Novel without anything | The book that Antoine Charbonneau-Demers is ashamed of

Antoine Charbonneau-Demers wanted to write his Da Vinci Code. Rather, here he is back with a powerful Novel without anythingwhich nevertheless contains lots of things.

How are you ? Antoine Charbonneau-Demers greets our simple, banal question with silence, then a sigh, before tucking his long hair behind his ear once, then a second time. We are then one day away from the publication of Novel without anything.

“I reveal myself in all books,” says the author of Coco, Good Boy And Daddy, a gently disconcerting work, among the most mastered of the last 10 years in Quebec literature, “but with this one, I feel more helpless. Interviews stress me out, reception stresses me out. I don’t feel entirely well.”

Antoine hesitates, starts a sentence, interrupts, continues, steps back, replaces his hair. And finally bursts the abscess. “It’s a book that I’m a little ashamed of,” confides the young thirty-year-old. Not in the sense that it’s not good. But I’m ashamed of what he shows of me. It’s like when you reread your diary from when you were 12, except I’m not 12 anymore and it’s less funny. »

Divided into two parts, Novel without anything opens with a “First book”, the essentially autobiographical story, with coldly minimalist writing, of the travels around the world in which an author indulges, at the discretion of the lovers for whom the kiss will more often turn out to be sad, even painful, than euphoric.

He will finish his race, in dire straits, in a meditation center renowned for its demanding asceticism, Vipassana, where he will be struck by a sort of epiphany: he must publish a “madam’s book, a book with an orchard on the cover , a summer book, an airport book, a Costco book, a book written like a bad translation […] “.

The “Second Book” unfolds as a sort of oblique response to the first, in the form of a satire on the world of coaches of life and merchants of redemption, like Wayne Walters, the author of Just Ask for a Miraclewhom Paris Dulove, Antoine’s alter ego, reveres.

“I wanted to make a Da Vince Code, he explains, laughing, but I know it’s a failure. »

Poor Bambi

And this is how a reflection on the saving power of literature emerges through these multiple avenues. While passing through Nice, a man asked Antoine about one of his books: “Poor Bambi, did all that happen to you? »

“No journalist, no presenter, no close friend, no member of my family, not even my editor dared to ask me [cette] question, he will lament. They see “novel” written under the title and it frees them from a burden. »

But doesn’t the Antoine of real life prefer to establish a watertight boundary between his narrators and himself, even if, since Good Boy (2018), they all look a lot like him?

“It’s true that authors have said a lot that they want to be separated from their work,” he admits. For my part, I always wanted to say something about myself in my books, to obtain empathy, support. And the realization I make today is that writing a novel, as a cry for help, is doomed to failure, it’s a roundabout way of saying things. »

There is a void in Antoine Charbonneau-Demers’ alter ego that he will try to fill through unbridled sex, through self-writing and through meditation, but this void will refuse to be resolved. No one, ever, will knock on his door to miraculously come and relieve him of everything that is bothering him, including these mysterious health problems, appearing in the form of a shadow between his shoulder blades.

“My character has a need to attract attention, to be seen, which I also have, but I don’t know how that could translate so that I’m satisfied,” he admits. I don’t know what I hope from people and I think there are many of us in that position. »

A sexuality that is often brutal, or at least entirely devoid of tenderness, once again occupies a major place in this novel: “Because it is all that my character experiences,” explains Antoine Charbonneau-Demers, “but also because it is in the sexuality scenes that the humanity of my characters is revealed. Power relations too. »

The prison of autofiction

Antoine Charbonneau-Demers, by failing to extricate himself from the grasping hands of self-writing, which hold him hostage, once again signs a fascinating book, with a vulnerability that borders on cruelty towards himself. A book possessing this all too rare quality, which runs through all his work, of letting its readers create their own meaning.

Writing a novel without anything, a command from your lover to which he will give in, will prove impossible, because to write, no matter how, is already to oppose nothing. “I did everything to please him,” he says, half annoyed, half amused, “only for him to tell me at the end that it was a failure. »

But there are failures more beautiful than others – this one is magnificent – ​​and if he expresses himself so frankly about his tortuous relationship with writing, it is undoubtedly less because he is the only one to live it like this because he refuses to disguise his anxieties.

“We often talk about noble reasons for writing,” he observes, “and I tell you, the reasons that push me to write are not very noble. It’s for my personal interest. »

Novel without anything

Antoine Charbonneau-Demers

VLB

376 pages