Recent Quebec Books in Translation

Review article Recent Quebec Books in Translation D.W. RUSSELL Hubert Aquin, Hamlet's Twin. Trans. Sheila Fischman. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1979 (1974). Cloth $12.95. Marie-Claire Blais, Nights in the Underground. Trans. Ray Ellenwood. Toronto: Musson, 1979 (1978). Paper $8.95. Andre Major, The Scarecrows of Saint-Emmanuel. Trans. Sheila Fischman. Toronto: Mcclelland and Stewart, 1977 (1974). Cloth $12.95. The three novelists whose work is represented in these recent translations all played major roles in that .dramatic blossoming of Quebec literature in the 1960s. Aquin, a decade or so older than Blais and Major, came into literary prominence in 1965 with the publication of his first novel, Prochain Episode. In this same year, Marie-Claire Blais won international acclaim for her Une saison dans la vie d'Emmanuel. The year 1965 also marked a turning point in the career of Andre Major, for it was then that he publicly broke with Parti Pris. He had been a founding member of the group in 1963, and Editions Parti Pris published his first novel, Le Cabochon, in 1964. This novel, along with Laurent Girouard's La Ville inhumaine and Jacques Renaud's Le Casse, both also published by Parti Pris in 1964, had provoked a strong reaction in literary circles because all three attempted to use joual deliberately as part of the "litterature engagee" policy of the group. Major's involvement in the political ferment of the decade was similar to that of Aquin. The latter had bee.n editor of Liberte since 1961 and had published widely in Quebec on political and cultural topics. Aquin had also been intensively involved on the political level, with the Rassemblement pour l'Independence Nationale. His arrest for suspected terrorism in 1964 (the charges were eventually dropped) was perhaps the most dramatic moment of his ''engagement.'' Aquin, who committed suicide in March 1977, had had a mercurial career in the two decades preceding his death. He had worked first for the CBC, then for the National Film Board, then as a stock broker, next as a professor (at College Ste. Marie, at UQAM, SUNY Buffalo, and Carleton) and finally as the literary director of Editions la Presse, a position from which he publicly resigned in August 1976, in protest against the cultural policies of the owner, Roger Lemelin. All three of these writers achieved a high profile in the heady days of the sixties, and all three, at some 142 point in their careers, worked or studied outside Canada : Major in Europe, Aquin and Blais in both France and the United States. Of the three, Major remains the least known outside Quebec, where he has a solid reputation as a journalist, editor, writer, broadcaster, and literary critic. In contrast to Aquin's and Major's involvement in the cultural and political world of Montreal, MarieClaire Blais grew up in Quebec City and has devoted herself almost exclusively to her writing. Early in her career she became a protegee of the American critic Edmund Wilson, and spent several years on Guggenheim fellowships writing at Cape Cod. She later moved to France. Given the prominence these three writers achieved in the decade of the sixties, it is interesting to consider how well their works have fared the ravages of time as we move into the 1980s. Upon rereading the works under discussion, I believe that two prove disappointing while the third, in contrast, is a brilliant, although disturbing, work. The Scarecrows of Saint-Emmanuel was first published in 1974 as L 'Epouvantail, the first of a trilogy, the other two volumes being L 'Epidemie (1975) and Les Rescapes (1976). It is the first of Major's novels to be translated. The publisher touts it as a "marriage of the murder mystery and the literary novel,'' but on both counts The Scarecrows comes across as thin and one-dimensional when it is compared to Hamlet's Twin which in some senses is indeed such a marriage. As a murder mystery The Scarecrows is long on descriptions of violence and sexual encounters, and a little short on sustained suspense or even interest. The one murder in the novel remains unsolved at the conclusion, and the...