Jean-Louis Tripp | The little brother: living after death

We know Jean-Louis Tripp in Quebec for the series General store, which he co-signed with Régis Loisel. He continues with The little brother an “autobiographical puzzle” started in 2017 with ecstasies. It is another part of his intimate life that he delivers here: the death and mourning of his brother Gilles, broke at 11 years old, when the cartoonist was 18 years old.

Alexandre Vigneault
The Press

Jean-Louis Tripp has just put down his suitcase with his brother Dominique, in Toulouse, when The Press gasket. The cartoonist, who lives in Quebec half the year, started a promotional tour a month ago for his latest book, The little brotherpaved with nearly 350 pages where he recounts the tragedy that struck his family in the summer of 1976: his brother Gilles was hit by a driver on a road in Brittany.

He has weeks to come to talk about the book, with its neat movement, which acutely translates the emotions we go through when we are propelled into mourning: the pain, the sadness, the cottony state in which we finds, the impression that time has stopped and that life will not be able to resume its course.

“I’m a little overwhelmed by the wave,” admits the cartoonist. The little brother aroused a strong reaction since its publication in France, in May. Even for General store, which was a great success, it did not experience such enthusiasm. He is still amazed at the amount of messages he receives, from people telling him of their pain or telling him how much they have been touched by his.

Jean-Louis Tripp is no longer in pain. The accident he recounts took place 46 years ago. “Time, fortunately, is like a stream that smoothes the stones,” says the 64-year-old designer. He will nevertheless say that he had to do a lot of work on himself to get rid of his guilt.

His little brother, Gilles, was at his side for a moment before being hit by a car. Worse: he held her small hand in his. She escaped him on impact. Where was it just before? The question has obviously haunted him for a long time.

What makes the human

Telling this story is not part of a process of mourning or reparation for the cartoonist. If he does so, it is because a few years ago he undertook a “global” autobiographical cycle, initially centered on amorous intimacy and sexuality, entitled ecstasies. “The fact that I tell my life is not very interesting in itself, notes Jean-Louis Tripp. What is, for me, is to explore the things that build us as human beings. »

This angle gives meaning to his work. It also radically changes the way we look at a book, according to the cartoonist: an autobiographical story immediately forces the reader to wonder how the events narrated resonate in his own life. “It is there, for me, the virtue of the autobiography”, underlines it.

And for him: it’s a space of freedom. He now works without a script (“I know the story”, he says, with a smirk) and spontaneously uses the strengths of the language of comics to best convey what he wishes to share. In this regard, he demonstrates great mastery in The little brother : he goes from heaviness to a skilful distancing, plays with the timeline and the color, bursts the boxes when necessary, remains sober when the scene commands it. All this with an amazing naturalness.

To tell one’s story is inevitably to reveal that of others. Jean-Louis Tripp broke a family taboo by daring to address the death of his brother Gilles. “There was a kernel of silence that made it impossible to break it,” he says.

“It was complicated with my mother at the beginning,” he admits. Then, over meetings on Skype, she began to help him reconstruct the events, to help him write the book, as he says. “She began to perceive at that time and she now perceives very well that this book gives a memory to my brother, thinks Jean-Louis Tripp. It inscribes the memory of my brother in a circle wider than the family circle. »

The little brother

Jean Louis Tripp

Casterman

350 pages