometers as the crow flies, in the same state.
After studying at nearby Fitchburg University, Robert Cormier became a journalist, then editor of the local daily, the Fitchburg Sentinel. Her first novel, Now and at the Hourwas published in 1960. Twenty more followed, including The Chocolate War (The chocolate war1974), his most famous, adapted to the cinema like three other of his stories.
“I was about seven years old when The Chocolate War came out, says Mme Cormier. My father’s notoriety immediately exploded. When I was eleven [en 1978], he was able to quit journalism to become a full-time writer. My mom worked and my dad was the stay-at-home parent. He was such a great guy. »
Renée has the same first name as her French-Canadian maternal grandmother. She is the youngest of a family of four children. “We visited Canada once a year and visited my mother’s family in Sherbrooke and Saint-Hyacinthe,” she says. My father didn’t speak much French, because his Irish mother hadn’t taught him. My mother cooked pies and spoke French. I am saddened not to speak it myself. »
However, Franco-American society emerges in the fictional universe of his father. Much of the paternal work written for adolescents takes place in an imaginary double of Leominster called Monument, in a renowned Frenchtown district where religious communities from Quebec are active in health services as well as in schools. Most of the characters have surnames of French-Canadian origin and the older ones still express themselves bit by bit in standard French, but not in the play of certain dialogues dear to Jack Kerouac.
The worldwide notoriety of the latter, born exactly a century ago, overshadows Robert Cormier as far as Quebec and a multitude of Franco-American authors from the same region. The list of writers descended from proletarians who came to settle in “little Canadas” to work in the factories of the industrial revolution in New England includes Norman Beaupré, Clark Blaise, Gregoire Chabot, Paul Marion, Michael Parent, Susann Pelletier, David Plante, E. Annie Proulx, Rhea Côté Robbins, Gérard Robichaud and Connie Voisine.
Jacques Ducharme (1910-1993) wrote the first typically Franco-American novel, The Delusson Familypublished in 1939. The book, telling the story of a typical emigrant family, was a source of inspiration for The Town and the City (before the road), Kerouac’s first book.
A filthy world
Marie Grace de Repentigny (1924-1964) is another star of Franco-American literature that is little known here. Born to a mother named Laurette, she was from Manchester, New Hampshire, another textile industrial town, also located about forty kilometers from Lowell. Like Ti-Jean’s father, said Jack, Grace’s father worked in the printing press.
She got married at 18, became Grace Metalious, soon had three children. His very first book, Peyton Placewritten in his early thirties and published in 1956, caused epoch and scandal because it spoke of realities (rape, incest, murder, adultery…) hypocritically concealed by the idyllic image of small towns of the’American way of life.
The novel contains only one reference to the French fact, and again, simply to explain the origin of Violette’s sweet first name. On the other hand, the dark last tale of Grace Metalious, No Adam in Edentells the painful life of a Franco-American family over three generations around Angélique de Montigny, daughter of Armand and Monique.
the fire Peyton Place stayed a year and a half on the list of bestsellers from New York Times and sold 12 million copies. One in 30 Americans owned one and often read it on the sly. The story was quickly adapted to the cinema, then in a successful television series in the 1960s (ABC) with Ryan O’Neal and Mia Farrow.
With the rights to the feature film ($75,000), Grace Metalious bought a Cadillac and a large house in a rural corner of Gilmanton, New Hampshire, a small town she had lived in since 1953 and which she had transformed for her fiction. criticism in Peyton Place while drawing inspiration from a local news item from 1947.
The locals couldn’t forgive Grace Metalious for portraying their supposed little corner of paradise in a filthy world. “I think people are still mad at him,” says Marshall Bishop, owner of the writer’s home, bought with his wife, Sunny, after their retirements, she as a flight attendant, he from the army. Marshall Bishop has been in a wheelchair for a few months, following a fall from the roof. He should walk again.
The beautiful mansion serves as a reception hall, decorated with military memorabilia throughout, medals, uniforms, photos and even a Pan Am costume from Sunny. The couple sell their own wine made with purchased grape must, including a bottle named for Grace, which is ironic since the writer died of cirrhosis aged 39.
Grace Metalious was ultimately another victim of Peyton Place–Gilmanton, summed up the Vanity Fair the fiftieth anniversary of the film. But fans of his work remain: his grave at Smith Meeting House Cemetery was one of the few to show signs of visitation a few days ago.
A brutal universe
Robert Cormier’s books aren’t exactly jojo anymore. They approach fundamental themes (death, commitment, freedom) from an often pessimistic perspective, where young people fight against oppressive powers or embody evil themselves. After the First Death (After the first death1979) recounts the terrorist taking of a school bus hostage; The Rag and Bone Shop (At the flea market of the heart2001) is about 12-year-old Jason accused of murdering a young girl; heroes (Heroes1998) tells the tragedy of a young soldier who returned disfigured from the Second World War.
The contrast is great between the man, the father described by his daughter, and this brutal universe created in his fiction. “He was very sensitive and aware of the cruel reality of life”, says his daughter, giving the very simple example of the anecdote at the start of The Chocolate War.
One day, her brother Peter came home with bags of chocolates to sell for the benefit of the school. The discussion started at supper on the options offered: buy the whole lot, go door to door as requested or refuse the deposit and return the treats to the school. The son opted for this option and, the next day, seeing him leave with his bags, the father imagined the worst that could happen in a similar story.
“A spark has germinated”, summarizes Renée Cormier. She also says that the heroine Emmy’s phone number in I Am the Cheese (I am the cheese, 1977), his father’s most experimental novel by writing, was actually that of the family residence.
“He didn’t want to use a fake number that would get annoying calls. My mother had accepted. Young readers called us sometimes. They were asking to speak to Emmy, and my dad was pretending to be her dad. He was very kind to them, very generous. »
This report was financed thanks to the support of the Transat International Journalism Fund.The duty.