Writer and committed citizen, the author has taught literature at college, is president of the governing board of an elementary school and member of the editorial board of Quebec letters. She co-directed and co-wrote the collective Shock treatments and tarts. Critical assessment of the management of COVID-19 in Quebec (All in all).
Sent in mid-December, the letter from the Ministry of Health which dissuaded schools and libraries from giving access to the posthumous youth novel by François Blais, The boy with upside down feetor to encourage its reading had the effect of a stone in the pond.
The literary community is shocked: small-time censorship. The librarians are confused: after finding the work acceptable, they are told “it’s dangerous and[ils] shouldn’t be promoting it or talking about it,” one told the Sun, anonymously. On the side of the ministry: radio silence. It’s the holidays, after all…
Let’s put things clearly: I’ve read almost everything by Blais. He is an author that I greatly appreciate; one of my favorites, even. I had already planned to read his ultimate novel, so I downloaded it to my eReader under this letter to read it and, also, to judge whether anything in it warranted such a review.
The more I read, the more I wondered what fly had stung the civil servants… After closing the book, I was dismayed: had they only read it or had they contented themselves with making a stupid amalgamation with the disastrous end of the author’s life after having skimmed over the titles of the chapters?
Not a suicide book
Mysterious, but quite light, the story tells first and foremost a story of friendship, as Josée Boileau pointed out before the outcry. Adrienne and Corinna grab Leonie’s attention; and this relationship evolves according to the long day of the disappearance of Joey, Adrienne’s little neighbor. This is the heart of the dangerous drift of the ministerial prescription: someone who sticks to the warning builds a story that has nothing to do with the one that is told!
We imagine an entity that, page after page, gives young characters tips to end their lives; one imagines that the dead accumulate; one imagines teenagers invaded by a malaise so profound that they jump off a cliff or cut their wrists. “Let’s ban this vile book, scandal! The feathers, the tar, the pillory! ” However, it is not. Nothing at all.
We have to take our prudish lynx eyes out to find the grain of sand stuck in the throat of a paper pusher. Because he has one and only death, that day in Saint-Sévère, where the cows are apparently freer to exist than the works… That of little Kaleb Saint-Martin, six years old, who dies because he “used a straw to drink from the tank of the lawn tractor”. At the end of the book, we learn that it was Thomas, an entity (and not-so-imaginary friend of the younger Adrienne, also dead), who told him to do it to fulfill his mission as a demon-revenant: to kill someone every seven years, but without being able to physically intervene.
These passages are a drop in the ocean; they fit in a few lines and are more of a challenge than suicide. A “truth or consequence” in a morbid version, what… Were they enough to have the novel banned – or was it not rather the fact that the author himself opted for this outcome in his own life that governed this decision?
When we come back to Umberto Eco, we can only lean towards the second option. Because the intention of the work (which we distinguish from that of the reader and that of the author) is miles away from allowing us to conclude that a book would incite suicide. The only link with the act is the death of its author. The two should not be confused, said David Sénéchal, editorial director of Fides, which published the novel. Otherwise, as author and editor Marilyse Hamelin pointed out, “on that account, you might as well banish Nirvana and Les Colocs”.
A slap in the face
In the wake of the warning, the Quebec Association for the Prevention of Suicide announced that it was working on a “Guide to good practices for fiction authors”. An initiative received coldly by some actors in the literary world, although some support the general mission of the organization.
Let’s not forget: writers who tackle sensitive subjects question themselves when they tackle them. In addition, they are accompanied by editors who know how to do their job. They are sensible, competent people who are aware both of the potential excesses of certain subjects and of the importance of addressing them in fiction. That we want to parameterize the work of these professionals is worrying, just like the fact of wanting to replace teachers, librarians or specialized booksellers, who know literature and young people.
Many have mentioned the Streisand effect, namely that the media phenomenon resulting from the ban will propel sales and increase interest in the banned cultural object. But the children’s book ecosystem is moving differently. Works read in schools are more dependent on recommendations. What will happen to Blais’s book if librarians can’t talk about it anymore, if teachers can’t put it on the curriculum?
Institutions are often sensitive to the cold… Already schools are even more subject to the Ministry of Education since the abolition of school boards, it was also necessary for the Ministry of Health to poke its nose into pedagogical freedom and what has right of citizenship in school libraries (which we abandon, except when the time comes to interfere)? School professionals are already exhausted: who will have the energy to face a possible outcry by defying the warning?
The Ministry of Health must imperatively reconsider its decision: anyone who has actually read The boy with upside down feet can hardly conclude that it is dangerous. With such an opinion, we are moving backwards… François Blais deserves much better.