Names For The College Annual Fest

Americanity

* I repeat here the text delivered at the Roundtable "American Writing" organized by Andree A. Michaud, 24 February 2009.

I was born September 11, 2001, back welded to a futon orange, feet on the ground to keep from fleeing. I woke before the images appear on-screen aircraft interlocking towers. Until this morning I can not rid myself, I had had before the world and the political attitude of the pampered child who believes the world is going on outside, away from her. I was not so young, however, which means I had no excuse. But I never really felt involved, affected by what I saw on the news. The collapse of the World Trade Center had good happen to hundreds of miles from home, I could no longer shrug and say that this does not affect me. The American continent was shrinking, while the cooled coffee into the cup that I had forgotten in my hand.

I never thought my writing in terms of Americanness. Maybe because I have never, or so little then, thought the literature under the auspices of a national body, but according to the authors within me or with me for a while. I do know that I was more in common with Russian literature than the French. And until I am able to read American novels in English, I knew that some of this literature, authors like Paul Auster, whose translations by Christine LeBoeuf made me shudder as I recognized that she knew nothing the North American reality. As to what the North American reality could well be, I was not persuaded to offer a response that is yours.

I think what has changed, Sept. 11, initially only not affected my relationship with writing, but my relationship with the world. I saw the same TV images that the Americans. I heard the same stories. I had, in fact, access the same information that the residents of the United States not located directly in the city of New York. And what I saw opened my eyes, making me doubt things taken for granted for so long: security, everyday buildings. In collapsing towers, revealed to me how the view of the protected western that I was insecure. I could not, in fact, act as if this was happening for example in the Middle East could affect me.

By changing the look I was asking about the world, it is inevitable that the events of September 2001 also change my writing. I did not put in writing immediately around events, it would take me years to get there. But I started thinking about my relationship with writing and literature based either on the language in which I wrote and read the French, but according to membership of a continent, America. Not that I develop in my writing detailed thinking about the question: I am simply conscious of living in America, my relationship with the world, landscape, space, politics itself is a U.S. report.

The question, doubt, anxiety, is becoming more Americans than North America. After all, I spend so much time now to read in English that I find myself starting News in English, and having to make a conscious effort to repeat in French. I do not know where that can take me. I only know that if France continued to exert a certain appeal, I can not deny that my eyes now turn to America. Maybe I'm the result of this cultural bombardment came from our neighbors to the south: television, news, literature, cinema. Or maybe all this is it the result of a simple proximity between the two nations were born almost simultaneously, and having been built on a relatively short period.

I know define myself first as an American, in the sense of belonging mainland, appears to some as an abandonment of the real identity of Quebec. After all, my growing attachment to literature, culture and the English language is it not about to cause my assimilation, this same fight against which Quebec? Yet it seems to me that what Americanness means, for me at least, this is the principle of a meeting: cultures and microcultures Quebec, Canadian, Americans, Native American and Mexican feeding off one another and freeing a commitment to "filial" with Europe. This filial attachment is not bad if it allows us to recognize some of our roots. But he can not prevent us from recognizing that the continent on which we built has its own story, a story we have partly created, partly inherited from its first inhabitants, transformed and adapted in part from what we have brought with us from Europe. And I thought, at least at this moment, be inhabited by a culture and literature U.S., the fact remains that I keep a certain distance before them, the one that gives me my position of Quebec. I therefore different states Americanness and unity, since they have no monopoly on this continent. In sum, it is perhaps less for me to define my relationship with Americanness in exclusive terms, to place America, Quebec, Canada, the United States, France, etc.. In opposition and more see my relationship with the world through the points of encounter between different worlds. I am, after all, the generation that has seen the world shrink over the web. It is therefore perhaps not surprising that I do not feel the need to define myself according one identity, one belonging.

I was born September 11, I said at the beginning. Not that this event has imported more than others in the history of mankind. But it's probably because it is only today that I realized that I was part of that humanity, especially when I realized that this plaque, which I found somewhere on the Atlantic Ocean, was neither too large nor too small it might seem at first sight.

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The truth? (2)

If the mass of facts hangs over the events of September 11, 2001, also because they seem inevitable. I will not repeat here the journey of these figures. I only say this: write 11 September 2001, perhaps it is primarily to provide a space through the facts, for they are undeniable, the veil event. Also at Blue Metropolis, Marc Zaffran, alias Martin Winkler explained that all the medical facts of his various novels were fair, verifiable. It was important for him that fiction is not, in short, an opportunity to misinform. So he gave a role to fiction, a "mission".

A friend of mine, very good indeed, wrote a novel about Sept. 11, because force him to talk, I ended up infected. This is great news, very solid, with an interesting character. Except that. Except that it plays with reality, with what would be the situation at the top of the north tower, at the restaurant Windows on the World.

How much room do we have the facts? Certainly, they must move, transform, adapt, short, cross through writing. But before a real event, history, how far can we go? My friend said precisely, we can do everything. And normally I would agree. Normally, that is, for anything that does not concern September 11, 2001. This project, in which I joined three years ago. That fiction can not help but invent what happened behind the shiny facade of the towers, there's no doubt. My problem is elsewhere: the facts, data, dates, times, I can not circumvent, avoid, in short, I can not deny them. They are there. To write my September 11, one of my characters is a space out of those facts that I have to spare. And I think this is so, being as just as possible as "real" as possible, that I will be able to write around this event. I am not a historical novel, but to write, I need to know that this thing under and the changing face (sometimes short stories, sometimes pulling the novel) can not be contested on its facts: everything else, yes. But the facts, the likelihood that my characters could have existed, even if they are completely invented, no. No one has survived up to the point of impact in the north tower. At the restaurant Windows on the World, heat, smoke was suffocating. To the 78th floor of the south tower, the survival impact of the second aircraft was not impossible but rare.

I have of the event that facts scattered images seen on television, photographs, stories heard. To rebuild it, give it meaning, I fill the gaping spaces left between these facts. I am not a history book, I remember. But if I do not believe that my book has a "mission", it seems he can not lie. He can not divert the facts. Everything else, yes, the rest is the image we wanted to give the event, its crystallization in the figures (the hero, the victim, the good, the bad guy). Freedom to write September 11, she comes from a search of reality for me based not on an abandonment of truthfulness, but on a negotiation with reality: Can I convert, I have to accept.

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The truth? (1) Peter and Eva

I often think back to my brother's accident. The facts are indisputable: a man alone in his car on a Wednesday evening, deviates slightly from its route, a few miles from his home and finds himself in the path of a truck he can not avoid. The force of impact does not forgive. The truck ends up in a cornfield, the man's car is destroyed. Those are the facts. I was fine try to understand the incomprehensible, I could not know with certainty what had happened for a good driver as my brother found where he was. All explanations have remained in the air even more difficult to consider that those quick to deconstruct because they are too afraid. I do not believe in suicide as an option, I will say right now: my brother was much too specific, determined to risk to fail, to survive, or to intentionally hurt someone. But he got sick? The winds were strong it seems, that evening. His jeep he was deported by a flurry came from the fields? And if the cause was a mere moment of inattention, as every driver has at one time or another, like my brother might have been very often during his twenty years of driving? I do not know.

After his death, accompanying the reason for which I had no answer, because the one who could explain what had happened could no longer respond, I asked how. Medically. Almost coldly. No, not cold, it's not true. Instead, methodically: I wanted to understand how the body of this man that I loved so much had been abandoned. My brother, when he was small, always said "want to see." I think about it, here now and realize that if he wanted to see me, I wanted to understand. So when I have not heard from my brother that the memories of the night he died, the shock of seeing him there, still, I wanted to understand the mechanics of his body, his wounds, to reach, difficult to admit that my older brother had no chance, and that had he survived, it would have been a way he would have rejected outright.

What remains there after the death of a loved one? Facts subside at some point. They are there, they still veiled, but there comes a time when to understand, to grasp this new reality, we must look at things differently, to reconstruct a narrative of the event which will incorporate these facts in the best case, but that will fill the spaces that the facts do not explain. And ultimately, here, now that my brother had felt unwell, he forgot to look before him, he was killed by a burst of anger or looking for a phone, do not change much to the fact that he is gone. Why, how, do not repair anything.

I do not write the death of my brother, yes. Or rather, I have written every day since October 25, 2006, for me to understand, to not accept it but live with it, learn to see beyond it and find my brother, my family life. (I know it's cheesy ...? Make way ...)

James Frey at Blue Metropolis, insisted today that the facts and truth are two. It is not wrong: the facts may be immutable, they are fragmented: they trace the portrait of an event can only be pierced. Telling it fill those holes, it adjust the facts to reach a truth (of the experiment, the subject of the current text) for the real drama of this, whether the death of my brother or September 11, become the reality of the character of the novel, new.

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It would, for they understand, that his portrait is as true as possible, he would like to say that she was still crying after. That was what had attracted more than his eyes, more than passion waving his hands over his body swimmer although she hated the smell of public pools. After love, she was crying, quiet tears, on either side of her cheeks, at the end outside of his eyes. He was worried the first time, then he realized that it was at that time, when the tears flowed, she enjoyed.

He had known several women during his adult life, women sometimes feel the need to support their orgasm noises, sounds and words, and spent his early years when he needed evidence to suggest adequate fit to give pleasure, he began to distrust noisy. It was so easy, even Peter had to pretend he began to look for other signs in its partners, more discreet signs. The tremor in one hand behind his back. A sound in the back of the throat. Eyelid opening suddenly. Peter loved to follow the rise and the enjoyment of women he met, but some feared the watchful eyes at a time when they would have desired so absorbed in their bodies than their eyes were lover disturb something.

Their first night could be described as an error. A flirt lift too much alcohol. A bed. Peter and Eva. The mess of clothes thrown behind them as they staggered into the room. The cavalcade of hands, heads may face, moving an arm, a leg, to make room for this other thing, this sudden movement unified. A cry, no, not a cry, a sound came from the bottom of the gorge of Eva, and a deeper panting Peter. Sounds as indistinct as their movements. As concentrated as the sensations.

But it was only after things started, after that first night Peter did not notice anything special about Eva, and Eva did that when she had to do, felt what she felt, and went home at dawn with the number of Peter on his Palm Pilot.

He tells it this way, the handrail on the hot metal banister. Here are some stories now that the feet are struggling in the water coming from sprinklers, as useless as a small tea cup to bail the Titanic. He knows that, while he advances, he knows without seeing something that thousands of sheets of paper flying from the top of Tower, confetti for a Tuesday party.

Eva cried. A tear on either side of her face. He knew how she enjoyed. He repeats that he, Peter Thornbridge, 38, as if a foretaste, he kept it alive, it stayed alive. Steps, one after another, the surf on water levels, the sweat on his back and his hand, the heat of the stairwell. With the enjoyment of Eva, small, very small details that prevent it from shaking down ant, wise and row, while his whole body cried out that he must, out now, without delay. Time is not waiting, and yet that is all Peter is now for 49 minutes.

When stops to let another company of firefighters, Peter reads the safety of a fire extinguisher. As if the prospect of fire eating his body, the average man with the concentration required to integrate the rules for using a fire extinguisher. To measure the distance between itself and fire, aim correctly, press the trigger. Peter asked about the number of fire extinguishers in the tower and wondered if anyone up there, working to attack the fire. He begins to descend.

Strange is not it, in a city like New York where, at rush hour, do not hesitate to push to enter the subway, while that to gain a few minutes to arrive earlier at their destination, strange that someone somewhere expects that thousands of people use the stairwells in a calm way and asked. Apparently yes, if it believes the relative calm with which the feet follow the flow of water now continuous sweeping. One step at a time. Politely. Wisely. A little more, and they would take all by the hand, two by two, singing songs from school.

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The impossible encounter

I constantly stress to students: Be generous with your characters, do not let them down. Accompany them, instead of judging them. I know it may be almost anything, from rhetoric to gain acceptance to aspiring writers need to treat well its characters, write correctly, not on the page garrocha hoping that the reader can follow. My students often resist: bin there, ma'am, it just happened! Maybe. Maybe. But I was not there. Your player was not there. Then reinvent them, instead of trying to transpose.

past year, I is not moving as briskly in the compendium. Of course, there is the lack of time, writing articles, giving courses, work, seminars, life. But it's not just that. I have not finished writing Bob and Helen because I do not know yet what will happen to them. Because Helen is the 78th floor of the south tower, and frankly it is not a good place to be on the morning of September 11. So I can not write it slightly. It focuses on these little beasts, as I often say. It focuses on those we create. Then he drives us as a conscience, which we do not want them to suffer unnecessarily.

The good characters, "I sometimes tell my students, they stay a while. You see them, we hear them. They exist. Some do not leave us, as James, the first collection, perhaps because I have not finished to write it. So from time to time, we come back, we find them, like old family members.

Why I think that tonight, when I could either a) correct such students or b) read a good novel? Because I am amazed at what just happened in a story. Leah. Leah is not an easy story. I try to tell something happened to him, telling how she wanted to die and how it seems to survive. I do not know what will happen yet. She is on the stairs, she falls back wanting, and I do not know if she went to the exit, it will make its survival. But what is strange that she just met Ginny Cooper.

must understand that even if the characters in my book are bound by the events of September 11, 2001, they did not know each other. It's not so crazy: with 45,000 visitors each day, can we really be surprised that about twenty people in two huge towers do not be encountered?

Ginny is just the opposite, it seems to me, Leah. Where Leah look back because she wants to die and wondered why it survives, Ginny, she looks forward resolutely, not to see death and fear. This goal Is Not a morality play. I did not start writing in response to one another, to bring something to light, to make judgments about Leah, or Ginny. And I do not write with a plan in mind, a clear idea of where the characters go, or the collection itself. My friend JSD, he likes the plans. Not me! I feel this way, and it was not until the very end that I know I'm done.

So you understand why, when Leah had not heard the martial determined, Ginny, I jumped. What these two share the descent, these two and not others, Donald, Tilly, Bob this opens a whole series of opportunities that I never even thought of.

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Leah (3)

She dreams take off his shoes, his socks, his jacket, his bloody ID card which continues to press on its shores. She dreams mostly repeat his morning back up there. She sat at his desk while his colleagues was frightened, calm, composed, repeating to them that followed them here, right now, do not expect me. Jeered the bill a bit, but the smell of smoke, noises on the upper floors, that would suffice for that left alone, after making her promise that she would find the bottom.

The woman before she goes down with an iron determination. Leah envy, thinking to put a hand on her shoulder and ask, naively, as it does to be so confident when the gypsum falls and towers tremble. She hears roughly and find it strange these words into the mouth of a woman in the stairway of a tower in a New York populated by guessing that Leah and sirens television camera.

On rising, morning after the marriage of Eleonora, Leah felt calm. For the first time since May, insomnia had not tortured. She took it for a sign, confirming that his decision was correct. She knew it would take several weeks to turn around in his things, give items, set the paperwork, make sure that nobody discovers incriminating secrets. It was not much to hide. But Leah had always been keen to preserve her privacy. When she laughed again, and Leah think of this as she is guided by the Chieftain before her, Leah said that growing up in a house with no doors and rooms populated by 5 boys had made her the wild it was. Not surprisingly, she recounted, when girl is caught with his pants the first time she really tries to discover what the girls talking at recess.

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Leah (2) Leah

The problem, says Leah as she feels behind it the pressure of hundreds of marchers, the problem is that I do not know why I have to rebuild myself. One morning in May, she stood up and everything was complicated. The day before, nothing, no real problem, some financial troubles, a little trouble at all. And then the next morning it was as if the sky had fallen on his head, and she could not get out of bed for two days. Unable to move. Unable to do anything but cry, cry tears that she came from nowhere, who swallowed, choked him. She thought she would die there in his bed on a Saturday in May, while the outside looked like spring to summer. She left the blankets and take over the tears ceased to hold the hoarse cry that shook his body and waited death.

But death did not come. And Leah found momentum, enough to go to the doctor, between bicycles and taxis.

She's better, certainly. Do not spend hours curled up in bed to settle her room and crying sounds she can not recognize. They came from so far. For a few weeks in July, Leah hoped that appeasement announced the end of the vacuum. She wanted to find, look in the mirror without scorn, without seeing the emptiness in her eyes that waved again. But since August, since August 17 in fact, Leah realized that the drug cocktail and the calm smile of his psychologist did hide the fact that big hole that replaces it.

August 17, Leah put on her best dress, the one that always gave him the urge to turn on itself to feel the smoothness and wrinkling of the fabric. The wedding of her friend Eleonora, on a ship, cruising the Hudson River, Leah smiled, while her dress tossed to the wind and the photographer looked into her telling him to settle a bit on the left. She danced, drank a little, ate well. His friends told him she had finally looks better. She nodded, grabbed a glass of champagne. Smiled. It was not a fake smile. But She did not smile for what they all believed.

Leah has never liked to leave things in plan. She came home very late marriage of Eleonora, drunk of sun and sea air. The mind clear, cons, for the first time since that May morning.

Good Nickname For Angie

and irony

Leah fights. Entangled with the jacket in the bag wedged between the ID card and the wallet it has not had time to put in the right compartment. She also fights with shoes too new and too tight, with the desire to sit there, not to move, to cry or to laugh or to cry. Most importantly, Leah fights with itself. This is not new, this struggle, Leah knows her well, it seems that she has lived since his birth. No, this is nothing new. Except that if the fight is the same, the cause this time is different. And it is with this that Leah is struggling, while its not swallow his shoes, that threatens to empty wallet on the floor, and she wondered why she always keeps advancing. The others, she understands. They want to survive. But she?

Leah came to work at 8.30 specific for what she knew his last day of work. Not only for the company. Tuesday would be her last Tuesday, she had decided to end it. His life was not so sad, if not empty. But it brought him nothing. Leah, since May, feels empty. Neutral. That's the good word: neutral. She wants to cry, scream, yell, she would dream to feel something, something other than silence in it which leaves him no respite. She does not smile even when the sun heats it or face the laughter of a child appears out of nowhere. All summer, she waited, hoping that something woke her. Saw a psychologist. Taken drugs, pills yellow, blue, white, who were bewildered and did not put more than the silence in her muted. Be patient, he said both the doctor that the psychologist. It takes time to rebuild.

The problem, says Leah as she feels behind it the pressure of hundreds of marchers, the problem is that I do not know why I have to rebuild myself.