Our columnist Jean-François Lisée is publishing these days Through the mouth of my pencils published by Somme tout/The duty. Here is the introduction to this collection, which brings together around fifty texts.
I cut out some articles for you. It was our aunts who told us that, right? You, who were an athlete or a dentist, an arts student or an apprentice welder, your aunt thought of you when she saw an article relating more or less to your field of interest. She handed it to you during your annual visit, as a token of the interest she had in you. Obviously, this article didn’t teach you anything that you didn’t already know, but you accepted it with “ha”, “great”, “that’s nice” and “thank you very much mate, I’m going to read it with interest “.
This is because you knew that it was in no way a transmission of information, but a proof of affection. Besides, if you asked her what she thought of the article, most of the time she had to admit not having read it. It was for you, for you alone.
So these articles, which I have grouped together in this book, it’s up to you to decide if they teach you something new or if you will be content with a polite thank you, with feigned enthusiasm, especially if it’s your aunt who offers it to you.
I can, however, guarantee you that I have read them, in fact reread them, after having written them, updated several of them, with you in mind. First of all, I believe that the reader’s time is too precious to be offered repetition. I choose my topics by always asking myself: what is missing from our understanding of a given phenomenon? What hasn’t been said about this event yet? What angle of explanation has not been addressed by any of my journalist colleagues?
It won’t surprise you that I sometimes have opinions. But I believe I have failed in my task as a columnist if I have not offered the reader information, data, references which had escaped him and which I often only discovered myself by digging into my subject.
Actually, it’s a thing. Obviously I want to convince you that I am right. But it seems to me that I will achieve this more easily if I intersperse my opinions with facts, figures and quotes which will amaze your synapses and lead you to think, against all expectations, that the facts prove me right. People will accuse me of choosing them on purpose to obtain this result. This is not completely wrong. But I have learned over the years that if the facts contradict your a prioriit’s probably that the reality is more surprising than you thought.
Since I have a penchant for originality, I welcome this counterintuitive data as so many gifts that I can then offer you. I have more respect for facts than for opinions, which is why I let them guide me off the beaten path.
Still, I approach issues, new and old, from a point of view that stands the test of time. A desire to better distribute wealth and power by using democratic mechanisms to achieve this – which can be summed up in two words: social democracy. A deep desire for truth and justice, an impatience with hypocrisy, lies, bad faith, broken promises, obscurantism, censorship and intolerance. A conviction that the Quebec nation to which I belong has made colossal progress since its awakening in 1960 and can continue to do so, but never as much as if it manages to give itself a country.
The texts gathered here mainly come from my production over the last three years for the daily newspaper The duty. In many cases, the texts are longer than what was published, because most of the time, once I have finished writing what I wanted to say, I have exceeded the space provided for the text. You then need to take out the scissors. However, I kept the scraps and reintroduced them here. You will also find some unpublished texts and others that were published on my blog.
Hurry up to read them, because if certain historical chronicles, at the beginning of the book, will stand the test of time, the others are firmly anchored in our current world, that of the middle of the new 2020s.
I believe in the inalienable right of the reader to choose their subjects, to skip pages or sections, even to tear out articles to give them to their nephews and nieces who will probably welcome them by saying that photos of the pages taken with your iPhone would have done the case.
Since these are short dives, the book is perfect for the waiting room, the plane and the bathroom. But I don’t guarantee that it will help you fall asleep, unless perhaps you agree with me at all times.