Biography

Émond was born in Lévis, Quebec

Lévis, Quebec

Lévis is a city in eastern Quebec, Canada. It is located on the south shore of the St. Lawrence River, opposite Quebec City. A ferry links Old Quebec with Old Lévis, and two bridges, the Quebec Bridge and the Pierre Laporte Bridge, connect western Lévis with Quebec City. The Société de transport de...

, Canada

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

 and earned his International Baccalaureate at the Petit Séminaire in Quebec City

Quebec City

Quebec , also Québec, Quebec City or Québec City is the capital of the Canadian province of Quebec and is located within the Capitale-Nationale region. It is the second most populous city in Quebec after Montreal, which is about to the southwest...

, where he studied under such teachers as Monique Ségal and Albert Dallard. At this time he discovered Noam Chomsky

Noam Chomsky

Avram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics" and...

 and wrote a thesis on the social satire in Les demis-civilisés, the Jean-Charles Harvey novel which for a long time was banned. Accepted into the Honours Program in the Department of Physics at McGill University

McGill University

Mohammed Fathy is a public research university located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The university bears the name of James McGill, a prominent Montreal merchant from Glasgow, Scotland, whose bequest formed the beginning of the university...

, he soon lost interest in his courses and instead took to spending his time in the library, where he read voraciously the works of Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...

, Milan Kundera

Milan Kundera

Milan Kundera , born 1 April 1929, is a writer of Czech origin who has lived in exile in France since 1975, where he became a naturalized citizen in 1981. He is best known as the author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, and The Joke. Kundera has written in...

 and Stéphane Mallarmé

Stéphane Mallarmé

Stéphane Mallarmé , whose real name was Étienne Mallarmé, was a French poet and critic. He was a major French symbolist poet, and his work anticipated and inspired several revolutionary artistic schools of the early 20th century, such as Dadaism, Surrealism, and Futurism.-Biography:Stéphane...

. After briefly studying political science and art history at Université de Montréal

Université de Montréal

The Université de Montréal is a public francophone research university in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It comprises thirteen faculties, more than sixty departments and two affiliated schools: the École Polytechnique and HEC Montréal...

, he entered the literature program at Université Laval

Université Laval

Laval University is the oldest centre of education in Canada and was the first institution in North America to offer higher education in French...

.

After a year, he left university life behind, finding it insufficiently challenging, and devoted himself to writing his first novel, Le manuscrit (The Manuscript), at age 20. It was published 12 years later, after the author had worked his way through a string of jobs, was twice involved in legal proceedings, spent a night in jail for public disorder, and was rejected by publishers no fewer than 200 times. Suddenly, after a review by Réginald Martel, the respected critic with La Presse

La Presse (Canada)

La Presse, founded in 1884, is a French-language Monday-Saturday newspaper published in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It is owned today by Groupe Gesca, a subsidiary of Power Corporation of Canada. The Sunday version was dropped in 2009.-Description:...

, who wrote: "Our national literature is in need of his immense talent," Émond found himself in the media spotlight amid comparisons with Hubert Aquin

Hubert Aquin

Hubert Aquin was a novelist, political activist, essayist, filmmaker and editor....

 and the observation that his libertine tone echoed the spirit of Denis Diderot

Denis Diderot

Denis Diderot was a French philosopher, art critic, and writer. He was a prominent person during the Enlightenment and is best known for serving as co-founder and chief editor of and contributor to the Encyclopédie....

. Thus it was that Hoc and "my character" became part of literary consciousness. He was soon awarded two Canada Council for the Arts grants. Preferring solitude to the drudgery of media commitments, he left the country when the opportunity arose, and spent two years in Southeast Asia

Southeast Asia

Southeast Asia, South-East Asia, South East Asia or Southeastern Asia is a subregion of Asia, consisting of the countries that are geographically south of China, east of India, west of New Guinea and north of Australia. The region lies on the intersection of geological plates, with heavy seismic...

. Upon his return, he submitted his second novel, Le conte (The Tale), to prolific author and publisher Victor-Lévy Beaulieu

Victor-Lévy Beaulieu

Victor-Lévy Beaulieu is a Québécois writer, playwright and editor.Born in Saint-Paul-de-la-Croix, in the area of Bas-Saint-Laurent, Victor-Lévy Beaulieu began primary school at Trois-Pistoles, moving later to Montréal-Nord.He began his public writing career at the Montreal weekly Perspectives,...

 who, seeing in it shades both of Yves Thériault

Yves Thériault

Yves Thériault, OC was a Canadian author.He was born in Quebec City to Alcide and Aurore Thériault. On April 21, 1942, he married Germaine Blanchet, with whom he would have two children, Marie-José and Yves-Michel...

 and Maurice Blanchot

Maurice Blanchot

Maurice Blanchot was a French writer, philosopher, and literary theorist. His work had a strong influence on post-structuralist philosophers such as Jacques Derrida.-Works:...

, was so taken with it that he purchased the rights to the first novel and published the new one.

Highly critical of the world of publishing, Émond wrote a short story in the form of an anonymous blog that shone a light on some of the practices engaged in by publishers in France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 and Quebec

Quebec

Quebec or is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....

. In 2009 he published the text, entitled Le sottisier de l'édition (Publishers' Howlers), on MySpace

MySpace

Myspace is a social networking service owned by Specific Media LLC and pop star Justin Timberlake. Myspace launched in August 2003 and is headquartered in Beverly Hills, California. In August 2011, Myspace had 33.1 million unique U.S. visitors....

. Then, in early 2010, out of a desire to continue breaking down the boundaries imposed by traditional publishing, he offered his third novel, L'aide-mémoire (The Mnemonic), as a free download.

Quotations

Le manuscrit (The Manuscript):

• ... it could have been anywhere in the world because, in reality, it was always the same abstract place laid out around us. (III, V)
• Now that I see things a bit more clearly, I find I don't want to forget. The manuscript is part of me. My character retains this very life that lives on. What I remember now most of all is this story, what it has become, what you have read. (Epilogue)

Le conte (The Tale):

• At first it was felt that this end was premature, coming as it did without warning, but as the news spread, some thought that death could have struck much sooner. (L)

Les carnets du Conte (The Tale's Notebook):

• Writing this tale was not unlike mapping out my path. At its beginning, I aspired to achieve the ultimate milestones, to find the sacred in the temporal. What I found was life, love and death.
• What lies before you when you look at starting over again from nothing? It means treading a difficult, sometimes pitiless, path where answers are not easy to find, if they exist at all.

Works

On the fringes of the literary mainstream, the novels of Louis Émond are linked together by an intimate logic. They are part of a cycle, entitled Le scripte, which is set within an abstract geography peopled by characters who belong more to the realm of fantasy than to that of genetics and who reappear from one work to the next. They are defined primarily in relation to "my character", the narrator's double, including Hoc, who is a distorted reflection, almost a negative, of "my character".

• His first novel, The Manuscript (2002), is the starting point for a meditation on the human condition which begins with the destruction of all ideals: "for a long time I thought I had to start over again, start everything over again," says the narrator. This is the story of a man endeavouring to remain objective as he contemplates the thing that preoccupies him, his own downfall, but gradually he loses the equanimity, the objectivity, the distance he had created.
• His next novel, The Tale (2005), tells the story of an outing in the snow which soon turns into a sort of inward road trip. The act of birth becomes a metaphor for exploring a life change that leads to doubt and a searching of the soul. Here the author examines the idea of a "profane quest for that which may appear sacred".
• His third novel, The Aide-Memoire (2010), is closer in style to The Manuscript than it is to The Tale and brings to a conclusion the triptych formed by these three works. In it the author explores the themes of perception, violence and alienation. The novel tells of the misfortunes of a young man who, ultimately, seeks to transform them into life. The Aide-Memoire is written using the new French spelling.

External links

• (fr) le scripte.net, Louis Émond's official web site
• (fr) L'Île, Quebec Writers' Literary Infocentre
• (fr) Biographical note
• (fr) Le sottisier de l'édition (Publishers' Howlers)