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Le roman de monsieur de Molière at the Théâtre du Nouveau Monde: A review

Le Roman de Monsieur Molière au Théâtre du Nouveau Monde - Photo/Yves RENAUD

Between modernism and traditionalism: the constant debate between Corneille and Molière

The theatre adaptation of Mikhaïl Boulgakov’s novel Le roman de monsieur de Molière by the Théâtre du Nouveau Monde comments on the playwright’s chaotic life, and paints a vivid picture of the anxieties of devoting one’s life to being an artist. 

The audience did not need to be an aficionado of Molière to understand the intricacies of the play. 

The newly-restored Théâtre du Nouveau Monde, following the fire that erupted in the building earlier this year, seated 800 people and was nearly full. Most of the audience seated in the orchestra seemed of retired age, while younger people sat in the balcony.  

Though Molière’s life has been profusely copied and reimagined, this performance is contrasted by the unique proximity between the author and Molière. 

The 20th-century Ukrainian author Mikhaïl Boulgakov, much like Molière, was an artist unrecognized for his genius. They were both censured and silenced for their prose, receiving recognition after their deaths. 

Boulgakov plays on this theme in his novel, as is also present throughout the play, standing on the sidelines observing his written work unravel in front of him. Boulgakov’s and Molière’s characters intertwine and untwine themselves to unite and individualize their realities. 

For instance, Boulgakov frequently uses the first-person singular when narrating the play, as if he was himself Molière. While the story unfolds, Boulgakov never leaves the stage: he stays still, as a spectator. 

The audience barely notices him, as his movements are often immobilized by his role as narrator. He uses asides when he notes something specific that cannot be translated into action. 

The two-hour play, without intermission, highlights the continual chaos that surrounded Molière’s life as he was exposed to the pitfalls of wanting to resemble the great Corneille in tragedy, while never receiving the appraisal he thought he merited. 

The show played between themes of modernity and tradition, the former being reflected by Molière and the latter by Corneille. Their rivalry occupied most scenes, and made for a constant battle for mastering words that were both dramatic and entertaining. They played on words taken from their works while inlaying humorous formations as a form of satire. 

Jean de La Fontaine, the 17th-century French poet, was represented as a medium between the two. His character spoke his lines comically, referring to his previous works quite humourisly.

Boulgakov narrated Molière’s life as he acted on stage. This gave the audience a deeper understanding of his inner thoughts. There were short representations taken from his other plays, namely L’écoles des femmes, L’Avare and Tartuffe. 

Molière and his company L’Illustre Thêatre would often play out scenes that foreshadowed the well-known plays that would then be created. For example, when Molière was sick, and his wife Armande responded that no doctor would come to see him because of his work, the audience understood that Le médecin malgré lui had been written. 

The audience could understand the chronology of the story and Molière’s rising fame through costume changes. The dresses of the comedians became fancier and more intricate, and the vest Molière wore went from simple black to polished silver — a symbol of his rising social standing as a comedian who was being acknowledged. 

The first scene mirrors the last, as a bath is used for Molière’s birth and death. 
The show will go on tour across the province beginning Jan. 18.

Trevor Ferguson writes his way through trying times and forges ahead with new novels

A Canadian Novelist’s voyage through the literary frontier

Trevor Ferguson, also known by his crime writer pen name, John Farrow, has gone from teenage wanderer to bestselling fiction author. And after nearly six decades of writing, Ferguson remains as committed as ever to the craft of storytelling.

On a clear day, Ferguson can see Mount Baker in the distance, a far cry from the gritty streets of Park Extension where he grew up. He moved from his home in Hudson, Que., to Victoria, B.C., right before the pandemic struck.

“For a writer to be required to stay home and not move around much means business as usual,” Ferguson said. His day-to-day may not have been interrupted by the pandemic, but connecting with readers has proved challenging. “Dead in the water,” he said of his 15th novel, Roar Back, which was released last January. His most recent novel, Lady Jail, was released on Feb. 02.

Ferguson believes that the pandemic has cast a dark shadow over the publishing industry. “People are trying online engagement, but public readings are out, and travel is out, so it is far more difficult now to get a book into the hands of readers,” he said. “What’s not working out for writers will hurt publishers and booksellers, some will not survive.”

However, Ferguson is no stranger to obstacles. His childhood reads like a coming-of-age story in which the main character overcomes the harshness of a mesmerizing but hostile world. At 11, he narrowly escaped an assault while on his newspaper route. At 14, he ran away from home and ventured west where he worked odd jobs and began to write. There, he camped beneath the northern lights and was almost run over by a train. In a motel Bible, he wrote a promise to become a writer, and he kept his word.

“I had to break the bonds of trauma,” he said. “I’m lucky to have survived in those wilderness camps but having done so I have a deep appreciation for anyone’s willingness to gamble with one’s life to create a new beginning.”

These trials helped shape the writer he would eventually become.

“Hard experience, such as a violent attack intended to be sexual, or starving on the road as a kid, which really can rip a person apart, and being and feeling utterly alone in a hostile world, all these things formed me as a person and in a way shaped me as a writer, but helped to imbue a certain resilience which over a long career has been necessary.”

But there were also struggles on the page.

“I had to write through the Faulkner influence, and that took a decade of hard-slogging and much misery, before I could break that down and rewire how my brain worked and come out the other side with a voice that is my own,” he said. “That is the magic a writer is looking for: the natural voice that in its own way simulates breathing yet spits onto the page all manner of notion.”

Ferguson published his first novel, High Water Chants, in 1977 and went on to publish a host of critically acclaimed novels like Onyx John. Yet, a wide audience of readers eluded him. To support his writing, he continued to work odd jobs for years, including driving cabs and bartending. It was not until he began writing crime fiction under the name of John Farrow that his writing achieved commercial success.

Today, the author continues to be drawn to his detective muse, Émile Cinq-Mars.

“He is a mystic in a secular age with a great interest in cosmological sciences; a moral cop among ‘dirty’ cops and living in an amoral time. He’s conservative yet living with a younger wife and he’s a French-Quebecker whose wife is American; a faithful Roman Catholic yet he considers himself a heretic. A city cop who lives in the country with a stable of horses,” he explained. “There’s dimension and contradiction in everything he is and in much of what he does. I continue to discover wells and veins I hadn’t realized were there, so while the lazy writer in me might repeat myself from time to time, the better writer in me discovers much for the first time.”

In 2014, the author returned to literary fiction with his first Trevor Ferguson novel in a decade, The River Burns. However, he did not find the transition difficult. The prose in literary fiction is more demanding, he explained, but crime fiction requires greater attention to narrative drive.

“Good writing is good writing,” he said, regardless of the  genre. “A well-conceived, intelligent, well-written crime novel can blow away a lot of poorly craftly, ho-hum writing, even if it calls itself literary,” he said. “I think there is a distinction, in ambition and style, scope and narrative inclinations, but there is no automatic distinction in quality. That has to be earned and demonstrated.”

Ferguson seeks to engage his readers with multi-dimensional characters to match the complexity of the worlds they inhabit, regardless of book classification. He believes in the power of fiction and hopes that in his characters his readers will find a world beyond themselves. “Fiction is a way of restoring the world — not necessarily repairing it — but restoring its energy to carry on.”

The future of the publishing industry may be uncertain, but the author, whether telling stories as Ferguson or Farrow, has more projects lined up, including television and film writing. After a lifetime of traversing borders, both narrative and geographic, Ferguson continues to place his faith in fiction and is busy penning new chapters.

 

Feature photo by Rod Ferguson

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Student Life

A conversation with Pasha Malla, author of Fugue States

Concordia alumnus releases his latest novel and discusses his journey as a writer

On your next trip to the local bookstore, you might notice the eye-catching, colourful cover of a book titled Fugue States by Pasha Malla. Released on May 23 at a launch event at Librairie Drawn & Quarterly in Montreal, this novel tells the story of Ash, a young man who recently lost his father, a doctor from Kashmir, India. His loss reunites him with his childhood friend, Matt, and together they embark on a journey from Montreal to his father’s homeland of Kashmir.

Known for his fiction stories filled with witty banter and a keen attention to detail, Malla creates a refreshing sense of realism in Fugue States. “I wanted to write something that was a bit more realistic. I guess my other stuff was supernatural,” he said. “The end of the book changes from that a little bit, but for the most part, I wanted a plot with people moving through space and time and talking in a way that is familiar.” Malla extends that sense of familiarity to include his personal experiences. “All my other writings at this point have not been about myself or about my family from Kashmir and that political situation—then I asked myself, why? It’s part of who I am,” he said. According to Malla, the details in his latest novel are a combination of events from his life and stories people have told him.

A photo of Pasha Malla with his dog. Photo courtesy of Pasha Malla

Malla didn’t start his career as a novelist. Instead, he majored in film production at York University in Toronto. According to Malla, however, film production and screenwriting were not his strong suits. He discovered his true passion while studying abroad for a year in Australia. “It was a good year for me—it allowed me to figure out what I wanted to do,” Malla said. “I love movies, but I don’t want to make movies. I want to write books.” He then moved to Montreal and completed his master’s degree in English and creative writing at Concordia University. Since obtaining his graduate degree, Malla has written six books and collaborated on two other novels. His previous work includes The Withdrawal Method, All our Grandfathers are Ghosts, 1999 and People Park. Malla has also written a monthly column for The Globe and Mail and is a regular contributor to The New Yorker. In addition to his own writing, Malla teaches the art of writing at the University of Toronto and Brock University.

According to Malla, the meaning of the title, Fugue States, is a mental condition, like amnesia, when someone experiences a break from reality. “The title itself is a metaphor to the various themes explored in this novel such as memory, identity and the idea of Kashmir itself as a forgotten state,” he said.
“I like to look at what is a dominant narrative in the culture that I think could use some critiquing, and I try to figure out a way of writing against it, of offering an alternative,” Malla said. “I hope that people read it actively and reflect on it, but you can’t control that—it’s an unrealistic anxiety to feel that everyone is going to think what I want them to think.” In Fugue States, he tackles the dominant narratives about masculinity. He explores the meaning of being a man, and the kind of behaviour and toxic culture ideas about masculinity create. “I am trying to say things about misogyny or the way that masculinist culture has inbuilt sexism,” he said.

Malla also had the opportunity to travel to Kashmir with his father—a trip he hoped would provide him with deeper insight for the third part of his book, which takes place there. However, Kashmir was not what he expected. “The idealization does not match up with the reality, and this is what the theme of the book is,” Malla said. “The trip was emotionally difficult, but helpful.”

The process of writing Fugue States took Malla six years. According to Malla, the most difficult part of writing this book was getting the words right. “I like reading books and feeling that it’s perfect, it’s precise, exact and couldn’t be said any better. It’s probably why it took me six years,” he said. He added it’s also important to him that the story and its message be accessible to people with varying backgrounds and experiences. “If there were only one way [into the story], I feel I would have done a bad job,” he said.

Despite teaching writing to people of different ages, cultures and socioeconomic backgrounds, Malla said he has noticed that most people put too much pressure on themselves to find the perfect first line for their book. “I think people worry that the first thing they write is the start to their story. There’s all these great books that have these amazing first lines, and that’s what you want to do. But when you start writing, it’s like turning on the engine on a car. It’s the beginning of the voyage—maybe you still have to get gas or go get groceries and then eventually you get on the road,” Malla said. “It’s allowing yourself space to write things that maybe will not matter.”

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Student Life

A socio-political tale of motherhood and cultures meeting

Photo by Ana Hernandez

Concordia professor launches her debut novel, Arabic for Beginners

Despite the relentless rain on Thursday, April 6, about 50 people came to support Concordia professor Ariela Freedman for the launch of her acclaimed debut novel, Arabic for Beginners.

The bookstore Drawn & Quarterly hosted the intimate gathering, with many of Freedman’s friends, family, colleagues and readers present to show their support.

“I love publishing, and I rarely enjoy it more than when I am in a position to launch a first novel and introduce a new voice in literary firmament,” said Freedman’s publisher, Linda Leith, when introducing her at the event.

Ariela Freedman is an associate professor at Concordia. Arabic for Beginners is her first novel. Photo by Ana Hernandez.

Arabic for Beginners tells the story of Hannah, a Jewish woman from Montreal who spends a year in Jerusalem. She becomes fascinated by group of mothers from her son’s daycare because of the cultural differences she notices. Upon meeting Jenna, a Palestinian mother, Hannah begins to reassess her own beliefs about motherhood and Israel.

The idea for the novel came about when Freedman traveled to Jerusalem in 2008 for her sabbatical year. She had spent time in the city during her youth, but it was during this return trip with her family that she found herself looking at Israel from a different perspective.

“Coming with young children made the country open up for me and brought me into contact with people I would have never met otherwise,” Freedman told The Concordian.

The novel explores themes of motherhood, friendship and nationality.

During the launch, Freedman read a passage from the book where Hannah is in a car with Jenna and her daughter.  “Jenna smoked, drove and nursed,” she read. At this point in the novel, Hannah’s friendship with Jenna forces her to revisit her own assumptions about parts of her life, including parenting. The character contrasts Jenna’s behaviour with those of her “puritan” friends in Montreal who all quit drinking and smoking after having kids, and who buy organic foods and use water filters.

Freedman confessed the reason parenthood was a central theme in the novel is because of her own initial worries, confusion and curiosities surrounding it.

“In the first flush of motherhood, I couldn’t figure out how to keep space in my head for my own identity and ideas,” she said. “I was afraid I would vanish into this consuming role as so many women have.”

Freeman said it was also important for her to explore the Israel-Palestine conflict in her novel. Set during the Gaza war, the friendship Hannah and Jenna form is atypical because of their different cultural backgrounds. Freedman described the present-day political situation in Israel as “kaleidoscopic” and said “capturing it factually is elusive.”

Freedman said she wanted to tell the familiar story of the Arab and Jewish conflict but she did not want to focus on men and wars. Instead, she explored it through the small gestures and ordinary domestic tasks of women’s lives.

“By focusing on the characters and their relationships, I tried to not let the themes overwhelm the story,” Freedman said. “I like stories that seem constrained, but have dimension, like those old View-Master stereoscopes that you would peek through to simulate binocular depth perception.”

Freedman has written reviews and poems for several publications, including magazines such as Vallum, Carte Blanche, and The Cincinnati Review. In 2014, she was given a writing mentorship with Elise Moser by the Quebec Writers’ Federation (QWF). That was when Arabic for Beginners was really able to take off. That being said, Freedman recalls it was difficult to start the novel.

The launch took place in Mile End’s Drawn & Quarterly bookstore on Thursday, April 6. Photo by Ana Hernandez

“At a certain point, I decided that, if I wanted to write fiction, I just had to go ahead and do it without standing in my own way,” Freedman said.

Freedman said she sees herself as a reader first and a writer second. She wrote fiction as an undergraduate student, but went into literature in graduate school.

“That demanded a lot of my writing energy, but it also made the critical part of my mind so dominant that it became hard to produce creative work because I was always aware of where I fell short,” she told The Concordian. “Writing fiction has involved letting go of that critical voice.”

Freedman is currently working on another story that has potential to turn into a novel.

“The next thing I’m working on so far seems to be set in New York,” she said.

The author has lived in Calgary and London, but New York, Montreal and Jerusalem are three cities she said she particularly loves living in. “[They] provoke feelings of intense ambivalence,” she said. While Freedman said she would like to write a book set in Montreal, she remembered Margaret Atwood once saying it is easier to write about places from a distance.

Freedman also wanted to share some advice to aspiring writers: “I guess I’d add—for students who are writers—that it can be really useful to share your work, and to look for the people who can help you get it into the world.”

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Arts

Tales of intrigue and gentlemanly adventures

Press photo

Graphic novels, a storytelling medium that relies on both words and visuals to tell its narrative, has been steadily growing in popularity over the past decade. With classics like 300, Scott Pilgrim vs The World and Watchmen, these modern narratives have masterfully combined the arts of writing and illustration. To those who are avid fans, though, Pure Steele may come off as a surprising change to the usually popular balance found in the examples given above.

Pure Steele is made with handwritten journal clippings and typewritten letters to and from London and Africa, with background illustrations to help accompany these letters. Press photo

The story of Pure Steele follows a British party of adventurers into the depths of the African jungles and savannahs in search of lost treasure. Set in the 1900s, the text-intensive and beautifully assembled package that is being offered to you by Concordia graduates Kim Belair and Ariadne MacGillivray, does a perfect job in putting the reader in the time with dialogue that is not only believable, but also timely. Ripe with the moral superiority that came with 19th-century colonial Britain during the annexing of African lands, and sexist behavior exhibited by men in the wake of women’s growing social identity, the novel makes no excuse for these inadequacies and, in fact, uses them as a storytelling tool.

Sitting at a whopping 234 pages — comprised mostly of text — this graphic novel is anything but a short read. With that said, taking away the graphical presentation of the novel would heavily detract from the way the story is told. Choosing to have the story presented in the form of multiple narrative perspectives, rather than using an insider’s description, or a detached narrative, helps readers understand the characters and their motives, but also allows readers to read between the lines and uncover details that would ruin the story’s intrigue should they be revealed in another narrative fashion.

The novel is built using journal clippings (which are handwritten) and typewritten letters to and from London and Africa, with background illustrations to help accompany these letters. Although the pacing is a little slow at first, it’s never made unbearable. With the exception of a few anachronisms, the book is believable by all standards. If a single complaint could be lodged, it would be the dubious choice of font used for the handwritten journals, which at times could get a little difficult to decipher to those who haven’t read cursive documents in a while.

All things said, Pure Steele is energetic, full of originality, and explores an often-forgotten time period with distinction, tact, and accuracy that builds a convincingly realistic tale and requires very little suspension of disbelief. The price tag of about $40 is hefty, but comes chock-full of beautiful, unique artwork, making this a must-have for any fans of both graphic novels, and fans of stories reminiscent of Indiana Jones.

You can find out more information about Pure Steele and its authors, as well as purchase the novel itself on their website at puresteele.com.

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Student Life

Women’s knees are weak for gay romance

Photo from Flickr.

With over 70 million copies sold worldwide and a movie on the way, you would need to live under a rock to be unaware of the 50 Shades of Grey mania, by author E. L. James, that has been going on around us since 2011. Women in particular, regardless of age, love to read about romance and sex. In fact, about 80 per cent of buyers were female, according to a Bowker Market Research analysis (and that goes without counting the men that bought the book not for themselves, but for their lady).

Photo from Flickr.

However, another fact has also come forward in the midst of the “50 Shades” explosion. Straight women do not restrict themselves to typical heterosexual love stories: they also love male on male romance and erotica books.

“By following on the heels and fandom of Twilight, E.L. James put kink on strip-mall shelves at a moment when public sexuality is permitted to go further and farther,” said Damon Suede, bestselling author of gay romance novels Hot Head and the recent Bad Idea.

“The impact on romance audiences has been seismic. The minute readers could access the atypical love stories they wanted without fear of censorship and reprisal, erotic romance exploded internationally.”

Suede’s first novel, Hot Head, sat at number one in its category on Amazon for six months and even made it into the general romance bestsellers list. His biggest fans are, yes, straight women. In fact, his biggest fan club named, Damon’s Bitches, is mainly female, “a group of sassy young women in killer shoes.” But why does male on male culture, love and sex stories appeal so much to straight women?

According to Suede, the easy explanation is that straight women are extremely curious about male feelings, but can’t get information about them from their emotionally silent heterosexual partners. They then turn to gay friends or literature for insight.

“Hetero ladies dream of big, rugged, brutal men…who can also cry and snuggle with that one special someone. They crave books that give them a window into the mysterious male psyche and romances offer that view in spades,” explained Suede.

To him, the difference between women and men growing up, and how it affects their views of things, is another explanation. Since gay men are born in a certain “male” way but adopt new “female” views growing up, they possess both sexes’ perspectives, a “double vision of the world” which is why they are so fascinating to women.

In a Yaoi Research analysis of Geoffrey Knight’s Why Straight Women Love Gay Romance, fantasy author and magazine editor Dru Pagliassotti also explains that straight women love male on male romance and erotica for many reasons. Some like it because it avoids gender stereotypes (especially the damsel in distress), because it’s arousing, more complex, and because women can relate to both male heroes and not be “annoyed by the weak heroine” often found in heterosexual romance novels.

Suede agrees saying, “Male vulnerability, tenderness, ferocity, and vulgarity get unleashed in gay erotica. All that Miss Manners courting gets tossed out; dudes get down to business without any need for niceties.”

One may ask then, “Well, if it’s so exciting, why aren’t all women reading gay romance?” According to Pagliassotti’s research, there are three ways to answer this question. It can either be because there is a lack of exposure, since gay romance and erotica is still not a mainstream genre. It can also be because women are afraid of what they will read or are afraid of getting “caught.” Finally, it could be because of the spiral of silence revolving around the genre; perhaps not all gay romance readers are willing to admit their literary preferences in public. Nonetheless, the genre is being read, whether privately or publicly and books like 50 Shades of Grey has definitely enticed some women to come out of the closet.

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Arts

A hologram of success amidst desert sands

Set in the Saudi Arabian desert, the novel explores the theme of the need to succeed. Press photo.

In the heat of a desert country, an American businessman is desperately trying to succeed in a new venture, or risk going home empty handed.

Set in the Saudi Arabian desert, the novel explores the theme of the need to succeed. Press photo.

Dave Eggers sketches a portrait of a character struggling with the economic effects of globalization and the emotional roller coaster of a mid-life crisis in his novel, A Hologram for the King.

Alan Clay is lost, his confidence is shaken and he is slightly paranoid. He has to pitch an IT project to Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah or he will be unable to pay off his debts and his daughter’s tuition.

Clay is hired by an IT company, called Reliant, to pitch its services to the King, in an attempt to provide technology to the new developing “King Abdullah Economic City.” Clay arrives in Jeddah to find that his team was designated a tent to prepare for their pitch and are seemingly isolated from the other business employees.

The air is hot and the people around him don’t seem to fit the images in his guidebook. He expects the natives to be conservative and reserved, however he finds a few that are liberal and go against cultural norms.

He tries to prove himself to the three young people working with him by pushing for better air conditioning and Wi-Fi reception. Meanwhile they shuffle back and forth between the tent and the hotel, lazily waiting for the King to arrive. The plot centers around the time spent on the preparation of the hologram, where he befriends his driver, his colleagues and his doctor.

We learn through short, thoughtful prose the emotional difficulties of Clay’s failed career and failed marriage. Clay is divorced from his wife Ruby and feels close to his daughter Kit. However, he only communicates with Kit in the form of email drafts he never sends.

Clay had tried to start his own bike manufacturing business in the United States, but was unsuccessful because most production projects were overseas. Reliant is a possible remedy to that failure.

A Hologram for the King delves into Clay’s head with short, rich details. He floats back and forth between his memories and his observations of Jeddah. Clay doesn’t plan on staying in Saudi Arabia forever, yet he feels a pull to it. The complexity of wanting to succeed, to prove that you are worthy is an echoing sentiment in this story.

When he has a cyst removed from his neck in Jeddah, Clay is sorry it is not cancerous. At least then, he would not have had to worry about paying Kit’s tuition fees.

The writing style is simple, yet aims to be provocative throughout most of the novel.

“They were married in a breathless hurry,” writes Eggers on Clay’s former marriage, “but Alan felt early on that she was looking through him. Who was he? He sold bicycles. They were mismatched. He was limited. He tried to rise to her level, to broaden his mind and see things as she did, but he was working with crude tools.” Eggers writes in short sentences, sometimes repeating his pronouns to highlight emotions.

Life is a complex web of people, who carry their past and their present with them. A Hologram for the King takes us on a journey, wandering in a middle eastern country, trying to find a way to mold the flawed past into a new beginning, or to simply survive.

 

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