Published at 12:55 am. Updated at 06:00.
Nathalie Collard: Dear Rafaële,
I admit that when the head of the dialogue section, Isabelle Audet, offered me a four-way discussion about our readings in 2023, I answered “yes”. » with great enthusiasm. I don't know about you, but books have helped me get through this year. Which year ! A war (Ukraine), then another (Middle East), the housing crisis, the debates about immigration, increasingly visible homelessness and poverty, the strike in the public sector, a health system that is failing everywhere, the school that needs love, the arguments on social networks, the planet that is burning… I no longer know where to give my heart and empathy.
So yes, books are my refuge, even if I read a lot of essays and not enough novels for my liking this year (I plan on recovering during the holidays). I know that literature is a faithful companion in your life. Have books brought you some comfort during these difficult times?
Rafaële Germain: Hello, Nathalie!
I don't know if books bring me comfort, but they certainly help me find little nuggets of meaning in a world where there is often too little of it. That's why I see literature less as a refuge and more as a means of transport. The books that touch me and stay in my memory for a long time are the ones that take me somewhere else, that open up new perspectives and give me perspective. Sometimes they are essays, like those by David George Haskell, which I talked about in a column1, very beautiful books that force us to slow down and encourage us to pay deep attention to nature.
But for me there is nothing better than a novel. Those I love and want to thank often take me far, very far away from the excitement of current events, to a distance that seems truly beneficial to me. Do you, who are a columnist and spend your time with both hands in the news, have this feeling? That sometimes we need to get away from the world to see it better?
NC : Absolutely. Novels give me a different perspective and sometimes keys to understanding complex topics (I'm thinking, for example, of “The Magician of the Kremlin” by Giuliano da Empoli). Sometimes books are also valves or balms. I lost my mother this year, and your book Fortresses and Other Havens, in which you talk about your mother, who died last year, did me a lot of good (although without any sycophancy).
I also really liked “My Mother’s Life” by my former colleague Nathalie Petrowski. These are stories that have beautiful literary qualities and ring true. For me this authenticity is very important. It must be a professional distortion… But I also remember, in the depths of a gray and particularly difficult day in terms of current affairs, being fixated on the last Asterix, the White Iris. Sometimes I don't even try to understand anymore, I just want to escape.
RG : I'm very touched that you say that! I think that authenticity is inextricably linked to the literary gesture. This is not necessarily a guarantee of a successful book, but it is almost certain that a book cannot be successful without it. Whether thriller, adventure novel, memoir or comic. This is why I have a problem with people like Sylvain Tesson, who, although he writes great, always gives me the impression that he is orchestrating his thoughts and favoring beauty at the expense of truth. As a literary stance, that's perfectly acceptable, but it seems like it no longer interests me.
I've spent a lot of time this year with Icelandic authors – Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir, Bergsveinn Birgisson, Jón Kalman Stefánsson – all three of whom feel like they're writing from a very distant place. Maybe this is due to the geographical location of your home country? They view their subjects in a way that may seem distant, but is actually deeply empathetic and ultimately of great tenderness. These books do me good, they remind me that from true empathy comes tenderness and kindness. These are not very sexy themes, they border on a little cute, but I think we really need them, in life as well as in our books.
NC : I completely agree with you when you talk about empathy. I don't know if you're like me, but thanks to their empathy, certain authors have become my friends over the years. It's a small, limited club that gives me the impression that it cares about me and helps me understand my own life. In my club we find, among others, Deborah Levy. The third volume of her autobiographical trilogy, The Cost of Living, was published last summer and together her three books feel like a conversation with a brilliant and enlightened friend. I have the same impression when I read Siri Hustvedt (who just published Mothers, Fathers and Others) as if I am resuming a dialogue with someone I have known for a long time. It's precious and the reason I was so excited for the Christmas holidays. Finally having time to catch up on the reading that work has put off and to find voices that I love and that resonate with me.
I'm throwing away a few titles that are in my pile: “Self-portrait of another” by Élise Turcotte, “It could have been a film” by Martine Delvaux, “Sad Tiger” by Neige Sinno and “The Vulnerables” by Sigrid Nunez, a New Yorker author I highly recommend. And what reading awaits you at Christmas time?
PHOTO ALAIN ROBERGE, LA PRESS ARCHIVE
The recent Montreal Book Fair attracted thousands of readers. Reading is often a refuge in a sometimes dizzying world.
RG : I love Siri Hustvedt so much. Apparently one of my imaginary friends. I find her to have a spirit of phenomenal clarity that she applies as powerfully in her novels as she does in her essays. I had a professor at university who often talked about the “invisible community,” the community we form with the writers we love and who challenge us. It is flexible, some disappear after a while, others come and impose their thundering voices, some stay for life. I talk to them, I ask them, I rediscover them. These are presences that calm me down a lot and definitely brighten my existence. Proust, Woolf, Flaubert, Ondaatje, Haskell, Carrère, Hustvedt and so on – it's really a big bunch. There are some who are discreet after taking up a lot of space, like Donna Tartt, who amazed me with her Goldfinch, in which there are some of the phrases that have left the most impression on me in contemporary literature.
It's actually one of the gang I'll be returning to over the holiday season, with “The Fraud” by Zadie Smith, which I plan to start with as soon as I'm done. May our joy endure. Kevin Lambert is one of the rare authors who truly bothers me, his revolt and anger confronting me with the fact that I'm not outraged enough. I always get a little annoyed with him when I pick up his books, but he amazes me every time. I also have “Demon Copperhead” by Barbara Kingsolver, “Smell of the Rain” by Cédric Sapin-Defour and the second part of “Dead Souls” by Gogol (which is a sign that I'm getting older: I'm returning to classics back, to books I read when I was 20, and I'm rediscovering that by measuring everything that I missed and everything that has happened since then). I will also have a very small collection of Véronique Grenier, Carnet de Parc, in my bag that I keep for a time when I need a break. In the hustle and bustle of dinners and celebrations, I tell myself that an afternoon of poetry would be a good idea.
NC: Poetry is always a good idea. I leave you with the words of Louise Dupré from her collection Exercises of Joy. And I wish you a year 2024 full of joy…
“You say joy while you think of catastrophe. They see the sky in flames, the charred clouds and flocks of birds crashing to the ground, or perhaps they are angels used to protecting children at night. And yet you cling to joy, you make the effort, as one imposes on oneself a duty of conscience, you have no intention of renouncing the heart that turns the stones of the path into jewels, even if it is the pure whim of a woman who refuses to face reality, soot, ash, landscapes full of sadness and pity. You make a list of benevolent images that could describe you, starting with the water of springs and moving on to the water of tears.
They believe that tears are the nest of all promises. »