The founder of the Quartanier, Éric de Larochellière, and the commercial director of the publishing house, Félix Philantrope, could not believe their eyes when they came across a window full of their books, that of the Monte -in the air. Portrait of a Parisian bookstore thanks to which Quebec literature takes off.
Posted at 9:00 a.m.
How did so many books from a Quebec publishing house find themselves highlighted in this way, when the titles of the Quartanier were still little distributed and distributed in France? It is that Aurélie Garreau, co-manager of Monte-en-l’air, was offered a copy of the novel Mailloux (2014) by Hervé Bouchard, by Marie Noëlle Blais, who at the time ran the webzine Cousins de personne.
“Having read this text, which I found incredible, I went to the Quartanier site and ordered books blindly,” says the bookseller, joined in Paris by videoconference. “When I read Hervé Bouchard, it was the language that touched me. I liked that it was patinated with words that weren’t mine. But what seduced me, beyond Quebecisms, is of course that it is literature, above all. »
Formerly little distributed in Europe, apart from the Librairie du Québec in Paris, Quebec books have been experiencing unprecedented growth there for more or less five years, while several publishing houses have acquired real and effective distribution and distribution partners. . This has been the case with Le Quartanier since 2019, Mémoire d’encrier since 2017 and La Peuplade since 2018. What does this mean, in short? That the presence of Quebec books on the shelves is no longer an epiphenomenon strictly linked to their reissues by French publishers or to the devotion of Quebec-loving booksellers.
After inviting two Quebec authors (Hervé Bouchard and Catherine Lalonde) in 2019 during its poetry festival Tremble parlure, the bookstore at 2, rue de la Mare, in the 20e borough, welcomes from June 8 to 16 a dozen representatives of the Quebec book community during Rapailler, the Mironian title of its first “Quebec literature festival”. Among them: Audrée Wilhelmy, Gabrielle Filteau-Chiba, Camille Readman Prud’homme, Vanessa Bell, Geneviève Blais, Aimée Verret, Lorrie Jean-Louis and Virginia Pésémapéo Bordeleau.
PHOTO PROVIDED BY MONTE-EN-L’AIR
The Le Monte-en-l’air bookstore is located in 20e district of Paris.
That we speak of “Quebec literature” and not of “Quebec literature” immediately demonstrates a sensitivity to the heterogeneous nature of the production of novels and poetry here, which is often misrepresented by folkloristic descriptions – the snow, woodsmen, indomitable nature! — what do the French media make of it? Without denying that part of the fascination of the French readership is due to a certain imagination of the great outdoors, as well as to Aboriginal issues, Le Monte-en-l’air considers Quebec literature in its irreducible plurality.
“Quebec literature is finally receiving, on this side of the ocean, the attention and respect it deserves,” reads Rapailler’s program. “It will have taken a long time! We wore blinkers, no doubt… And yet, what abundance! »
PHOTO PROVIDED BY MONTE-EN-L’AIR
Aurélie Garreau, from the bookstore Le Monte-en-l’air
It was very important for me, yes, not to be in Quebec folklore, to receive a poet whose work is deeply rooted in the language and the Quebec territory, like Marie-Hélène Voyer, but also to receive an Alain Farah, whose book talks about the Montreal of immigration.
Aurelie Garreau
Supported by Québec Édition, a committee of the National Association of Book Publishers dedicated to the international influence of Québec publishing, the advent of such a meeting is part of a “general movement in Europe”, thinks Julien Delorme, commercial director at La Peuplade.
A movement attributable, according to him, to the popular or critical success of several Quebec works — Audrée Wihelmy won the Ouest-France/Étonnants Voyageurs prize a few days ago for her novel white resin — as well as the initiatives of Québec Édition, thanks to which Aurélie Garreau was received at the Salon du livre de Montréal in 2017.
Until five or six years ago, some bookstores distinguished French books from those produced in French, but from the rest of the Francophonie, in departments that were less highlighted and more perceived as curiosities. There were few commercial or cultural stakes attached to it.
Julien Delorme, commercial director at La Peuplade
If Quebec literature still occupies its separate section in certain bookstores, such as the Quai des Brumes bookstore in Strasbourg, it is now “to highlight it, defend it more effectively”, rejoices Julien Delorme. At Monte-en-l’air, Quebec production blends in with the rest of French-language literature. In this case, continues Mr. Delorme, “the attention of booksellers is strong on Quebec production, but the reader does not differentiate a Quebec book from a French book, a good strategy to fight against a certain French snobbery which will depreciate what comes from elsewhere”.
“Several of our clients don’t necessarily know that Le Quartanier, La Peuplade or Mémoire d’encrier is Quebecois,” confirms Aurélie Garreau. For them, these are just new publishers to keep an eye on. »