Louis Émond

Louis Émond (born November 9, 1969 ) is a writer from Quebec .

biography

Émond was in Lévis , Quebec, Canada born and be received International Baccalaureate at the Petit Séminaire in Quebec City , where he among teachers as Monique Ségal and Albert Dallard studied . It was around this time that he discovered Noam Chomsky and wrote a dissertation on social satire in Les demis-civilisés , the novel Jean-Charles Harvey, which was banned for a long time. Admitted to the Honors Program at the Department of Physics at McGill University, he soon lost interest in his courses and instead spent his time in the library reading greedily the works of Friedrich Nietzsche , Milan Kundera and Stéphane Mallarmé . After briefly studying political science and art history at the Université de Montréal , he joined the literature program at the Université Laval .

After a year he left university life, finding it insufficiently challenging, and at the age of 20 devoted himself to writing his first novel, Le Manuscrit (The Manuscript). It was 12 years later released after which the author had worked through a series of jobs, twice in court proceedings was involved, a night in jail spent for public disorder and was rejected by publishers no less than 200 times. Suddenly, after a review by Réginald Martel, the respected critic at La Presse , who wrote, "Our national literature needs its immense talent," Émond was in the media spotlight amid comparisons with Hubert Aquin and the observation that his libertarian tone was the Corresponded to the spirit of Denis Diderot . So Hoc and "my character" became part of the literary consciousness. Soon he received two grants from the Canada Council for the Arts . Preferring solitude to the drudgery of media engagements, he left the country when the opportunity arose and spent two years in Southeast Asia . On his return he submitted his second novel, Le conte (The Story), to the prolific author and publisher Victor-Lévy Beaulieu , who, seeing in it both Yves Thériault and Maurice Blanchot in their shadows, was so enthusiastic, that he acquired the rights to the first novel and published the new one.

Émond, who is very critical of the world of publishing, wrote a short story in the form of an anonymous blog that shed light on some of the practices of publishing in France and Quebec. In 2009 he published the text entitled Le sottisier de l'édition ( Publishing Howler) on MySpace . In early 2010, out of a desire to push the boundaries of traditional publishing, he offered a temporary version of his third novel, L'aide-mémoire (The Reminder), as a free download .

Work

On the edge of mainstream literary literature, Louis Émond's novels are linked by an intimate logic. They are part of a cycle called Le scripte , which is embedded in an abstract geography populated by characters belonging more to the realm of the imagination than to genetics who return from one work to the next. They are primarily defined in terms of "my character", the narrator's double, including Hoc who is a distorted, almost negative reflection of "my character". Although his style appears complex, the script is precise and carefully rhymes, so Louis Émond's novels encourage the reader not to be fooled by the falsehoods of the narrative. Each of his works opens references to a variety of other types of text.

• His first novel, Le Manuscrit (2002), is the starting point for a meditation on the human condition that begins with the destruction of all ideals: "For a long time I thought I had to start all over again, start everything all over again," says the narrator. This is the story of a man who tries to remain objective when thinking about what is on his mind, his own downfall, but gradually loses the serenity, objectivity, distance that he has created.

• His next novel, Le conte (2005), tells the story of an excursion in the snow that soon turns into a kind of road trip inward. The act of childbirth becomes a metaphor for exploring a life change that leads to doubt and a search for the soul. Here the author explores the idea of ​​a "profane search for that which may appear sacred".

• His third novel, The Aide-Memoire (coming soon), is closer to the manuscript than the fairy tale and closes the triptych of these three works. In it the author examines the topics of perception, violence and alienation. The novel tells of the misfortune of a character who ultimately tries to turn it into life. The auxiliary memoir is written in the new French spelling.

Web links

• le scrpte.net , Louis Émond's official website (fr)
• L'Île , literary information center for Quebec writers (fr)