I’m not a summer reading

I mailed five copies of Les Mailles sanguines, the first one to Les Éditions..., whose reading committee suggested that I propose a second version. Two other copies were sent by e-mail to more "younger" Quebec houses. Another copy, by mail, to a large and former Quebec publishing house. Finally, one last text, tonight, at a French publisher.

These five actions were done without hope but out of necessity. I have no illusions, I am not building me any castle, I am already cautious about rereading this text, I remain unsatisfied.

Of course.

I have a few people who are currently planning to read my text. Only one has completed the reading so far. He said that the book was enjoyable, even if it is not a novel for the summer.

That goes without saying.

This comment is not new to my writing. I am a guy who doesn’t live in the summer. Even if I have glibness and can make people laugh, if I know how to have a conversation like others grow flowers, I feel more excluded from celebrations, just as I gladly dispense with them. I am not into laces, hate emptiness. I thirst to enjoy and sublimate.

My writing, therefore, seeks that magic which transcends everyday life without fleeing into the upper realms of a sharp and exacerbated intellectualism. I certainly would have liked to have lived in Romantic times. Without the drama, without the outpourings.

So I send this manuscript which will have taken so long to be born. I put my soul into it, full and complete. This does not make it, de facto, a work that will please. We prefer summer, and its sun, prefer for drunkenness.

However, happiness, I believe, is a beautiful plant, firmly rooted in anguish that is not very nourishing. Beauty is eaten cold, between two seconds of combat.