Comme un film des frères Coen par Bertrand Gervais

Abstract

C’est là [...] que s’était libérée la faveur joyeuse d’un monde nouveau. C’est là aussi que s’était opéré le miracle de la simplification, quand l’idéologie prend forme et se radicalise afin de balayer les derniers sceptiques et ceux dont la conscience n’est pas encore tout à fait obscurcie par la haine. (133) Reflet de l’auteur, Louyre préfère la métaphysique aux “intrigues policières” (75) et il accepte le doute plutôt que de “se priver de la vérité” (76). En créant ce roman où les personnages incarnent les conflits d’une guerre chargée de passions idéologiques et où l’on en cache les crimes, Dugain nous engage dans la lecture d’un livre captivant où la poésie côtoie l’horreur. Spence School (NY) Mary P. Schmid Combal GERVAIS, BERTRAND. Comme un film des frères Coen. Montréal: XYZ, 2010. ISBN 978-289261 -590-6. 213p. $24 Can. Imagine a story about a male, middle-aged writer narrating in the first person . Imagine him without a marriage problem, a rival, a shrinking public, worries about his masculinity, or an obsession with his craft. Gervais has not written that novel. His latest book is a fairly standard plunge into the middle-aged-malewriter subgenre. Rémy Potvin is a fifty-year-old writer whose books no longer sell. His marriage is on the rocks, and his successful painter son has chosen Rémy’s literary rival as a father figure. As one might expect, Rémy narrates the story, is troubled by his sexual decline, and drinks too much. These traits make a brand-new book feel shopworn. So do a few other particularities. Take, for instance , the requisite Rival. We learn about him when Rémy’s son, Alexandre (suddenly famous as a painter of urban skateboarders), moves out of the family home after his mother, Carole, has left Rémy. When, over the phone, Rémy asks Alexandre who he is staying with, his son responds: “Tu ne veux pas le savoir” (123). The reader has already learned about the recent success of Victor Tracas, Rémy’s college pal who is now a popular writer (because, of course, he has sold out). Rémy’s penis-obsessed editor and drinking buddy Hubert has shared the news. We are not surprised when Victor drops in on Rémy then asks for some of Alexandre’s things in a suitcase—Rémy learns that Victor is Alexandre’s landlord and, possibly, his mentor. Victor is not the only character in the book, or even the main one. Yet, like many of the other characters, he helps us imagine what we are to believe a writer’s midlife crisis feels like. Rémy sniffs at Victor’s artificiality, bemoaning his rival’s proclivity for facile Internet-gleaned quotes—when, with his degree in philosophy, he should know better. At the same time, Rémy is frustrated when Victor spoils the film they are watching, telling Rémy: “Souviens-toi de ce qu’on a appris dans nos cours de cinéma. Écouter un film, ce n’est pas suivre une histoire , c’est contempler une œuvre” (134). Is Gervais mocking the intellectual who has gone commercial, or the didactic pedantry of intellectuals who hold their peers to clichéd standards for how one should behold a work of art? Scenes like this one seem too slapdash for the ideas they appear to be trying to develop. Yet even the most predictable passages contain regular flashes of the striking creativity one associates with Gervais’s other books. For instance, the father-son relationship 786 FRENCH REVIEW 85.4 runs deeper than one initially expects, calling up the expected Greek allusions (Daedalus, Oedipus) with aplomb. There is also unexpected tenderness many fathers will recognize, when Rémy—otherwise jealous of his own son—reads a note from Alexandre and is moved: “Peut-on désavouer un enfant qui nous appelle papa?” (147). The best part of this novel, though, is neither its narrator nor any of his family members. It is “Gwyneth,” an imaginary...