Michelle Bailat-Jones

Writer, Translator, Reader

Posts from the ‘Jean-Louis Fournier’ category

Jean Louis Fournier – Where We Going, Daddy

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Today at Necessary Fiction I reviewed Where We Going, Daddy by Jean Louis Fournier and translated by Adriana Hunter:

Where We Going, Daddy is not a memoir in the traditional sense. This is not Fournier’s attempt to work his way to some form of catharsis through well-structured essays, poetic descriptions of his suffering and a philosophical attitude toward Thomas and Mathieu’s handicap. This slim book, written in part as a letter to his sons and in part a collection of vignettes of remembered moments, is appropriately stark.

Click here for the full review.

more Fournier

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We are snowed in today on my little mountain so instead of visiting the region with my sister and brother-in-law, we’re all snuggled down in various corners of the house with mugs of tea and books. Lovely to have bookworms for visitors.

And I thought I’d take a few moments to spend some time on this somewhat neglected (of late) blog…

Last spring I read a difficult, very emotional book called Ou on va, Papa? by the French writer Jean-Louis Fournier. The book is a memoir, dealing with Fournier’s life with his two disabled sons. My reactions to the book are here and here. As I mentioned when I first discussed the book, it was a controversial piece of literature when it came out (although it was selected to win the Prix Femina) because of the way it dealt with its subject. Fournier is a comedian and his book uses humor (quite dark) to approach his feelings of frustration and rage with respect to his difficult experiences. Despite the challenging nature of the emotional tone, I enjoyed the book and Fournier’s writing. Mainly because it was exceedingly honest about the conflicting emotions a parent must encounter when raising a child who will always be different, about the disappointments and anger which must have been an integral part of his day to day relationship with his sons.

I mention the book again for two reasons. First, it has finally come out in English and is called Where are we going, Daddy? I expect there will be some continued controversy as the book reaches a broader audience. And I am very curious to see the American reaction to the book since it doesn’t ever attempt to locate a positive aspect of Fournier’s experience. It isn’t depressing, at least I didn’t think so, and it was profoundly moving.

The second reason I bring this book up again is that when I originally discussed it, there was some question about what this same story would look like from the perspective of Fournier’s ex-wife, Agnès Brunet, the mother of Matthieu and Thomas. A thoughtful commenter pointed me in the direction of her blog (which is in French) and is very interesting. She has a clearly different perspective than Fournier on the lives of their sons….or perhaps she simply has a very different manner of expressing her emotional response to their shared experience. I am not interested in deciding which version is the truth, or even more compelling – they are both powerful narratives and both undoubtedly true.

What is interesting to me as a reader is how Fournier found the words to express, or attempt to express, what must have been a devastating, heartbreaking, exhausting long-term reality. He expresses his dismay and sorrow with great eloquence; even the parts that made me uncomfortable were compelling in a literary sense. As a reader and a writer, I can’t help admire that literary journey.

Jean-Louis Fournier – Où on va, papa?

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For those of you who read my post from Friday, I did manage to get through Où on va, papa? over the weekend. It turned out to be a relatively smooth read once I could take some personal distance from the book. This was really the only way for me to read it – to take myself and my own intangible, half-defined worries about impending parenthood away from my reading experience. And really, I think Fournier’s story deserves to be treated on its own terms, without putting any of the reader in there. Eventually, as I read deeper into his experience and began to understand how difficult it must have been for him to write the book, there was simply no room left for any consideration about me. As it should be.

As I mentioned before, Où on va, papa? is a memoir about what it was like to raise his two mentally disabled sons. His honesty in terms of his experience is one of the most disarming elements of the book. A combination of anger, disappointment, guilt, frustration and a complicated love. There is humor in the book, but his humor is the uncomfortable kind, a humor of grief. He uses humor a bit like a weapon, a kind of protection. I think as long he says the worst thing first, no one can take him by surprise.

The book is really a collection of tiny little flashes, short reflections or anecdotes that move more or less chronologically from the birth of his first son, Mathieu, followed two years later by the shock of having a second son, Thomas, with essentially the same level of handicap. They eventually have a third child, although they considered terminating the pregnancy until a doctor advised them otherwise. The doctor actually tells them that having a third handicapped child won’t change much for them in the long run, but that the chance to have a normal child would mean they wouldn’t have ended on a failure. Can you imagine? Fournier tells this short story without condemning the doctor, yet I think it’s clear how he felt when you see how acidic his narration becomes and how he ends the anecdote with an uncomfortable joke:

Notre chance s’est appellé Marie, elle était normale et très jolie. C’était normal, on avait fait deux brouillons avant. Les médécins, au courant des antécédents, étaient rassurés. Deux jours après sa naissance, un pédiatre est venu voir notre fille. Il a examiné longuement son pied, puis, tout haut, il a dit, « On dirait qu’elle a un pied-bot… » Après un petit moment il a ajouté, « Non, je me suis trompé. » Il avait certainement dit ça pour rire.

[We named our non-failure Marie. She was normal and very pretty. Which was expected, we’d made two rough drafts first. The doctors, aware of our history, were reassured. Two days after she was born, a pediatrician came to see our daughter. He examined her foot for a long time, and then announced, “It looks like she has a club foot…” After a short moment he added, “No, I must be wrong.” He certainly said this to get a laugh.]

Some of the book is written like a conversation between Fournier and his two sons. It’s clear he harbors a huge amount of guilt for what he imagines their life must have been like. His oldest son, Matthieu, dies at the age of fifteen. His younger son, Thomas, fades away in an institution. Fournier can’t seem to forgive himself, or fate, for that matter, for putting the three of them through this difficult experience.

Où on va, papa doesn’t have little gems of wisdom for anyone in a difficult situation. It is intensely personal, avoids any and all platitudes, and doesn’t come to any satisfying emotional wrap-up. I can’t help approving of the honesty in that. There simply aren’t answers to most of Fournier’s questions.

I often think of memoir as a means to catharsis. I envision the writer sitting down at the end of his or her life, or after some significant experience, and going back over the details of what happened, mining that time period for what it taught them, what it brought to their understanding of their life and purpose. Fournier’s take on this exercise doesn’t come with any real sense of catharsis; it is so much more raw and unprocessed. Less a meditation on his experience and more a testament.

Just a last note to finish up, the rights for Où on va, papa? have been sold to an American publisher, so hopefully in the next year or so an English version will become available.   

 

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