Rewriting America/Dany Laferrière's Rewriting

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes Notes 1 This film script formed the basis for the film by the same title which was directed by the author and produced by Équinoxe Films, Montreal in 2005. 2 All translations of quoted material are my own. 3 Here bold type is used to show what was added to the original 1993 version in 2002. Subsequent quotations consist entirely of what has been added to this later edition. 4 On Laferrière's blurring of rêvé/réel, particularly in Pays sans chapeau, see Dash, “Fictions” 39; den Toonder 129–147; Walcott-Hackshaw 149–162. 5 See the interview between “Dany” and “Laferrière” first added to the 2001 edition of Je suis fatigué (53–54)—a reworked version of the autoportrait/ interview “Tu sais.” 6 The narrator's dialogue with an angry female migraine sufferer is extrapolated (Cette grenade 2002, 125–130; 1993, 74–78), while “Boston, restaurant” becomes “Dallas: a restaurant” (Cette grenade 2002, 231–233; 1993, 129–132). 7 In an interview with Benjamin Vasile, Laferrière has spoken about his creative writing processes in terms of the spiral dear to Frankétienne and the other spiralistes. See Vasile 248–249, 256. Here again, we see Laferrière's penchant for contradicting himself, and for blurring all pistes.