Did Marc-André Poissant let himself get knocked down by these disappointments? Absolutely not! He set to work once again and started to write what would become his first published novel: Paul Desormeaux, Student. In the intervening time, since he also had to live, he found work as an editor at a publishing house. His employers, aware of his abilities as a writer, set him a thankless task: writing the “autobiography” of a recovering alcoholic singer (whom he once again declined to name). This little work, written in around sixty hours, sold no fewer than forty thousand copies. A bestseller! This great success had the happy effect of putting him in his employer’s good books; to compensate him, they agreed to give him a chance and publish Paul Desormeaux, Student. And, as if that wasn’t enough, the novelist Marie-Claire Blais, who’d just won the prestigious Medici Prize for A Season in the Life of Emmanuel, agreed to recommend the novel, which appeared with the blurb “We are witnessing the birth of a great writer.” (I like to imagine Ms. Blais bringing it up every time she gets tipsy: “I don’t like to boast, dear friends, but I actually played a part in discovering Marc Fisher…”)
The book sold seven thousand copies, which is very respectable, especially for a debut. (I would be astonished if more than seventy copies of The Death of the Pterodactyl had sold.) But rather than resting on his laurels and staying in his comfort zone, Marc-André decided to switch genres and write a suspense novel (The Mirror of Folly), in which a young woman neglected by her husband claims to receive anonymous phone calls and threatening letters, of which she herself is actually the author. Caught in her own trap, she soon ends up in a lunatic asylum. (Note to self: Ask the lady at Hélène-B.-Beauséjour to order it.) This time, sales rose to thirteen thousand copies. However, despite this success, Marc-André was still not satisfied. He knew he hadn’t yet found his voice, his own style. Incidentally, his next two novels were failures. In hindsight, he recognized that his first novels had had considerable problems, and so it was to help his readers avoid making the same mistakes that he wrote his two short treatises on narratology.
But how did Marc-André Poissant, a young and inexperienced author, become the demigod of letters known as Marc Fisher? Here’s his answer: “I’ve been through many different kinds of suffering, interior experiences (…) that have radically changed me, my powers of concentration, my sensitivity, and have made me the person I’ve always dreamed of becoming, this novelist that I was not, and would never have become, without this mysterious transformation” (The Work of the Novelist, page 30). Is there more? What exactly were these different kinds of sufferings, these interior experiences? Mr Fisher draws a discreet veil over this aspect of his life. (A veil that he does, however, lift in his book The Soul’s Ascent [Un Monde Différent Editions], available at all good bookshops.) For the time being, all he tells us is that it was the start of the real journey. “Yes, in the end lead does turn into gold, just as the water was changed into wine at the wedding at Cana (…).” At the end of this transformation, he had several more years of fumbling around, during which he was, by turns, acquisitions editor, writer, and slave once more. And then, at the age of thirty-four, he wrote The Millionaire. The rest you know.
Ò...17...Ò
Lessons From the Master
(The Force Is with You, Young Skywalker, But You’re Not a Jedi Yet)
Marc Fisher’s teachings consist mainly of practical tips, stuff you can immediately put to use. He’s not the type to get overly bothered about the characters’ arcs and interactions, and there’s no way you’ll ever see him getting bogged down in the distinction between a heterodiegetic and a homodiegetic narrator. He’s keener on the famous “show don’t tell,” beloved of Anglo-Saxon writers (rather than simply saying that Lisette is jealous, show her losing her mind with jealousy), and on narrative consistency (if you learn, in the first chapter, that Lisette is a jealous woman, don’t forget to make her act accordingly for the rest of the book). “How do you get published?” he asks in Advice on Getting Published. “Write a good novel!” he shoots back. “Editors are like bees: give them a successful manuscript whose every page is a perfumed petal, enthralling, profound, and beautiful, and they will absolutely have to interrupt their busy flight to publish you” (The Work of the Novelist, page 79). It’s nicely put, right? The whole thing’s like this from start to finish.
He scorns a whole swath of “literary romantics” who don’t believe that a novel should bend to any rule, that it should “simply emerge, magnificent and perfect, from the dishevelled head of its genius creator.” Inspiration is good, he’s not going to argue with that, but let’s not forget that Bach and Mozart had teachers, and that Picasso and Rodin studied fine arts, and so on. What was good for them should certainly be good for you, should it not? That said, he devotes his first chapter to the problem of character, because this, according to him, is where debut novelists make the most blunders. Well, as far as we’re concerned, our hands are somewhat tied since we are the characters. You do what you can with what you have, right? So I’ll skip to the next chapter, in which Marc lists what he likes to call the ten great qualities of a novel. In his opinion, “the more you inject these qualities into your novel, the more happiness you’ll produce in your future reader and the greater your chance of being published” (The Work of the Novelist, page 113). Let’s quickly look them over, just so I can see how I’ve been doing so far.
Quality 1: Emotion. That this quality comes first is not an accident, since “a good novel is above all an emotional experience, not an intellectual one. And remember that if your characters’ fate doesn’t move you, there’s a high likelihood that the reader will be indifferent too” (The Work of the Novelist, page 114). Um…does my fate interest you, dear reader? No, no, please don’t answer out loud.
Quality 2: Relatability. “Novels that have characters in which everyone can recognize themselves generally do well.” There’s no point burying my head in the sand here: I’m off to a bad start. The good news is that there are still eight qualities to turn things around.
Quality 3: Suspense. “Suspense means tight, fast-paced writing with minimal exposition; it’s light on description and psychological analysis, and has frequent but not chatty dialogue, and above all, a large number of narrative units, which means, basically, events. When there’s not much going on, you lose attention” (The Work of the Novelist, page 115). Microsoft Word confirms that my file will soon hit twenty-three thousand words and apparently I’m still setting the scene: so much for “minimal exposition.” On the other hand, you have to admit it’s pretty low-key on the descriptions and psychological analysis fronts. As for these pesky narrative units, I can only repeat that we do what we can with what we have. Fewer things have happened in our entire lives than in a single Dan Brown paragraph. I can’t bring myself to believe that things happen to us for the sole purpose of stopping our attention from wandering.
Quality 4: Humour. “Clearly, being funny—particularly on command—isn’t easy, and it’s probably a gift, something that can’t easily be taught. (…) For us mere mortals, being funny on command is an unreasonable demand” (The Work of the Novelist, pages 115–16). Do you find me funny, reader? Personally, I can’t really tell. I mean, Jude and I are a good audience for each other, but we rarely get the chance to test our material on other people. Annick at Subway seems to find me hilarious, but she’s always sniggering anyway. Plus, I’ve noticed that she finds me funniest when I’m not trying to be funny. Anyway, it’s difficult to play the clown for a reader who’s still theoretical. Not being acquainted with you personally, I don’t know if Lise Dion or Groucho Marx gets you going, or Marcel Gamache or Molière. To deal with all contingencies, I’m inserting a joke here that will, I’m sure, be universally appreciated. Then at least you’ll have got one laugh out of this story.
Two ducks are chatting beside a pond.
“Quack quack!” says one.
And the other replies:
“I w
as just about to say the same thing!”
Quality 5: Romanticism. “A novel in which men and women hang out together for two hundred pages without the slightest amorous spark flying seems artificial, cold, and lacking” (The Work of the Novelist, page 116). Once again, I’ll just say in my defence that the material I’m working with is not especially fruitful in this respect. If we disregard those who are only mentioned in passing (such as my colleague Annick, about whom I was just talking), this story would have just three characters: 1. Jude and me; 2. Sébastien Daoust; 3. the neighbour (and even that’s barely more than a walk-on part). We’re certainly not going to start something with the neighbour just so you can get your dose of romance. (Bleurgh! Just thinking about it gives me the heebie-jeebies.) Look, I’d rather fall in love with an inanimate object than with the neighbour. That’s a thing, you know. I read in the paper the other day about some guy in Australia who developed a crazy passion for an umbrella, not just sexual attraction, like a fetish, but an actual romantic attachment. There’s even a name for it, but I forget what. When they say it takes all sorts, they aren’t joking. Here’s a few more: do you know what dendrophilia is? Sexual attraction to trees. Exobiophilia? That’s when you have a thing for aliens. If you’re an asthenophile, you get turned on by being ill, if you are an emetophile, by vomit, and you can be sure that if someone’s gone to the trouble of inventing the words it’s because they’re real things. People look all innocent when you pass them in the street, but there are all kinds of lunatics out there. But now I’m getting sidetracked again.
Quality 6: Information. “Every time your novel teaches the reader something about other countries, other cultures, times or places that he doesn’t know, or doesn’t know very well, you score points. Who doesn’t want to learn while they’re enjoying themselves?” So you have nothing to complain about. I bet that two minutes ago you didn’t know what emetophilia was. It might not be the kind of word you’ll manage to insert into conversation all that often, but it’s better to know too much than too little, right?
Quality 7: Imagination. “(…) to spice up a dull scene, set it in an unexpected location. For example, take that business meeting in the predictable conference room and set it in a Jacuzzi or at the top of a mountain. An amorous encounter taking place in a bar, like so many others? Go right now and set it in an ambulance (…)” (The Work of the Novelist, page 119). I honestly don’t think I have any imagination. When I was little I got myself out of trouble (behaving badly, not doing my homework, etc.) with a repertoire of three or four lies, which I served up to my parents, my teachers, my conscience whenever required. However, unless I’m very much mistaken, the present “novel” is probably the first to relate a journey to Bird-in-Hand. That’s at least as original as a business meeting in a Jacuzzi.
Quality 8: Structure. “When your work is structured well, when nothing is superfluous, the publisher can tell, and that will make him or her favourable toward you” (The Work of the Novelist, page 120). Not applicable to the present situation: this being a travel narrative, it would be difficult to fit it into a framework.
Quality 9: Philosophy. “Works that make us think stay with us longer because they provoke stirrings deep inside us that alter us; it’s as if they’re talking about us and, above all, about what we could become” (The Work of the Novelist, page 121). I’m realistic enough to know, dear reader, that by this point it’s been a good while since you’ve relied on me to explain the meaning of everything to you. However, at college I got unbelievably good marks in philosophy, but I must confess it takes a complete idiot to not get good marks. I remember spending ages on syllogisms (“All mice like cheese; Bobby likes cheese. What can we deduce? a) that Bobby is a mouse; b) that Bobby is not a mouse; c) that Bobby might or might not be a mouse.”) and on the biographies of some important philosophers (Socrates was as ugly as sin, Spinoza’s dad made spectacles, Nietzsche died in an asylum, Schopenhauer left all his worldly goods to his poodle, etc.). We also had to puzzle over boring ethical dilemmas (A boat is sinking; there are twenty people on board but the lifeboat has room for only ten. What criteria do you use to allocate the spaces?). Basically, the really important questions went unmentioned, and in any case, I reckon my teacher at the time was, despite his PhD, as clueless as his own cleaning lady about the great mysteries of life. Which means it was all very well frittering our time away on stories about mice who like cheese, but now I’m completely powerless to soothe your metaphysical anguish. Remember, though, that it was me who suggested you read Livre M by Paule Doyon, in which everything is explained. You could certainly call that a shot on goal.
Quality 10: Style. “Between a somewhat clumsy storyteller and an impeccable stylist with nothing to say, the ordinary reader will always choose the former, whose weaknesses will quickly be forgotten as he or she enjoys being caught up in the story” (The Work of the Novelist, page 124). Reading these two treatises, you quickly work out that style is Marc Fisher’s pet peeve. He holds back—with a great deal of difficulty—from advising his disciples to write like pigs, but he never misses a chance to mock stylists. He contrasts, for example, the Goncourts, those upholders of “artistic style,” with Zola and Balzac, whose slick writing was free of superfluous ornamentation, noting in passing that nobody reads the Goncourts anymore and that their name would have been forgotten if Edmond had not had the felicitous idea of founding a literary prize. In fact, he simply recommends not wasting too much time on it, because the “the public pays no heed to style. Yes, they want a certain level of accuracy, but apart from that they really only care about the story.” And he carries on with his sledgehammer argument: to have any hope of living by one’s pen, a Quebec writer has to target the international market, and that style can’t survive translation. Under such conditions, the best thing is to aim for an “invisible” style, which fades into the background to allow the characters and events to take centre stage. He quotes the case of the English translation of Madame Bovary, in which “nothing remains of the master’s inimitable style, of his deep and sonorous phrasing.” What a fool old Gustave was, to have gone to so much trouble! What’s the good of all that effort if you’re still going to go unnoticed by the Americans?
Ò...18...Ò
Spelling Mistake Cookies
This list of the ten crucial qualities of novels represents just a tiny part of Marc Fisher’s teachings, but at least it gives you some idea of how far I’ve got to go. I won’t despair though. At worst, everything I’ve done so far will have been good training, improving my skills. I can easily delete everything and start again with a blank slate, and you need never know anything about it. Anyway, we’ll see.
Of all the precepts the master tries to inculcate in his padawan (put down the OED, it won’t be in there, try Wikipedia instead), the one he comes back to the most could be formulated thus: “Strike early and strike often!” Modern readers, the former Mr. Poissant tells us, often judge a work on its first chapter, or even its first page or first line. The publisher is no exception. And what strikes their eyes first? The title, of course. This is why the importance of the title can’t be overstated. “In some ways this is your window. What makes a good title? There are no hard and fast rules. Generally, go with short titles over long ones, but there are notable exceptions” (The Work of the Novelist, page 130). So that doesn’t help me much, but in any case, I’ve never really liked someone else doing my dirty work. (I’d never dare repeat that last sentence if I was hooked up to a lie detector.) After reading these lines, I dog-eared the page and called Jude to drop everything and come and join me in the living room (it was good timing: he was doing precisely nothing), for one of those brainstorming sessions we were so good at.
“We need a title,” I announced.
“Okay, I’d like to be a duke.”
“Stop playing the fool, I mean a title for our book.”
“Oh. I thought you’d already come up with one.”
“No, it’s called Document 1 for now, but that’s what Microsoft Word thought of. Surely we can do better.”
“There’s no hurry.”
“True, but if we always put things off until the next day, it’ll still be called Document 1 by the time we’re ready to send it out.”
“And your sister will accuse us of procrastinating again.”
“She said we were vacillatory, but I have to admit it more or less comes to the same thing. So, any ideas?”
“Um…we could ask Dany Laferrière. He’s a pro at titles.”
“Yeah, I Am a Japanese Writer and How to Make Love to a Negro Without Getting Tired are supercool. But I bet he keeps them all for himself; those writing types are always arrogant. And surely we can come up with something ourselves.”
“Do you have an idea then?”
“What do you think of Spelling Mistake Cookies?”
“What does that mean?”
“Nothing. It’s a dream I had. I was at my mother’s, but not where she lives now, more like our house on Seventh, but it wasn’t really our house on Seventh because in my dream it had a basement. My sister was there, and my dad, too, even though my dad had fucked off long before we were on Seventh, but anyway… At some point I went into the kitchen and there were cookies in the oven. I asked my mother what kind they were and she said, ‘Spelling mistake cookies.’ I forget the rest of the dream, but when I got up I remembered the spelling mistake cookies and thought it was a punchy phrase. Seems like it would make a good title. Anyway, it would pique people’s curiosity.”
Document 1 Page 7