Readopolis

by Bertrand Laverdure

  * * *

  To: readmeagain@sympatico.ca

  From: earnestoearnesto@gmail.com

  Hey Ghis!

  You’ll never believe it! I’m full of love for everyone, I tell you, full of love! Feel like running in the fields, the forests, the streets! I’ve got to reread Queneau!

  They picked me, Ghis! Last Sunday, I participated in the pilot for a Télé-Québec quiz show. Kind of like Reach for the Top, but in teams of three and with the right to consult your team. Facile! A friend from Quebec City had sent me the info, knowing my quick-response symptoms… So I signed up on the game’s website, the Tournoi des mètres, and after completing a round of three games, I qualified!

  General knowledge is not some dead weight, it’s sparring material!

  This is the first time in my life that I set foot in Télé-Québec! I was summoned at 8 am at 1000 Fullum St. End of the road, just before you hit the river… the building, a huge drab cube, kind of squashed under the bridge… inside is where it gets interesting. At the entrance, you walk on tiles, a strange black mosaic with a long blue stripe. At reception, I wrote my name in the register, the whole time eyeballing the large mosaic scarred by the long blue line… looking at it a bit closer, following the line of colour against the dark background, I realized that the names of Quebec towns were stuck to the blue strip, made of thousands of tesserae, blue, brown, yellow and white tiles carefully cut by the artist. I felt so dumb not understanding what I was walking on. It wasn’t until the first break… as soon as the floor manager brought us juice, zucchini bread, coffee and glasses on a trolley… I’m such an idiot… it’s so obvious, so obvious, I suddenly got it: we were walking on the Saint Lawrence River! A large mosaic of the Saint Lawrence River with the towns that stretch along it and criss-cross it… I think you’ve got to visit Télé-Québec just to have a look at the floor in the entryway…

  I was there to test the hosts… This was the task of our small group, the six of us who had qualified… Only two women in the lot… Unpopular guys seem to have this pathetic mania for becoming game show contestants at any cost…

  As for the studio… cables, cameras and computers, a nervous director… The set amounted to two cable cars, a garish red one and a Joliette-subway-yellow one. Ever seen the Joliette subway stop? Just kidding… It’s always surprising to be on a TV set. The fake decor, trashy imitation, the wires, the gummed tape, the nails, the small Xs on the floor of the contestant’s booth… The whole theatrical side, the smell backstage, the feverish state of fellow contestants… Everything seems to stem from fortuitous joy, a world out of the ordinary, a universe of artifice ruled by precise Darwinian laws: only beautiful people, only individuals able to improvise with elegance, or with controlled vulgarity, only faces that look good onscreen…

  With my black dress and glasses, I looked exactly like the stereotypical intellectual… an intellectual who had escaped from Saint-Germain-des-Prés in 1948. By strange coincidence, the three members of my team (they paired us up) all wore some black. My teammate with an athlete’s body and bearing reminded me of an SS youth on probation from a boot camp for young delinquents… I quickly started to rely on him, he knew all the answers… Pressing the button that stopped the ticking of the seconds… Not moving a muscle, hardly cracking a smile… He was a rock… Imperturbable, everything that came out of his mouth was fair, considered, right… (And by the way, Stéphane E. Roy (the ridiculous accountant on Caméra Café on TVA) totally botched up his audition for the host. Nervous, badly prepared and with bad hair, he made jokes that fell flat and seemed to be struggling with his own frustration at not being able to answer all the questions himself… In short, he seemed overwhelmed. Besides failing his part, he couldn’t manage to follow how the game was unfolding… A total disaster.) I learned later, cuz we had time to socialize a bit between the takes, that Jean-Marc, the SS champ, was a radiology intern at Notre-Dame Hospital… scrupulously elitist. In fact, he was the only contestant to ask the “content editor” (that’s the job title; in the world of books, we call this the writer) when the episodes of the show would start being filmed. He already saw himself there, confident, a trooper… but never looking to provoke, to swagger… a professional contestant selected by the Darwinian laws of television.

  I don’t think I embarrassed anyone… I was wrong two or three times, put my foot in my mouth suggesting wrong answers to my teammates… We lost two games out of three… Looking back, I guess I did embarrass myself a few times.

  What is the name of the village bard in Asterix?

  One of my co-contestants quickly whispered to the leader: Cacofonix… Nervous, my nerves fried, knowing that our score was falling behind the other team’s, I panicked, said with steadfast conviction to Pierre-Luc, the guy in the lead: Getafix… I shrieked Getafix in his ear… He, also nervous, trusting me (the certainty with which I passed him the answer had undoubtedly convinced him), hit the red hot button in front of him and spat out: Getafix!

  Clang! Suddenly a blue cable car appeared on our screen, unhooked from the cable, tilted over and dropped into the void. Boinnnnnnng! Wrong answer…

  Wrong answer… The sound effect was ridiculous. All that to make us feel guilty, embarrassed… Getafix is the druid, come on, the village druid, the druid, wake up! Bloody hell!

  We have to say that we’re having fun. Shouldn’t get too ambitious, it’s only a game… only a game… It’s only a game if we want to believe that no one is judging anyone… Ghislain, we have to admit that we’re ridiculous at all times because we’re afraid to live completely, to live out our pleasures until we exhaust them, until we open the door to excess.

  Télé-Québec is going to send me a cheque for $50 to compensate me for the damage inflicted on my small dignity.

  I’ll take you out to a movie as soon as I get it.

  Courrège

  xx

  * * *

  * Aquin’s 1965 classic novel, Prochain épisode, was translated by Sheila Fischman and published in 2001 as Next Episode by New Canadian Library. (Trans.)

  2.

  The Gospel of Distribution

  unbearable! shit, it’s unbearable! people don’t reread what they write. It’s awful.

  Impossible to keep reading this mess. It’s beyond my control. I feel like pitching the manuscript out the window. Unbearable.

  Twenty pages are plenty. Twenty pages is all it takes, my work is done. I won’t go any further. It would drain the last of my remaining strength. But they must be stopped, these keyboard delinquents!

  Why am I not a person of private means? I depend on this ecosystem of sorting, an editorial structure based on choices; it’s wretched. I go prospecting, shake my little gold pan, throw back the lumps of sand and pebbles. A cat-and-mouse game, a game of promises and rejection letters. Pessoa was convinced that we are slaves, no matter what we undertake, no matter what we do. Revering freedom as we do negatively reveals our utter confusion.

  * * *

  I earned my thirty dollars—the amount recommended by UNEQ (Union of Quebec Writers). Thirty dollars to read one manuscript. Yet it is not really work; it’s a vocation, a calling. But that’s the book business, no way around it: everything is meagre, rationed. I’m forced to admit that in some publishing houses, all we’re offered is water. I can still see the poor publisher telling me that he is ready to add another member to his reading committee. Then he offers me a glass of water. Pours some warm “Our Compliments” water into a scratched Arcoroc glass. I take it. He will not be giving me my thirty dollars per manuscript. I will be the good prince. Offer him the beggar’s deal: four free manuscripts.

  It’s an obsession. Why do I keep knocking on the doors of publishers who are puny, stingy and broke (hence their stinginess, it’s not just for dramatic effect), fishing for work that is only symbolically remunerated? I’m stubborn. I want to be able to say to people that I “work in my field
.” People feel less sorry for me when I tell them: “I’m not rich, but at least I work in my field.” This satisfies them. They’re content. They can then tell themselves that no one studies for nothing, that it all leads to employment, that jobs exist to compensate anyone who has completed years of studies, that life is one vast puzzle into which we fit without a hitch, without having to trim the edges, build up the energy, constantly change direction. It’s a dream of order. We satisfy our dream of order, a fantasy of social tidiness.

  Most people think that society resembles a messy house where we must engage in the household tasks of dusting, scrubbing, clearing out, holding garage sales all year long. When we tell them that we work in our field, we feel as though we’re giving them proof that confirms their vision.

  I studied in such-and-such field, I work in the same field and there you go, everything is neat and tidy: the underwear in the right drawer, the broom in the closet, the pants in the lower drawer, the coats on their hangers, the dirty clothes in the laundry basket, the living room clean, the furniture dusted. And the bathroom exuding a chemical lemon scent.

  The national dream is to fulfil these fantasies countrywide. The management of this flow into appropriate social containers falls upon economists, counsellors, technocrats, journalists, legislators, and politicians.

  But it never works.

  Desire and utility don’t go hand in hand.

  It would be so simple to determine the number of candidates needed in every field every year, adjust the enrolment quotas in universities and vocational programs, and carry out a kind of natural selection process in order to keep the unemployment rate as low as possible. But these simplistic principles are pure hallucinations. Nothing is more unpredictable than an individual filled with desire. It’s miserable, but we can choose to be poor, not work, change our minds, travel, miss the boat, set off on an adventure, forget our dreams, tempt fate. It’s human nature. Since the traditional nuclear family with two kids is no longer imposed, no longer suitable, several other models have been introduced. Organic, fluctuating models; human trajectories that are chaotic, libertarian, marginal. To die of hunger in this day and age, in a postmodern city like Montreal, you need to be disabled, dying, or stupid. Life doesn’t give up easily. Although places where one can sleep in peace are increasingly rare, as soon as food is no longer a problem, nothing slows down the procession of the living.

  Living beings congregate, assemble, spread disease, invent regimes, complain, vote, become indifferent, and disseminate ideas through media. A living being is a human billboard. A citizen, no matter how marginalized, is always the target of a pollster, the eventual consumer of fast food, the elemental part of a demographic to be conquered, a subculture to be infiltrated.

  So I was a kind of well-integrated social wreck, a catastrophic scenario that would have been averted at the last minute, a mesclun of influences and abilities. This category of citizens is called “self-employed.” A paradoxical term. Our self-reliance, or versatility if you like, is no doubt an indication of our vulnerability in the face of life’s difficulties.

  I didn’t have any choice. I was always looking for work. The general idea was to get somewhere. Not to finish a race or follow a path to the end, but to go with the flow, do what was necessary to keep following the parade, struggling in the current. Paying for the electricity that would light up the occasional conversation.

  Okay then, four manuscripts to condemn today.

  How should I do it? Be succinct or use a more formal approach? Let’s go with the usual tactic, which proves that I’ve done my job.

  Three paragraphs, two paragraphs, a few lines and a page to give my impressions, convey my dashed expectations (I don’t actually have any expectations, but engaging in this literary sport keeps writers on their toes), communicate my criticism or distaste. Because reading can be distasteful, like overripe fruit, a badly seasoned dish, a failed recipe.

  The author promises a fine soufflé, but right from the start, we bite into a dry biscuit. Spelling mistakes feel like mouldy wedges; obese sentences ooze; clichés resemble Smarties sold in bags in the candy aisle; bad dialogues are puff pasty swimming in a halo of animal fat; bad chapter titles look like dried-up maraschino cherries. A mediocre manuscript is a soulless pastry left behind in a flimsy stall. Makes me think of the Portuguese pastries sold on the Main, arranged in rows on wooden boards, heaps of flour assembled into indistinguishable bells, shouting their soulless flaky misery to onlookers.

  For a few seconds, a bad manuscript can make you angry. Rage blows out of your nostrils. Once these few seconds pass, only a sense of sadness remains, a feeling of pity. As soon as the manuscript is put away in my large bag and my reports are printed, I sit down.

  From all my time as a professional reader, I don’t remember one categorical rejection that found another taker, that was published by another publisher or discovered under the gravel of its pitiful presentation. I am fully aware that I’m flushing the (unrealistic) hopes of four people down the drain, that I’m getting ready to disappoint four citizens who wish to distinguish and make a name for themselves, to become something other than anonymous figures knocking on people’s doors with a census or plastic objects or handmade wallets for sale.

  Typically, neither the managing editor nor the publisher deign to get their hands dirty in the greasy pile of unsolicited manuscripts. A second chance is given to people they know, which makes the entire decision-making structure somewhat unfair. But, ultimately, publishers don’t want to lose their reputation and will more often than not reject manuscripts written by their friends or acquaintances that received a poor assessment from the editorial board. In any event, in the worst cases, a bootlicking author that is rejected yet encouraged by a publisher’s nepotism must submit to the multiple rewrites that a badly begun book necessitates. My work then serves no purpose, and I always feel a bit stunned when this type of book appears in stores. That said, the reviews and disappointing sales of the volume soon corroborate my initial assessment. Most of the time, I’m bang on.

  I say it again and will keep saying it until the day I die: we have to read and keep reading, asking questions, gathering materials, getting informed. We often forget that a writer is an artist—of language, of documentation—an artist-reader.

  Everyone is capable of reminiscing about life, summarizing a film, or retelling a story heard the night before. But the artist-reader transforms these ordinary narrative functions into unusual tableaus, long candlelit vigils, or solar, tousled, intriguing poems with repetitions that carry much weight like rails.

  A thousand definitions of the writer exist.

  Here, of course, I give myself permission to establish my point of view as a universal principle. That’s all. I wouldn’t go any further.

  The issue is complex, but the method of investigation is ultra simple. Ultimately, it’s a matter of sounding out the water’s surface, probing the abyss with sonar, grasping what lies beneath falsity and mannerisms. I love the idea of prospecting. It’s useful. Because it involves the ideas of the sieve, gravel, and gold.

  I often reassure my friends, who are sometimes outraged by my categorical rejections, with this maxim I invented: No manuscript is lost, only memories with no author are.

  * * *

  It’s turning into comfortable indecency.

  I was still into Maldonne. Mixed friendships, especially if they have a sexual or at least libidinal basis (isn’t this always the case?), transform into bitter concoctions.

  We never refuse someone something with impunity.

  The imagination is limited to formulating trivial excuses. Once the rhetorical mechanism of forgiveness is set in motion, the matter seems settled. But this attitude is puerile. Besides, who among us (please raise your hand and say “I swear” three times without batting an eye) would be able to come up, time and again, with the right amount of words that a cordial und
erstanding between two individuals requires? Few among us would. Very few. We all mess up. Our bodies betray us, arrogance gets the better of us, we fade into the carpet or in time. Life entails a reactive continuum in which we must swim of our own accord and knowledge. Who hasn’t almost drowned? Who hasn’t done an about turn that spatters everyone else?

  Maldonne reacted with torturous frankness: she was way too late.

  Time is celestial punishment. It acts as chastisement.

  Whoever imposes their routine on us is in fact asking us to adopt their lifestyle. Quite simply, the person imposes their rhythm on us. We have to adjust, to politely endure the discrepancy and renounce our use of time. Henceforth, the person stipulates belatedly, I will manage the time between us. Because controlling time comes under the jurisdiction of an almost political mania, a materialist mania that consists in passing judgment on how days and hours elapse. Which is odd, first of all, and if we think about it more carefully, rather rude. Because time is not a material but a universal pool of emptiness into which we pour everything that passes through our hands: death, illness, money, intelligence, trustworthiness, laziness, virtuosity, calm, relaxation, ease, stress, exercise, rejection, complicity, agony, and gratitude. If it’s not a material but a flow of words we try to put in order so as to indicate who we are, then time is a subtle instrument of domination that we brandish when needed in order to establish our power and, consequently, our individualism. In prison, we do time because our power to dominate has been taken away from us, and this is how we recharge, by reconnecting to memories throughout the years. Memories = time; time = domination. More memories mean more domination; more time to devote to memories means more memories stored up.

  Every lateness elicits an analysis. No lateness is trivial. In the case that concerns us, Maldonne used the opportunity to scold me. Every temporal punishment, from life imprisonment to a short delay, is the sign of a wrongdoing that must be atoned for, paid for. Making someone wait unexpectedly is always a punishment. We inflict dead time. The offence is concomitant with how long the person is made to wait.