The confusion of minds in our era of accelerated change is a golden theme for works of fiction. Sources of inspiration for designers emerge from the spirit of the times. See! Sign holders challenge each other on gender identity. Yesterday’s knowledge and beliefs end up in the dump of ideas. Books are blacklisted by the far right and the far left. The foundations are collapsing, the common fund is being diluted, private life is disintegrating under the blows of social networks and new puritanisms. Anti-colonialist, anti-machist, anti-elitist positions come up against sclerotic or panic-stricken conservatism. Many media outlets accentuate the climate of hysteria. Like cats and dogs, activists from one camp and the other are tearing each other apart online and in the public square. Hence the flashes and tensions.
Calls for social justice towards minorities who have been mistreated for so long, however, require more than the exacerbation of trench warfare between wokes and antiwokes. The potentates of the profit-hungry billionaires who pollute and damage a suffocating planet deserve to be denounced. The new mentalities, beyond the irritating excesses of the culture of cancellation and a collective amnesia to be decried, stir consciences in the face of the injustices suffered by the sacrifices of history.
For a creator, in what tone should we bear witness to this incredible period of turbulence?
Denys Arcand, in his satirical film Will (in theaters October 5), with a 36-star cast, charges full speed ahead with the revolutions of the day which hit its aging hero thrown off balance by the fall of his bearings. I will come back to it.
On a similar subject, May our joy remainthe high-flying novel by Quebec author Kevin Lambert (QRoberval erelle), walks more skillfully on the razor’s edge, showing the precipices emerging on the right and left. A finalist for many major French literary prizes, Goncourt, Médicis and company, his latest work is so powerful that it should reap a big laurel in France. She, who is very cinematographic in the shots that she brings forth spontaneously within herself, is obviously predicted to have a future adaptation to the big screen.
On Sunday, I went to Usine C to attend a reading of extracts from May our joy remain as part of the International Literature Festival. In the company of performers Lise Roy, Marie-Thérèse Fortin, Ariane Castellanos and Ralph Prosper, the show was a succulent spicy dish. I liked finding a condensed version of the highlights and twists and turns of a work that artfully lights all the pyres of the vanities. But the subtleties of the text can only be savored when reading the novel.
The writer’s decision to invite a “sensitive reader” to give her opinion on a racialized character in the manuscript is causing a stir in France. Authors often have their works proofread by experts in one field or another. So where is the problem ? Still, the subject deserves to be debated. I’ve seen films or books lose their bite after being scrutinized by overzealous activists. It’s all in the skill. The skill and quality of Kevin Lambert’s novel plead his case and win it. Moreover, the loud cries are running out of steam in France in favor of more in-depth analyses, as the works in the running for the Goncourt are being so extensively scrutinized.
This novel denounces the upper bourgeoisie and capital by offering humanity to its star architect accused of gentrifying a neighborhood of Montreal. That does not prevent him from jointly criticizing the excesses of the demonstrators and the media who attack him. The heroine named Céline, described as the best-known Quebecer on the planet, takes us back to Céline Dion in a so-called “bobo” sphere. Informed references to the work of Proust and a tip of the hat to Marie-Claire Blais nourish the deep exploration of novelistic territory.
Kevin Lambert is a fighter who attacked François Legault in July for daring to give a laudatory review of his book, when the writer holds the Coalition Avenir Québec government responsible for the deterioration of the social fabric. Whether he harvests this or that in the Parisian literary arena, the Quebec novelist will know how to confront the warlike French literary circle with pen and beak.
May our joy remain encourages reflection all the more as its author evades demagogic traps. The reader sees himself thrown back into the web of his prejudices, of his good consciences. Well and truly condemned, willingly or unwillingly, to the fertile discomfort of uncertainties.