Jean-Philippe Pleau borrows a formula used by Annie Ernaux: he is an internal immigrant. His father is illiterate, his mother has little education. However, after long studies in sociology, he hosts the most “intellectual” program on Radio-Canada radio, the aptly named Think out loud (Sunday at 7 p.m.).
“My background is very different from that of my parents. It’s possible and that’s what I’m trying to show without making a recipe,” he explains in an interview.
Author, director, host, Pleau recounts his journey as a class defector in the courageous Rue Duplessis: my little darkness (Lux Éditeur), in bookstores Thursday. It is a harsh, relentless account, without pretense or pretense, of the economic, cultural and intellectual poverty of the working class from which he comes. An uncompromising portrait, anything but watered down, of his childhood scarred by bullying, his unhappy youth in Drummondville, and his social migration through education.
The former director and co-host of It’s crazy… with the late Serge Bouchard presents this “novel of a life” as a love letter to his parents, who like him were not lucky enough to attend school for a long time.
In a direct style, Pleau speaks frankly. He puts his guts on the table and gives no quarter. Even if it means possibly hurting those close to you with this exposure that is far from flattering.
“There was nothing very extraordinary about the ordinary racism of my parents,” he writes. It was part of the decor of the time. » His baby boomer father is not fundamentally homophobic or xenophobic, he recalls. It was the company that built it. His mother is not a bad mother because she entrusted him shortly after his birth, distraught, to a maternal grandfather who beat his own children. “My parents have supported me from the start. They know it’s going to be hard,” says the author, who still fears their reaction.
A reality that deserves to be told
The parents of Jean-Philippe Pleau, who no longer live on rue Duplessis but still live in Drummondville, have not yet read the story of this “quiet revolution” of their son. I sense a smile of sadness when the author tells me that they are not planning to be present at its launch on Wednesday evening. His mother still told him that she hoped that this book would bring them closer together.
I also have this hope [que ça nous rapproche]even if I know that their first reading will be head-on.
Jean-Philippe Pleau, on his relationship with his parents
The initial momentum of Rue Duplessis comes from the mother of Jean-Philippe Pleau. “She listened to an interview between Édouard Louis and Serge [Bouchard, en 2018] and I and she pointed out to me that it would take someone to write this kind of book in Quebec. » Pleau was inspired by Édouard Louis who, he said, in writing his first novel Put an end to Eddy Bellegueule did not want to glorify the working class, but rather to bring into literature those who do not believe that their reality deserves to be told.
“The danger is falling into class contempt,” notes Pleau, who walks like a tightrope on this tightrope, moving from the intimate to the universal. In his story, which he presents as a “novel (let’s say)”, he goes head-to-head, naming what he could be criticized for, inspired by the French sociologist and writer Didier Eribon (Return to Reims). Which doesn’t mean he will avoid criticism. His manuscript had not yet been submitted to his publisher when members of his extended family were already threatening him with legal action…
PHOTO ROBERT SKINNER, THE PRESS
Host and author Jean-Philippe Pleau
“How to change class without denying yourself? This is the big question to which this book does not provide an answer,” writes Jean-Philippe Pleau, who has long been ashamed of coming from such an indigent background, in every respect. Shame is a feeling that fades over time, but slowly, says the man who no longer expresses himself today on the radio as he expressed himself three decades ago at the high school (which there is no shortage of remind him of his oldest friends).
“Sometimes, I can bring out words or ways of thinking that I know are specific to my background, but in a presentation at university for example, I know it is inappropriate and it shows. Shame is a feeling that doesn’t deceive when you feel it,” notes the radio host, who admits to still suffering from imposter syndrome.
“Every time I turn on the mic, I wonder if I’m stealing someone else’s spot…”
Jean-Philippe Pleau says he went from being ashamed to being ashamed of being ashamed. Can what was a shame become a pride? “Yes, now it’s a source of pride,” he replies. But I have not yet reached the point of assuming it without thinking about it, quite naturally. Transforming shame into pride can be done. But ignorance remains a dead end of thought. »
Feed the problem
We sit down, somewhat by chance, in the very place where Jean-Philippe Pleau wrote half of Rue Duplessis, in a café on rue Masson, in the Rosemont district. I don’t know him well, even though he’s the person I meet most often while jogging, a sport he engages in daily, like Haruki Murakami, as a form of meditation. Our first meeting dates back to 2009 when I was invited to one of the first Canadian radio episodes of Sportsnographerwhich he co-hosted at the time with Jean-Philippe Wauthier and Olivier Niquet.
The emotion invades him again when he thinks back to the first years of the Sportsnographerborn “on the internets” in 2004. “The 46-year-old guy that I am would have difficulty redoing the Sportsnographer as we did at the time. I think I was harboring the problem I’m denouncing now. »
I laughed at people who hadn’t had the chance to go to school for a long time, like my father, but who had been given a microphone. It’s normal that they constantly made mistakes. And I hit the nail on the head. It pains me to have hurt them and reduced them to this.
Jean-Philippe Pleau, about Sportsnographer
Jean-Philippe Pleau, who was also inspired by Caroline Dawson (Where I hide), would like the microphone to be given more to people like his father, who do not recognize themselves in the media, where they are essentially caricatured. “They have a vision of the world to share,” he recalls. We stigmatize them or confine them to vox pop. »
As a teenager, young Jean-Philippe skipped school to shop for sports car accessories (“I still like mags ! », he admits). Thirty years later, Pleau the public intellectual was inspired by the methods of Pierre Bourdieu, who was interested in the social and cultural habits of different classes, not just their economic habits.
“In the media, and in public discourse, when we talk about class defectors, it is mainly in an economic way. It has its value, but to reduce this phenomenon to the economic variable is to miss many things. One of my main interests, with this book, is to modestly contribute to raising awareness that this phenomenon of class defectors is not only economic. »
“What I find fascinating about my parents is that we are different economically, politically, culturally. It’s really an immigration from within, as Annie Ernaux says. I feel it like that. Like a journey from one social class to another, with all the upheavals that that can create. It comes with impact. »
If there is one thing he wants, it is for readers – starting with his parents – to see the glimmers of hope in the interstices of the story of his “little darkness”. “I think there is enough light in the book. As I leaf through it, I feel the love inside. We understand, I hope, that this is not an enterprise of judgment, but of sociological description mixed with love. »
In bookstores April 4
Rue Duplessis – My little darkness
Lux
328 pages