Some authors seem immortal, others sink into oblivion. What remains after a while? In his monthly series Faut-il relire…? With the help of admirers and attentive observers, Le Devoir devotes itself to one of these writers. Today, Christian Mistral (1964-2020), the first Québec author to make his debut there, has made a splash in the literary world in the midst of a somber decade.
He knew book fairs and prison cells (those of Parthenais and Bordeaux); the rush of success and the headache of tomorrow; the label of the enfant terrible then that of the bat woman. He was also recognized by his dandy look, his perpetual hat firmly atop his head, having made rue Saint-Denis his kingdom and certain bars, including Les Beaux Esprits, his headquarters.
Christian Mistral never wanted to go unnoticed, at least at the time of his fame when Vamp came out in 1988. This first novel, written by a 23-year-old young man who had barely strolled through the school desks and was already fueled up on alcohol, was received as bombproof as a manifesto, that of Generation X, with whom Mistral fully identified. Not to mention his descriptions of Montreal, which oozed sensuality and desperation under his gaze.
The writer, it must be said, was precocious in many areas, he who had self-published his first volume of poetry at the age of 14 – a gesture of love for a girl who preferred to burn her copy… –, married at 16 for two years later he divorced and became a father in the meantime. Mistral was also very fond of Montreal nights, and his drug addiction was no secret. If his consumption was a problem (financially too!), his mood swings assumed sad legendary proportions long before his death. Indeed, testimonials abound that describe him in his worst days with both unwavering loyalty in friendship and devastating arrogance.
I loved Montreal, I was crazy about it. I kissed her outrageously at all her subway entrances; We were tens of thousands to impregnate her bowels from dawn to dawn, and the beauty hummed with delight.
Some have also seen autobiographies disguised in Vamp and all the following books (Vautour, Vacuum, Valium, Léon, Coco and Mulligan), written with a sometimes extraordinarily romantic touch. Before things got out of hand and justice caught up with him again in the 1990s, his flamboyant personality added a grid of analysis to a personal and rich body of work. Jean-Roch Boivin, former literary critic for Le Devoir and recently deceased Le Voir, said of him “that in life he behaves like a reincarnation [Jean-Paul] Sartre”. No less.
A family affair
André Vanasse, 81 years old and now retired, vividly remembers meeting Christian Mistral. Since he was literary director at Quebec America at the time, he had not yet completed Vamp’s manuscript, urging its author to publish it under his name. With the success we know and the excesses that followed.
Indeed, the man who was also a professor of literature at UQAM and a novelist (La saga des Lagacé, La vie à rebours, La flûte de Rafi) recognizes that he had “a kind of father-son relationship” with Mistral. In fact, the lyricist of Soirs de Scotch, singer Luce Dufault’s big hit, often drowned out his grief at not having known his birth father, one of the many wounds Mistral somehow hid. And that often betrayed his erratic behavior.
“I’ve never been afraid of the Christian mistrals of this world! proclaims André Vanasse, nevertheless admitting that it was at the time of Quebec America as at XYZ, where he will continue his work as editor since the 1990s, that he made him see all the colors. This is confirmed by his son Alexandre Vanasse, editor of the Lettres québécoises, who was very early involved in the literary world at his father’s side. “I still remember a call from the secretary of XYZ who, in a panic, asked me to intervene as quickly as possible between Christian and André: they weren’t arguing, but they were screaming happily! remembers the one who quickly became Mistral’s adoptive brother. As for the surrogate father, he remains convinced Mistral would never have beaten him, while admitting “the truth was his violence was what killed him”.
After three liters of white wine and sixty cigarettes, we’ve got wood in our bones. It’s dangerous what you can do in moments like this. You can kill someone just like that, for reasons that seem excellent, and the worst thing when you think about it is that you risk not remembering how or why the next day. 25 years in prison for a crime we don’t remember is a tough time.
While he was in legal rather than literary headlines in the 1990s, Christian Mistral already knew the mysteries of justice, being convicted of fraud in 1984, obstruction and trespassing in 1989. This was the period of his meteoric rise… which coincided with his. His first novel, La rage, published by XYZ in 1989, earned him the Governor General’s Award… and the respect of the man with whom he shared the same literary director, André Vanasse.
It was then that the two writers of the same generation who had quickly become his disillusioned champions saw each other occasionally, to the point where Mistral of Hamelin said he was his brother too. “He was looking for his father, he was looking for a family and he envied mine very much,” says the man who is also a columnist for Le Devoir. But he took up a lot of space, moved a lot of air, and we didn’t have the same idea of what a writer was: I was a recluse in his cabin in the woods, he was fascinated by cursed writers like Jack Kerouac or Henry Miller. At some point it was no longer tenable. I had to move to maintain my physical and mental health. Basically, he was a rather unhappy man: that doesn’t excuse anything, but it explains certain things…”
Legend or Shooting Star?
Hamelin, however, acknowledges that we can never take Mistral’s rare talent, stunning in Vamp and well-affirmed in Vautour, even as the author of La constellation du lynxr acknowledges that there are two entrenched camps: some revere the first book, others the second. “Before our interview, I reread a few pages of Vamp. Whatever one thinks of the character and his life, it’s a classic of Quebec literature. At the time, this book came as a shock to me and shaped the writer I have become. »
That dazzling pen and the hymns of praise it evoked ended, no pun intended, in a frenzy of Christian Mistral. His alliance with André Vanasse lasted a while, the two men had distanced themselves. As for Alexandre Vanasse, he had never quite broken ties with him, occasionally visiting him in his small apartment on the rue Rachel, where he ended his days. He recalled both a “definitely smarter than average” guy and a guy who could show up at his house “at 3am after an argument at a bar” and would have liked to get back to him about the career plan tied together. “I offered him a column in Lettres Québécoises. The first one, with Gilles Vigneault, was great, but after that he gave us his money and kept asking for advances, it couldn’t go on like this. A casualness his father also faced: “A conspicuous figure in Quebec literature, certainly, but a conspicuous character, it has to work.” Yes, he became someone, but it still wasn’t Jesus Christ! »
In an interview with La Presse in 1995, Christian Mistral already sensed the ambivalent relationship we will have with his work and that his disappearance has not been completely erased. “Perhaps that’s my only reason for sadness: I’ve always wanted my books to defend themselves, to be read without the knowledge we think we have about the author. Will this always be possible?