The writings of the prolific Larry Tremblay have this great quality of deeply disturbing me. His simple name on a cover is the promise that I will be shaken, because the question of evil runs through his work, and ultimately through us, from Obese Christ to the famous The orange grove Passing by Final picture of love last year.
Already, this new title, Of hells and children, seems to fit the news, and I’m almost jealous. All these demonstrations that we have been seeing for some time, against drag, trans people or mixed toilets, are always done to supposedly protect children, who more often serve to open the way to some hell from which we thought we had escaped. “Why does it happen that childhood and hell share the same season? », we can read on the back cover…
Larry Tremblay welcomes me to his home, between two trips and four projects, as always, and he notes that “the child is a central figure these days”. “As if it supported a projection screen, where we register our fears, our fears, our overprotections, our overfragilities too,” he says.
Of hells and children, these are five hard-hitting short stories, from which we do not emerge unscathed, contaminated by the spirit of the times, but transformed by the gaze of Larry Tremblay. A man who must use metaphor to speak to the abuser from his childhood who perverted the experience of pleasure and love; a mathematics professor who speaks eloquently, but is a conspiracy theorist, ready for the worst to protect his “little thing” that he believes to be unique; a couple who destroy themselves by attacking the gender identity of their child, forgetting their “ordinary” brother; the terrible confession of a son at his mother’s grave; the mistreatment of a boy who disappoints parents who are themselves more than disappointing, because they are too damaged by life.
I thought particularly of the child in social structures, in the family or at school. These short stories are very distinct from each other, even if there is a common thread, but the form is different each time.
Larry Tremblay, author, playwright and poet
And this common thread is Arthur Rimbaud, the brilliant child, who lived his “season in hell”. “He is a child for me, who went through all kinds of stages, sexuality, then adventures, the Commune, the war, Africa, and then, his poetry, his relationship to language, his impact . I found that this figure contained almost all of my themes. »
Philosophical astonishment
But what is childhood and what is hell for Larry Tremblay? “I think children live in the present,” he replies. There is a philosophical astonishment in the child, that is to say that he has no prejudices, no preconceptions, and then we see things in their spring. Because philosophy is about being surprised by what is. But after a certain time, we are no longer surprised and we project systems of thought and systems of values onto reality which becomes compartmentalized, analyzed, dissected. We lose the sense of reality. Maybe hell is forgetting that, being stuck in a past of resentment. This is why we do meditation, why we do art, why we go see a painting, a show, which allows us to disconnect a little from this reality. »
Larry Tremblay, who is also a playwright and poet, and whose novels The orange grove And Final picture of love are being adapted for the cinema, is however worried that this refuge that is art is today invaded by a new morality. Worried enough to have written an essay on the subject which will be published within the next year. He wonders, for example, if a book like The orange grove, covered in awards and translated into 25 languages worldwide, a fable set in what appears to be a fictional country in the Middle East, would receive the same reception if it were published today. “I wonder about our legitimacy as creators, what do we have the right to write about today? », he notes.
PHOTO FRANÇOIS ROY, THE PRESS
Larry Tremblay
At the start of his collection of short stories, he intended to write about George Floyd, from the police officer’s point of view, to try to understand how one could come to commit such an act, but he was made to feel that you shouldn’t have gone there. It was also pointed out to him that he was not British to write about the painter Francis Bacon. The writer is not complaining, his career is going well, he will soon leave for a European tour, but these comments are symptomatic according to him of a desire to build walls rather than tear them down.
“It bothers me a lot because I call it the narrowing of the imagination, which causes writers and creators to turn all their imaginative power on themselves. We talk more and more about ourselves, because it’s safer than talking about others. I am thinking about a general trend which means that if we are not vigilant, we will move towards this narrowing. »
Because society, right-thinking and current authorities encourage most people to think about themselves, their body, their skin color, their own religious values, and all of this means that we are more and more turned towards oneself and not outwards, towards the other.
Larry Tremblay, author, playwright and poet
For a creator like him who has never dealt with autofiction or easy themes, the concern is understandable. This is perhaps also why he created a new piece called Getting old which will be presented in January at the Trident and in the spring at the Théâtre d’Aujourd’hui. “I think that morality has surreptitiously integrated aesthetics, because there is no longer any in politics. Creators have a moral responsibility whereas before, we didn’t have that. »
As Larry Tremblay has never been an excited polemicist, and I never miss any of his books, I am very eager to read his essay, while waiting to recover from Of hells and children.
In bookstores October 4
Of hells and children
The People
149 pages