Souvenir of my friend Louis Gauthier. January 1973, I launch my first novel in downtown Montreal, it is Louis who publishes me in his Collection of the angel and the ketchup bottle, a collection given to him by Pierre Tisseyre, CEO of the Cercle du livre de France (now Les Éditions Pierre Tisseyre). Louis has just published with Tisseyre his marvelous novel Anna, it is an honor and an unexpected gift that he gives me by accepting me in his small collection. Literature in Quebec is booming and Louis intends to trip over the literary canons of the time and have fun as always. Our friendship is born from there, he will publish my first three novels.
How can I talk about my friend Louis? A unique and demanding writer, very discreet, a great joyful pessimist, a serious man (he comes from philosophy, he studied at the University of Montreal), but the words that come out of his mouth and his pen are protrusions of light thrown against the black, fly away lightly in the dark immensity of our time and join us, marry to a laughing music of an astounding humour. He was a demanding writer, of a unique genius. Louis chiselled his novels, little novels that clacked with truth, dripped with humour, written on a tightrope, in a kind of profound derision of himself, but which resounded like inner calls, instinctive and very precise, little novels written with a scalpel. Because, to tell the truth, it’s always refreshing to read Louis’s novels, his humor, which was his trademark, was divine. All his books are good, they are benevolent, like his very person, and they have not aged a bit, you just have to read them, they are wonderful!
To see in video