Crazy human comedy in Quebec
Print Edition
OFTEN compared with Balzac’s masterpiece “The Human Comedy,” French Canadian novelist Yves Beauchemin’s “Alley Cat” (“Le Matou”) has been translated into Chinese so readers can appreciate the absurdities of human existence.
One Chinese critic calls it a “fairy tale for adults.” The 1981 novel by the Quebec writer has been honored many times, published worldwide, adapted into 16 languages as well as a TV series and film. More than 1.6 million copies have been sold.
Beauchemin is one of the most important and garlanded French-Canadian writers, known for his novels published in English such as “Juliette (1993),” “The Second Fiddle (1998)” and “Charles the Bold (2006)”.
“There are too many characters, too many story lines, and dozens and dozens of events, adventures, anecdotes, mysteries and other happenings. It’s like a fairy tale for adults,” writes translator Hu Xiaoyue, in his postscript.
Last October, the Shanghai base of the Lijiang Publishing House, published Beauchemin’s “Alley Cat,” translated by Hu Xiaoyue from French into Chinese.
Set in Montreal in the 1970s, the novel follows the crazy and tragic adventures of young Florent Boissonneault who wants to become independent and open a restaurant.
He comes to the aid of an accident victim and finds his live changed forever. One onlooker, the powerful, sinister and supernatural Egon Ratablavasky, haunts his ambitions and dreams, lurking behind every opportunity, success and failure.
Born in Quebec in 1941, Beauchemin studied French and art history at the University of Montreal. He taught literature for many years and has written full-time since 1983.
Q: What are your major themes?
A: The action of all my novels take place in Quebec, of course, because it is my country, the only part of the world of which I have a reasonably good knowledge. In all my novels, the principal character is trying to attain a goal. I must say that it is very difficult for me, even after all those years of writing, to analyze my own works: I am an instinctive writer. My books stem from characters, events and emotions much more than themes and events that appear to me as quite abstract stuff.
Q: How do you see yourself as a novelist?
A: The realistic kind. Historic, fantastic or futuristic novels are beyond my talent and my interests. Accessibility to readers appears to me as quite normal but not to the point of indulging in readiness for commercial reasons! Writing a book is too difficult a task to spoil it for money. Humor is very important to me as a writer, and as a human being, of course.
Q: What made the “Alley Cat” so popular?
A: Success was not instantaneous and it took many months for my publisher and me to become aware of it. I guess I am a good story teller with a fertile imagination and not reluctant to work hard. Luck is an important factor in success.
Q: What is your next novel about?
A: My next story deals with a young man fresh from university who gets involved in spite of himself (at first) in a bribery affair. It is entirely fiction, but everybody knows, of course, that fiction originates from real life. It will be published in November.
Q: Language is crucial. Since you write in French, do you identify yourself as French? What’s the difference between a French-Canadian and an English-Canadian?
A: I think that a country is above all a culture, and that goes for every country on earth. I don’t identify myself as French, since I wasn’t born and raised in France, but as a Quebecker. French is the official language in Quebec. The term French-Canadian is seen as quite old fashioned in Quebec since around 1960. The term still applies to French minorities living in the other Canadian provinces. In Quebec, we consider ourselves as simply Quebeckers, members of a nation 80 percent French living in a massively English country named Canada. But, of course, this issue is like a boiling pot on a hot stove. Beware of spilling hot water!
Q: What’s the best book you’ve read this year?
A: “Death and the Lover” by Hermann Hesse. A moving, sensual, mystical and eventful story full of joys and hardships, taking place in the Middle Ages, about the friendship between two men.
Q: What’s your ideal reading experience?
A: When I am not writing, during a vacation or in the Montreal subway or in a bathtub full of hot water or at my country house.
Q: What’s your favorite work of world literature?
A: I have many. “War and Peace,” “Cousin Betty” by Balzac, “David Copperfield,” “The Imaginary Invalid” by Molière, “Enchantment and Sorrow” in the original French by the great Quebec writer Gabrielle Roy.
Q: Who’s your favorite childhood literary character or hero?
A: Jim Hawkins, the hero of “Treasure Island,” and Rémi, the homeless boy of Malot’s “Nobody’s Boy.”
Q: If you could meet any writer, dead or alive, who would it be?
A: I would like to meet Mikhaïl Boulgakov (1890-1940), the great Russian novelist. Such an intriguing person, writer, physician, stage director, journalist, living in the Stalin era, gifted with a unique feeling for the strange aspects of reality.
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