The writings of the prolific Larry Tremblay have the great quality of disturbing me deeply. His very name on a cover is the promise that I will be shocked, because the question of evil runs through his work and ultimately through us, from Obese Christ to the famous The Orange Grove to last year’s Final Picture of Love.
Published at 1:58 am. Updated at 9:15 a.m
Already this new title, Of Hells and Children, seems to fit the news and I’m almost jealous. All these demonstrations that we have been seeing for some time now, against drag, transsexuals or mixed toilets, are always carried out to supposedly protect children, which more often serve to pave the way to a hell from which we thought we had escaped . “Why does it happen that childhood and hell fall in the same season? », we can read on the back…
As always, Larry Tremblay welcomes me into his home between two trips and four projects, noting that “the child is a central figure these days”. “As if it were a projection screen on which we register our fears, our anxieties, our excessive protective measures, even our excessive fragilities,” he says.
From Hell and Children, these are five haunting short stories from which we emerge not unscathed, tainted by the zeitgeist, but transformed by the gaze of Larry Tremblay. A man who must use metaphors to speak to the abuser from his childhood who perverted the experience of pleasure and love; a math professor who speaks eloquently but is a conspiracy theorist willing to risk the worst to protect his “little thing,” which he believes is unique; a couple who self-destruct by attacking their child’s gender identity while forgetting their “normal” brother; a son’s terrible confession at his mother’s grave; the mistreatment of a boy who disappoints parents who themselves are more than disappointing because they are too damaged by life.
I was thinking particularly of the child in social structures, in the family or at school. These short stories are very different from each other, although there is a common thread, but the form is different each time.
Larry Tremblay, author, playwright and poet
And that common thread is Arthur Rimbaud, the brilliant child who experienced his “time in hell.” “For me he is a child who has gone through all sorts of phases: sexuality, then adventure, the Commune, the war, Africa and then his poetry, his relationship to language, his impact…” I found this character to be almost all of mine contained topics. »
Philosophical wonder
But what is childhood and what is hell for Larry Tremblay? “I think children live in the present,” he replies. There is a philosophical wonder in the child, that is, he has no prejudices, no preconceptions, and then we see things in their spring. Because philosophy is about being surprised by what is. But after a certain time we are no longer surprised and we project systems of thought and values onto reality, which is divided, analyzed, dissected. We lose our sense of reality. Maybe hell forgets and is stuck in a past full of resentment. This is why we meditate, this is why we make art, this is why we look at a painting, an exhibition that allows us to detach ourselves a little from this reality. »
However, Larry Tremblay, who is also a playwright and poet and whose novels L’orangeraie and Tableau finale de l’amour are being adapted for the cinema, is concerned that this haven of art is now being invaded by a new morality. Concerned enough to have written an essay on the subject, to be published next year. He wonders, for example, whether a book like “The Orange Grove,” which has been showered with awards and translated into 25 languages around the world and is a fable set in a seemingly fictional Middle Eastern country, will receive the same response would if it was released today. “I wonder about our legitimacy as creators. “What do we have the right to write about today?” he states.
PHOTO FRANÇOIS ROY, THE PRESS
Larry Tremblay
At the beginning of his short story collection, he intended to write about George Floyd from the perspective of a police officer in order to understand how someone could commit such an act, but it was made clear to him that he shouldn’t do that. I didn’t go there. He was also advised that he was not British to write about the painter Francis Bacon. The writer is not complaining, his career is going well, he will soon leave for a European tour, but these comments, in his opinion, are symptomatic of the desire to build walls rather than tear them down.
“It bothers me a lot because I call it the narrowing of the imagination that causes writers and creators to focus all their imagination on themselves. We talk more and more about ourselves because it is safer than talking about others. I’m thinking of a general trend that means that if we’re not vigilant, we’re going to move toward that narrowing. »
Because society, right thinking and current authorities encourage most people to think about themselves, their bodies, their skin color, their own religious values, and all of this leads us to focus more and more on ourselves and not after outside, on the other, concentrate.
Larry Tremblay, author, playwright and poet
For a creator like him, who has never dabbled in autofiction or simple themes, the concern is understandable. Perhaps that is why he has created a new piece called Coup de vieux, which will be performed at the Trident in January and at the Théâtre d’Aujourd’hui in the spring. “I think that morality has secretly integrated aesthetics because there are no longer any in politics. Creators have a moral responsibility, whereas before we didn’t have one. »
Since Larry Tremblay has never been an avid polemicist and I never miss any of his books, I am very excited to read his essay while I wait to recover from D’enfers et d’enfants.
In bookstores from October 4th
Of hells and children
The people
149 pages