There was Jean-Paul Sartre and the Café de Flore; Émile Zola and the Opera district; Stephen King and Castle Rock; or even Anne Hébert and Kamouraska. Great writers have always been associated with spaces, neighborhoods and landscapes that have marked their works. In this summer series, The duty visit, in the company of four Quebec authors, the places that inspired them.
This is not the first time that Nicolas Dickner has offered an interview at the Jean-Talon market in Montreal. The publication of his first novel, in 2006, caused a veritable tidal wave, or at least as many waves as a literary phenomenon can create in Quebec. Nikolsky earned its author a Booksellers’ Prize, a Literary Prize for College Students and an Anne-Hébert Prize.
Nearly 15 years after its publication, it still sells a few hundred copies a year, in addition to being studied in several schools in the province. “We call it the beast that doesn’t want to die,” says the author with an ironic laugh.
Nikolsky tells the story of Noah, Joyce and an unidentified narrator, three young people in their early twenties who leave their birthplace to begin a long migration to Montreal. When they arrive, they all unknowingly find themselves in Little Italy, from where they dream, travel, love and try to take their lives into their own hands. Their destinies then intertwine in an absolutely pleasurable impressionist rendering, populated by scavenger archaeologists, legendary buccaneers, illiterate divers, nomads who disappeared into the wild, reflections on Americanness and consumerism, and a compass that never points north.
When Nicolas Dickner settled in Little Italy upon his arrival in Montreal in the 1990s, he saw the rooftops of the Jean-Talon market from his shower window. In the street float the scents of the Shamrock fish shop and the pizza dough of Jo and Basile, now replaced by a vegan restaurant. “These were the best Italian sausages in town! exclaims the novelist.
gentrification
Things have changed a lot since the writer brought the neighborhood to life in the pages of his novel. Young families and more affluent workers have embraced the area, bringing with them a significant rise in prices. Shops have been modernized, gentrified, conforming to the latest trends.
It’s quite rare, this enthusiasm [pour le côté multiculturel du coin]. When we talk about cultural or ethnic cohabitation in Montreal, it’s often pejorative.
Gone were the heaps of rubbish, “the boxes of fruit compressed and tied up in juicy cubes, cardboard boxes and jumbled peels”, “the multicolored layers of tops, leaves, cores, mangoes, grapes, pineapples, interspersed with fragmentary words: Orange Florida Louisiana Nashville Pineapple Yams Mexico Avocado Manzanas Juicy Best of California Farm Fresh Product Category No. 1 Product of USA. », scattered all over the place, which gave the Jean-Talon market a slightly more raw side, and which allowed the novelist to begin a reflection on the relationship of waste with history, identity and the economy.
“At the time, there was a fruit Sami, recalls Nicolas Dickner. They didn’t sweep the tile floor. They had scrapers and pushed the water to the corners. There were things you couldn’t find anywhere else: 56,000 kinds of roots, superb guavas. We felt elsewhere. »
An effort to integrate
Living together and social diversity are also aspects that seduced the author when he arrived in the neighborhood, and which allowed him to enrich his universe and his characters. “There was a barber on the corner of Saint-Zotique. A sign posted on his door read: “We speak French, English, Spanish, Italian and Arabic.” When I asked him how he came to speak so many languages, he said it was thanks to the people in the neighborhood and the customers in the market. »
Everyone, from residents to tourists, praised the multicultural side of the area. “It’s quite rare, this enthusiasm. When we talk about cultural or ethnic cohabitation in Montreal, it’s often pejorative. Ah! The problems in Côte-des-Neiges, the shootings in Montreal North, the poverty in Saint-Michel. However, when we talk about the market, which is also an exercise in integration, people find that brilliant. There was a counter-discourse there that inspired me. »
Open your blinders
Walking down rue Dante, towards the statue of the writer of the same name, Nicolas Dickner reveals the great sense of observation and erudition that made him one of the greatest authors in Quebec. He regularly stops to observe an insect trap, detail a graffiti, smell a bouquet of peppermint or tell an anecdote about the financing of certain monuments by the Mussolini regime.
In front of the Notre-Dame-de-la-Défense church, he stops short. He points to a small ceramic box reminiscent of a mushroom, whose curve follows the shape of an old electric pole about to be replaced. “That is extraordinary. It is one of the “post fruits” of the artist Louis-Philippe Ogé. He placed them all over the neighborhood in the 1990s, about 200, all of different colors. Below, there is a kind of serial slogan, a play on words with a country, a vegetable or a fruit. Suddenly he opens his eyes wide. “They’re going to take it away. They have no choice if they replace the post. I absolutely have to find a way to get it back. »
This idea, that we often cross places without seeing them, obscuring the details, without trying to take a path or a different point of view, is at the heart of Nikolsky. It is by reading the chapter of Moby-Dick on the migratory corridors of whales that Nicolas Dickner had the idea of demonstrating, through a novel, that humans are just as predictable.
“When I went to Guatemala, after the civil war, all the tourists disembarked and went to the same places. It was impossible to climb on the roof of a bus and not meet someone you knew, as if everyone was following the same trajectories invisible to the naked eye. It’s the same thing in Montreal. We all circulate with our own geography. The world is big, but the paths we take, which reflect our personal experiences and the subculture in which we live, that’s small. Sometimes it’s enough to take a left rather than a right to change our perspective and discover a completely different world. »