Lately, the New York Times published a list of the 100 best books of the 21ste century, but that is not what inspired this file that you are about to read, on which our team has been working for several months.
In fact, this project was born from a lack. As we soon reach the quarter of the 21ste century, no general overview has really been made of literature in Quebec for at least 30 years.
The Press does not claim to replace the educational and research establishments, which are also doing this work – I will come back to this later. But we wanted to launch this reflection: what are the new classics of Quebec literature? Which books are most likely to be taught and cited as classics in lists of the future?
In Quebec, we regularly make lists of the best Quebec books “of all time”, and precisely because we respect the classics, these lists inevitably end up looking similar and eclipsing what was published in the 21st century.e century, which is less and less young.
We didn’t want to stay just among journalists. This is why we asked around forty people – writers, booksellers, teachers, directors of book fairs or festivals, presenters, etc. – to participate in the development of this list of 25 titles, which can be subject to a thousand debates, of course.
We did not ask respondents to share their personal favorites, but rather to choose ten works, regardless of genre (novel, essay, poetry, comic strip, etc.) according to these criteria: their influence on artistic production and on their contemporaries; their actual and potential sustainability; their ability to identify the issues of their time, but also to transcend it.
To our great joy, those contacted responded enthusiastically to this project.
A large university study to come
Such an exercise is underway as part of interuniversity research carried out by a dozen researchers and students, several of whom are attached to the Interuniversity Research Center on Literature and Culture in Quebec (CRILCQ). They have been working for several years on a vast study, which should be published by PUM before 2030. For the moment, the working title is “Contemporary Quebec literature put to the test of history”.
We still wonder if our time still allows this idea of canon or classics. “I think we are always a little afraid of approaching contemporaries, because we fear making a judgment that will be revoked a few years later,” notes Martine-Emmanuelle Lapointe, professor of literature at the University of Montreal and member of the CRILCQ team, who also responded to the invitation of The Press.
PHOTO IVANOH DEMERS, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
Martine-Emmanuelle Lapointe, professor of literature at the University of Montreal
We know well that our work can have blind spots and that in 20 or 30 years, someone will show that we have lost our way in places, but that’s the game!
Martine-Emmanuelle Lapointe, professor of literature at the University of Montreal and member of the CRILCQ team
She points out that in the 1960s and 1970s, in full national awakening, and with the creation of CEGEPs and the network of universities in Quebec, we did not hesitate to classify contemporary authors – Anne Hébert, Marie-Claire Blais, Michel Tremblay, VLB… – very quickly in a cannon. “For example, in History of French literature in Quebec by Pierre de Grandpré (1967), Réjean Ducharme was already being made a great author, even though his first novel had appeared two years previously. »
Also, it was easier at the time to go around the production, because the number of published texts was much less than today. The team of researchers, like the participants in our file elsewhere, faced the titanic challenge of making a synthesis in a proliferation of publications. “We always have the impression that something is escaping us, because it is mind-blowing, everything that is published,” admits the researcher.
“All this to say that the problem is twofold: there is the fact that we are always afraid to talk about what is close to us, especially from a historical perspective, for lack of perspective, and the other challenge is the large mass of texts,” she summarizes.
An ethical turning point
Out of curiosity, I ask him what is beginning to reveal itself in the CRILCQ research. What is fascinating, she tells me, is that at the turn of the 2000s, the discourse on Quebec literature was very pessimistic, even declinist. Certain events contributed to this climate: disappearance of the Cultural Channel and programs devoted to literature, reduction of funding for literary events, etc. However, in the 2010s, the gloom was completely reversed, a certain enthusiasm returned, and this is perhaps due to the excitement of the student strike of 2012.
Martine-Emmanuelle Lapointe evokes what Michel Biron called the “ethical turning point in Quebec literature”. “It obviously had an impact on our ways of reading works, we no longer have the same criteria. The conception we had before of literature was a bit that of a fetishized object. We no longer teach works in a purely structuralist manner, neglecting context or history, which does not mean that we are no longer interested in the form of the works. This is what strikes me the most. »
Indeed, who today would dare to write a history of Quebec literature while omitting the voices of women, Indigenous people or immigrants?
But finally, is it still relevant to defend the idea of a canon, of having classics?
“I would tend to say yes,” answers Martine-Emmanuelle Lapointe. The canon will always be nourished by current values, dominant values, it is reconfigured over time, it is always subject to rebellion. And that’s not new. Is he outdated? You could say that the canon is always outdated, but it’s always being rebuilt too. That’s the beauty of it. »