Tout bouge autour de moi by Dany Laferrière (review)

father) such an average fellow opens the novel to a broad meditation on the meaning of history. For Forest history is something we are most often unaware of as we live it, and its mercurial nature is further complicated by the works of professional historians who inevitably provide a somewhat simplified, occasionally sanitized version of what happened and why. It is at this juncture that fiction becomes important, not because it provides clarity, but rather because it reintroduces the sloppy, the aleatory, the absurd to events experienced by those too confused or frightened to realize they were making history. Literature may not be much, but “cette pauvre petite chose de papier usé qu’on nomme un roman” (556) can endow an era, a generation or an individual life with a modicum of dignity that might otherwise have been lost. This is very much the case with regard to the narrator’s father, a person one might easily dismiss as “typical,” without, of course, ever being quite sure what that adjective means. Instead, through the grace of Forest’s telling, the reader discovers a man who spends more time in the clouds than his profession might suggest . If he loves seeing the world from on high, his thoughts are also lofty in his total, albeit unconscious embrace of his family, his religion, his country and more generally his implicit belief that his idealism is not some pie in the sky, but a very clearheaded grasp of reality. While it is apparent that the narrator does not share his father’s confidence in this world and the next, his admiration for what his parent did and believed is never hidden. As a result, this novel, which initially appears to focus on one individual and one generation, is really about two; it is about the narrator’s efforts to learn from his father and about his generation’s puzzlement at their parents’ optimism which, as the novel makes clear, cannot be dismissed as naïveté. One of the achievements of Le siècle des nuages is to depict with great respect beliefs and attitudes which are scarcely fashionable today. This novel often reads as a memoir, and in a French novel so concerned with memory, the influence of Proust is inevitable. Especially in the opening pages, the structuring of l’histoire is replete with Proustian devices, especially the long, grammatically complex sentences that in Le siècle des nuages impress the reader as primarily being long and complex. At its weakest, which is to say its most literary, the author’s style calls attention to itself by forever reminding the reader of someone else. This caveat aside, Forest’s novel shines in its depiction of a man who actually knew a great deal about himself except for one telling detail: he was a hero. Florida State University William Cloonan LAFERRIÈRE, DANY. Tout bouge autour de moi. Montréal: Mémoire d’encrier, 2010. ISBN 978-2-923713-30-4. Pp. 159. $19 Can. Venu à Port-au-Prince pour le festival Étonnants Voyageurs—réunissant écrivains et cinéastes du monde entier—Laferrière était en compagnie de deux amis au restaurant de l’hôtel Karibe le 12 janvier 2010 lorsque, à 16h53, la terre s’est mise à trembler. Étant donné l’ampleur du séisme, le festival n’eut pas lieu. Retenons toutefois parmi l’ensemble des activités reportées, le thème prophétique d’une table ronde: “De l’urgence de la littérature en temps de crise”. Il nous est impossible de savoir comment le panel se serait déroulé. Mais force est de constater que ce thème à débattre—loin de mener à des discussions de l’ordre anecdotique ou théorique—s’est depuis soldé par une véritable mise en action, 594 FRENCH REVIEW 85.3 voire mise en œuvre: des écrivains de par le monde se sont engagés à réagir au tremblement de terre en Haïti par le biais de la littérature. Parmi les écrivains ayant publié un livre ou contribué à des collections d’essais sur l’événement, nombreux sont ceux qui évoquent le côté pulsionnel ou thérapeutique...