{"id":414572,"date":"2019-02-12T13:00:21","date_gmt":"2019-02-12T18:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/?p=414572"},"modified":"2019-02-12T12:56:47","modified_gmt":"2019-02-12T17:56:47","slug":"biblioasis-catherine-leroux-redux","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2019\/02\/12\/biblioasis-catherine-leroux-redux\/","title":{"rendered":"Biblioasis [Catherine Leroux Redux]"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last December, when I was working on this post about Quebec fiction<\/a>, I came up with the idea of having themed months running throughout 2019. Which is why January was all about Spain, February about Quebec, and March about Uwe Johnson’s\u00a0Anniversaries.\u00a0<\/em>(Which might kill me and\/or lead me into an insane rabbit-hole of increasingly esoteric posts about my mental state while reading such a gigantic book.)<\/p>\n

Anyway, once I had this idea for structuring my weekly posts, I immediately wanted to schedule a month for Canadian publishers. Partially because I like a lot of them\u2014and they get next to no play in the U.S.\u2014but mainly because I wanted an excuse to read Catherine Leroux’s\u00a0The Party Wall<\/em><\/a>, translated from the French by Lazer Lederhendler and published by Biblioasis<\/a>. And thank god I did. Over the past two months, she’s become one of my favorite contemporary writers. And I curse myself for not having read these books earlier . . .<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

Similar to what I did last week for\u00a0QC Fiction, I want to highlight all of the Quebec titles that Biblioasis has published as part of their “International Translation Series<\/a>.” (Which, you should all know, contains a number of non-Quebec authors as well. Definitely worth checking out!) But, because I’m struggling through some insane anxiety right now (I have a new computer, which is glorious, but we’re having trouble accessing the 1\/18\/2019 backup that contains literally\u00a0everything\u00a0<\/em>that I need, which is . . . breathe, breathe, deep breath), I’m not sure how many smart things I’m going to say. Instead, I’m probably going to rely on Biblioasis’s descriptions and random thoughts . . .<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I definitely want to start with\u00a0The Party Wall\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>though, about which, I do have some thoughts. First off: GO BUY THIS BOOK AND\u00a0Madame Victoria<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em>I really should’ve read this back in 2016 when it was first published in English\u2014and was a Indies Introduce selection<\/a>\u2014or, if not then, at least last spring before I went and met Catherine Leroux as part of a special event at the Toronto Public Library celebrating the special\u00a0Granta\u00a0<\/em>issue on Canadian writing<\/a>. (Which was co-edited by Leroux and Madeleine Thien.) Then again, maybe I was meant<\/em> to wait until now, because reading this over the past three days has been as gratifying as any literary experience I’ve had over the past couple years.<\/p>\n

The Party Wall\u00a0<\/em>is the sort of book that I don’t want to spoil, which would absolutely happen if I went into too much detail about why exactly I like it . . . But here goes: This novel is made up of four different stories, each featuring a pair of characters. “Madeleine and Madeleine” is about a woman who finds out that she’s a chimera, containing two distinct sets of DNA, as if she basically encompassed her twin while in utero. “Ariel and Marie” features a very charismatic Canadian politician whose life is utterly derailed by information about his birth mother. “Simon and Carmen” revolves around the death of their mother and secret revelations about their father.<\/p>\n

Each of those storylines appear twice in the book, whereas the fourth, “Monette and Angie,” occurs between every other chapter (seven times in total) and tells the story of two girls in Savannah, Georgia who walk to a grocery store to get candy.<\/p>\n

So far, I’m sure this sounds like a rather conventional, if not a bit disjointed, novel. Which is pretty accurate. Each of these sections is utterly captivating, building its own particular world and conflicts, fleshing out its characters and raising the stakes over and over in a way that would make most conventional novelists really jealous. The theme of identity and one’s ancestors ties all of these pieces together, and, to be honest, the book would work\u00a0pretty well\u00a0<\/em>if that were its only unifying structure.\u00a0Instead, Leroux takes things to a masterful new level, linking together all of these stories in ways that are tricky to delineate, are generally unexpected, and that reward close readers.<\/p>\n

\"\"Again, I can’t go into too much more detail without somewhat ruining the mental thrill of uncovering the underlying structure to this novel. Which is exactly what I liked about\u00a0Madame Victoria\u00a0<\/em>as well. I’m a sucker for interesting structures, for books with a sort of architecture. It’s one of the things I love about Thomas Pynchon and Richard Powers and William Faulkner, and that has me dreaming about Leroux’s next novel (which Biblioasis publisher Dan Wells told me a bit about already). I find these sort of books to be so much more gratifying than titles that play it safe and stick to a more straightforward, easy-to-follow approach. (A statement that will surprise exactly no one.)<\/p>\n

It’s tricky to pull out a single paragraph to share here, so instead, here’s a bit from an interview the ABA did with Leroux when they selected\u00a0The Party Wall\u00a0<\/em>as an Indies Introduce book. (I can’t envision a better response to sell this book to me than this one.)<\/p>\n

Valerie Welbourn: In\u00a0The Party Wall<\/em>, there are many stories, characters, and layers that eventually connect. Was it difficult keeping so many threads going in your head?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Catherine Leroux:<\/strong>\u00a0It would have been impossible to manage in my head. I created different tools to help me keep track \u2014 timelines, character summaries, a diamond-shaped graph, and esoteric calculations involving ages, specific dates, world events, and the future. And I\u2019m terrible at math.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

There are nine other works of Quebec literature in the Biblioasis International Translation Series, including\u00a0The Dishwasher\u00a0<\/em>by St\u00e9phane Larue, translated from the French by Pablo Strauss<\/strong><\/a>, forthcoming in May of 2019. Here’s the jacket copy:<\/p>\n

It\u2019s winter in Montreal, 2002, when a graphic design student\u2019s gambling addiction starts to drag him under. In debt to the metal band that\u2019s commissioned him to draw their album cover and ensnared in lies to his friends and his cousin, he takes the first job that promises a paycheck: dishwasher at La Trattoria, a high-end restaurant, where he finds himself thrust, on his first night, into roiling world of characters. A magnificent, hyperrealist debut, with a soundtrack by Iron Maiden,\u00a0The Dishwasher<\/i>\u00a0plunges us into a world in which\u2014for better or for worse\u2014everyone depends on each other.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Iron Maiden, eh? That’s a curious choice.<\/p>\n

\"\"Although the vast majority of titles that Biblioasis publishes in the series are works of fiction, they have brought out two poetry collections, both by Robert Melan\u00e7on:<\/strong>\u00a0Montreal Before Spring<\/em><\/a>, translated by Donald McGrath <\/strong>and For as Far as the Eye Can See<\/strong><\/em><\/a>, translated by Judith Cowen.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

I don’t know much about poetry, and nothing about Melan\u00e7on, but a cursory glance of his Wikipedia page points out that he won the Governor’s General Award on two occasions: in 1979 for French language poetry or drama, and in 1990 for English to French translation. There’s something really impressive about that . . .<\/p>\n

If you’d like to check out Melan\u00e7on’s poetry, Biblioasis posted three poems<\/a> by him back some time ago. Here’s one of them:<\/p>\n

\n
A VOICE HEARD IN A DREAM, UPON AWAKENING<\/b><\/i><\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
\u201c<\/span>Your days will pass, one by one,<\/span><\/div>\n
words in a breathless sentence strung<\/span><\/div>\n
together without punctuation, your actions,<\/span><\/div>\n
those thoughts that come at such a cost,<\/span><\/div>\n
won<\/span>\u2019<\/span>t follow you, but if they do<\/span><\/div>\n
it will be as perpetually vain regrets, little<\/span><\/div>\n
will it matter, very little, whether you<\/span><\/div>\n
betray or remain faithful, because each will<\/span><\/div>\n
come to you in turn, everything will<\/span><\/div>\n
be lost as if you<\/span>\u2019<\/span>d been dreaming, it<\/span>\u2019<\/span>s like<\/span><\/div>\n
a dream, the disorder of an old man<\/span>\u2019<\/span>s life<\/span><\/div>\n
that comes back at the end, you<\/span>\u2019<\/span>ll descend<\/span><\/div>\n
into lower depths you don<\/span>\u2019<\/span>t suspect are there,<\/span><\/div>\n
you<\/span>\u2019<\/span>ll be seized, at times, by an unfathomable joy<\/span><\/div>\n
before the expanse that evening will open up<\/span><\/div>\n
where the streets run out; impassive, the world<\/span><\/div>\n
will continue on its course, flowers<\/span><\/div>\n
that will fade in autumn will come, snow<\/span><\/div>\n
that<\/span>\u2019<\/span>ll melt like snow in the sun, each day<\/span><\/div>\n
will bring with it the History you<\/span>\u2019<\/span>ll throw out<\/span><\/div>\n
with the newspaper, with your boredom, you<\/span>\u2019<\/span>ll<\/span><\/div>\n
have friendships that you<\/span>\u2019<\/span>ll lose, love you<\/span>\u2019<\/span>ll see<\/span><\/div>\n
falling away from you, that you<\/span>\u2019<\/span>ll try<\/span><\/div>\n
in vain to hold onto, everything will be<\/span><\/div>\n
given to you, everything taken away,<\/span><\/div>\n
everything will come, everything pass away<\/span><\/div>\n
like this night I<\/span>\u2019<\/span>ve pulled you from, now go.<\/span>\u201d<\/span><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
<\/div>\n
\"\"<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Arvida<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>by Samuel Archibald, translated from the French by Donald Winkler\u00a0<\/strong>is a book that Tom Roberge has talked up on the Three Percent Podcast, and which is the only (?) Quebecois book from Biblioasis to make the Best Translated Book Award longlist. As a result, it got a “Why This Book Should Win<\/a>” entry a few years back:<\/div>\n
\n

Arvida<\/em>\u00a0is a collection of stories named after a town named after the American industrialist Arthur Vining Davis, who underwrote its construction around an aluminum smelting plant over the course of an astonishing 135 days back in 1927. As a child born to this far-flung outpost in Saguenay, Quebec, Archibald\u2019s world was a tapestry of tales of madness, misfits, domesticated bears, and a Yeti-like cougar prowling the woods. The fact that Arvida was quickly absorbed by a neighboring town and exists, in a sense, solely as a memory only reinforces Archibald\u2019s fascination with the mythic dimension of these private and shared histories. As he observed in an interview with the Canadian press, \u201cgrowing up in a place that is so remote it\u2019s on the edge or outside history, you never have any history except for the stories you told each other.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are two kinds of spaces in the narrative world of\u00a0Arvida<\/em>: the vast, unknowable ones of the Canadian wilderness, and the claustrophobic, unknowable ones of the home.<\/p>\n

Archibald excels in the latter, filling domestic spaces with the minor chords (and occasional bloodcurdling screech) of gothic horror. Yet for all the attic rattlings and mythical predators that abound in this narrative world, there is nothing more frightening than the interactions among its inhabitants, or their behavior when left to indulge in isolation. As Bryan Demchinsky observed in the Montreal Gazette, \u201cthere\u2019s a dark, hard presence in the stories, sometimes wry, sometimes muted, but always lurking\u201d . . . most menacingly, perhaps, among armchairs and embroidered tablecloths.<\/p>\n

(P.T. Smith)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

One interesting thing about\u00a0Mauricio Segura<\/strong>, whose Black Alley<\/strong><\/em><\/a>, translated by Dawn M. Cornelio<\/strong>, came out in 2010, is that he’s originally from Chile. Which likely informs this book that’s about the Cote-de-Negre area of Montreal, home to a lot of immigrants, including “Marcelo, the sensitive son of Chilean refugees, and Cleo, a shy boy from Haiti, [who] find friendship on the track, winning a major relay race together.” This sounds like a really interesting multicultural novel\u2014one that probably would get a ton more attention if it had been released today.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

It’s nice that Biblioasis tends to do multiple titles by the authors they include in this series. That’s something a lot of small presses aspire to, but aren’t always willing\/able to pull off. Ondjaki, Mia Couto, Mauricio Segura, Catherine Leroux,\u00a0 and Robert Melan\u00e7on all have multiple titles on this list.\u00a0Oscar<\/strong><\/em><\/a>, translated from the French by Donald Winkler\u00a0<\/strong>is based on jazz pianist Oscar Peterson<\/a>. So rather than come up with something interesting to say about this book, let’s just hear some music.<\/p>\n