Reviewing and translating one's first text, thirty-five years later

After thirty-five years, I'm dusting off the first text that kick-started my (small) career as a writer. Its publication was the result of what you'd call happy chance.

I was working for a small graphic design shop whose owner was an avid reader. I'd given her Le Putain to read so she could tell me what she thought. I'd only just gone back to writing after ten years of near-total silence, having come out of university with a vague generalist degree.

Jocelyne came back to me, I believe, the next day to say she'd liked it. Right around then, one of our clients, Antonio D'Alfonso, publisher and owner of Guernica, walked into our offices. Without any preamble, Jocelyne announced to this publisher:

“Guy's a writer. Read this.”

I didn't even have time to protest before Antonio was already promising to read it. I then left for a two-week vacation. When I got back, a letter was waiting for me — because yes, back then, people still wrote letters. Antonio was offering to publish this short, 4,800-word story!

Probably a year later, I held the little book in my hands. I was pumped. There was, naturally, a joint launch with other Guernica publications. My family was invited. During the event, one of my brothers-in-law came up to me.

“There's a mistake in the book.”

“What?”

He immediately showed me the page he'd opened at random in this 48-page text, printed in large type: "maintenat" instead of "maintenant."

“How is that possible? I cried. There were, what, ten of us proofreading and re-proofreading this text?”

The damage was done. The publisher simply shrugged, smiling. No one — and he was right not to worry about it — ever rubbed the mistake in my face, since, after all, it was just a typo. The blame, if any, belonged to the publisher.

That didn't stop me from getting a nice review in the trendy paper of the day, Voir.

Silence after that. As with everything else. I quickly learned to stay humble in that already crowded world of publishing. Full of pride, I went to visit a bookstore to see where they'd placed my little book. There it was, on the new-Quebec-releases table, but it was so small it got lost next to some doorstop by the likes of Marie Laberge or Michel Tremblay.

Incidentally, every time I published a book, Michel Tremblay happened to publish one of his own. Granted, he was putting out maybe one a year. I never stood a chance against him — or against anyone else, for that matter.

I was bitter about it for a long time, until I finally had to face the fact that it didn't do any good. My family, especially my father, would gently serve me that little bit of vinegar: that what mattered was having fun, that my writing was a hobby.

He meant no harm by it, and he was quite right. Unless you want to make a career of it and do everything it takes to succeed, success will only ever be modest — appreciated, but it won't pay your bills.

There's so much more to say on that subject, though it shouldn't even be the point of this blog post, since what I actually need to announce is that I've reread, reworked, and translated this book, as I've done with my other out-of-print titles.

Thirty-six years, then, if you count the writing period. Jupiter has gone around the Sun three times. It really is a cycle ending — and beginning again — for me, just on a different scale. The passage of time is a strand of DNA. The Sun, on its invisible course, drags its captives through the unknowable void of the universe, forming a helix, more or less symbolic and more or less real. Some mysteries seem built only to feed our equally twisted neurons…

I'll settle for these observations without trying to wring any wisdom from them. Le Putain is a symbol of who I am as a writer. So I reread it with a good deal of apprehension, immediately cut a few sentences, and, by the second part, I'd fallen behind and noticed a weakness in tone that needed fixing.

Indeed, by the third "chapter" — if you can call ten pages of text a chapter — I didn't like a shift in voice. In the first two parts, I'd stuck to the inner voice of the first character, Paul. But in the third part, it was all Marthe, who kept telling herself all sorts of things. I found that frankly clumsy. I suppose I'm just not fond of being an omniscient author. That's probably part of my narrowness, my weakness, even my laziness. Who knows.

I took the time to bring everything back to Paul, which also meant rewriting the last part. Finally, I decided to change the female character's name, since she was called Marthe in the original. Marthe! The name of the main character in L'Effet Casimir! That really wouldn't do. Are we so shut in on our own little universe that we keep repeating the same stars?

I asked ChatGPT to suggest other names.

“Solange?”

“No.”

“Mireille?”

“Even less so. Find me something more distant, more mysterious.”

“Nalini?”

“Oh, interesting.”

“It's a name that could be of Indian or Egyptian origin.”

“I'd have to immerse myself in the culture of those countries.”

“Not necessary, and for such a short book…”

“You're right.”

AI is often right when all it's doing is feeding your own shortcuts. Nalini it is, then: a woman of hazily Indian origin, wealthy, in the middle of a divorce, who, having been hurt more than once, is out for revenge. We'll keep it vague; the reader will fill in the rest. Probably better that way.

Translating the title gave me trouble too. How do you translate Le Putain? Impossible, Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini all declared in unison. I know all too well that English doesn't formalize the masculine and the feminine.

What's more, the cherry on the sundæ: Claude pointed out that while Whore might do the trick, there was an amusing wrinkle. In 1991, the very year my text was published, Kurt Russell — yes, that Russell — released his film Whore.

Of all things. Claude warned me this could create an unfortunate collision in internet searches, but that it might also work in my favor. Good to know! I'm not quite seeing how. Michel Tremblay on one side, Kurt Russell on the other — pfft!

The important thing, as Dad used to say, was to have fun. That much is undeniable. But what really matters lies elsewhere. It's not so much about pleasing yourself or passing the time, but about honestly submitting to the fine feelings you owe it to yourself to listen to. Never let the wine of your dreams evaporate in the bottle. Drink it all, and swear an oath to Jupiter that you'll do better on the fourth go-round.

The text is available to read online or as an epub here: https://guyverville.ca/livres/le-putain