La Création de Gérard Bessette by Réjean Robidoux (review)

188 LETTERS IN CANADA 1987 from R.-M. Alberes (49), whose characterization of that literary approach is somewhat out of date after the contributions of Henri Mitterand - cf Zoia et Ie naturalisme, 1986 - and many others. Sirois and Francoli have also made a few slips. They have, for example, accelerated the process or urbanization: Quebec was not 70 per cent urbanized in 1921, but rather in 1941 (11); basing themselves on a quotation from Grignon, they leave the impression that Ringuet's Trente arpents was published in 1939, instead of the correct 1938 (15-16). The editors do not comment on Grignon's claim that his novei was the first example in French-Canadian literature of a writer treating 'cette situation dramatique: l'avarice' (24), which should have been nuanced by reference to Patrice Lacombe's La Terre paternelle (1845). (One would also like to know more about Maurice Duplessis's firing of Grignon as a lecturer and publicist for the Ministry of Agriculture and Colonizaton in 1936, which is mentioned in the chronology.) But these picayune considerations cannot detract from the outstanding work of editors Wyczynski, Sirois, and Francoli, and the directors of the Bibliotheque du Nouveau Monde: Romeo Arbour, Jean-Louis Major, and Laurent Mailhot. (B.-Z. SHEK) Rejean Robidoux. La Creation de Gerard Bessette Collection Litterature d'Amerique. Editions Quebec/Amerique. 210. $17.95 Rejean Robidoux has given us another fine book. Its title summarizes the objectives of the volume's two parts, 'Cheminements biographiques' and 'L'oeuvre de creation': Bessette himself has emphasized the causal connections between his biography and his creative works. The title may thus be read as meaning 'The creation (development) of the man Gerard Bessette' and 'the creative works of Gerard Bessette,' as well as the relationships between the two. Bessette's strong interest in psythoanalysis and in the 'psychocritique' school of criticism developed by French critic Charles Mauron, and his frequent use of and references to both, fully justify Robidoux's careful scrutiny of Bessette's biography. Indeed, this part of Robidoux's task has been greatly facilitated by Bessette who - largely through the creation of a fictional alter ego (Orner Marin, in Le Semestre and Les Dires d'Omer Marin) - has explored his biography, his unconscious, and their profound structuring of the form and content of his works, so much so that Robidoux has placed, near the beginning of his 'cheminements biographiques,' a 'Chronologie de Gerard Bessette etlou (imaginaire) d'Omer Marin.' Bessette's activity in this regard is a handicap for Robidoux here, as it is difficult to analyse the Bessettian psyche better than Bessette has already. Yet even on this topic, La Creation de Gerard Bessette is valuable: not only does it provide some useful new biographical information, but it also structures the vast mass HUMANITIES 189 of information and self-analysis provided· by Bessette into a coherent sequence of subjects, thus making the information far more accessible to study and further reflection. These subjects, convincingly identified and illustrated, are 'Enfances,' 'Lith~rature pure,' 'Exils,' 'Pedagogies,' 'Comportements ,' 'Feminitude' (which studies the image of women in Bessette's works but does not deal sufficiently with his misogyny), and 'Ecritures.' In this last section Robidoux develops the thesis that all Bessette's creative works materialize a 'projet d'ecriture' which not only ensures textual genesis but is itself the 'essential and main theme' ofthose texts (86-7). This constant objective was stated by Bessette's alter ego, Orner Marin, in Le Semestre: 'restaurer cette langue [maternelle] dans sa splendeur originaire ... et meme ... aller plus loin ... pour recreer un dire irresistible ... Ie livre vraiment primal qui serait dans un sens un roman-memoire et d'anticipation creatrice ...' (103) (201; cf 84). The constant structuring presence of this 'projet d'ecriture' in Bessette 's work is Robidoux's fundamental hypothesis (103), and the second part of La Creation de Gerard Bessette, 'L'oeuvre de creation,' is a thorough, convincing, and often fascinating demonstration of this hypothesis through the careful study of Bessette's creative works. Robidoux~s success in this demonstration is all the more impressive when one considers the great thematic and stylistic diversity of Bessette's creative works, ranging from...