CHASE CORMIER, Mal, Moncton: Éditions Perce-Neige, 2024. ISBN: 9782896914753
Reviewed by Joshua Barrière (Cliquez ici pour lire ce compte rendu en français)
Claiming that Mal is a “narrative,” or a récit, on its cover page, even the editors admit that Mal is difficult to categorize. It is composed of 24 fragments, each a memory of adolescence from the narrator and main character, Perroquet. He recounts with charm and brevity pivotal moments from this period of change and discovery in his life: his parents’ separation, a chance encounter with a bogeyman, as well as simply sharing food and writing with family. The narrative takes place in a recent and familiar past in the hot and humid landscape of Opelousas, Louisiana. The choice to present memories from adolescence in this Franco-Louisiana text isn’t all that surprising. This culture, like so many other minority cultures, has undergone profound and important changes in recent generations. As has always been the case, the traditions of previous generations are fading away as time passes, but now a new more globalized generation is coming to light. Cormier is shedding light on this newer generation and their unique connection to their culture. The moments of change and understanding presented in this récit go beyond personal memories to reach the more universal experiences of minority cultures.
In fewer than 100 pages, the narrative immerses us in Perroquet’s family dynamic. We discover, notably, his paternal grandparents, including his grandfather Mal, his parents, and other family and friends. Mal is the only other named character and gives the book its title. The use of the word “Mal” seems to join a similar sentiment as that expressed by Albert Legrand (a French professor from Alberta), who defines this ache or pain felt by minority cultures “comme une aberration de l’espace natal auquel nous étions tous pourtant destinés à appartenir” (like a distortion of the birthplace to which we were all however destined to belong). The place of origin, supposed to offer rooting and security, becomes a site of disorder and alienation; so, too, in Cormier’s narrative. This tension between anchoring and rupture also manifests in the very form of the text, which hesitates between genres and defies conventions.
Although Mal does not present itself as a poem in verse, its arrangement in paragraphs does not fully align it with conventional prose. In an interview with French Press, a YouTube channel of Ohio University, Cormier, a professor of French originally from Louisiana, explains that this narrative initially took shape as a poetry collection—which is not surprising. However, as he explains, he chose a prose form, aware of the scarcity of such works in French-language Louisiana literature. Many poets have succeeded in writing dense poetic works without verification (Nobel prize winner Saint-John-Perse for example). Many of the poetic passages of this text are very strong, presenting novel imagery and powerful emotions; however, versification could have allowed the author to hone in on the essential elements of the work while cutting out some of the less essential elements (the ant motif for example). Robert Cormier's Frenchtown Summer is a lovely Franco American example of such a text.
This text resolutely inhabits a blurry zone between poetry and prose. And that is all the better! Its poetic dimension is essential, placing it within a broader tradition of what François Paré (a French professor from Ottawa) called “littératures de l’exiguïtés.” Poetry, Paré argued, is “le langage des marginalités,” of “petites” literatures. Indeed, the fact that poetry predominates Franco-Louisiana literature reflects its rich and unique character, capable of depicting marginal, shifting realities. A passage from the chapter titled “Battements” testifies to this eloquently:
La prairie fourmille d’histoires que je veux écrire. Parenté sur parenté, du travail dur, récolte après récolte, fourmi devant fourmi. Des fois le vent chante. Des fois Mal se tait. Des fois on peut entendre les battements des ailes, les pleurs du saule, les louches de la coulée qui me berce avec ses contes. (69-70)
[The prairie is crawling with stories I want to write. Kin upon kin, hard work, harvest after harvest, one ant after another. Sometimes the wind sings. Sometimes Mal is silent. Sometimes you can hear the beating of wings, the willow’s weeping, the ladles of the creek that lulls me with its stories.]
Beyond the figures of speech, it is the rhythm of the phrases and the richness of the images that give this passage its force, its poetic quality. This poetry, however, coexists with moments of more prosaic writing, creating a balanced oscillation.
This interplay between poetry and prose continues in the evocation of culinary practices, where meat, far from being a mere motif, becomes a vector of memory and meaning. Through Cajun dishes and butchery, Cormier explores a poetics of gesture and material, where writing is rooted in reality, while rising through rhythm and imagery. In a critical article, Cormier explains the close link between poetry and culinary practices in the Franco-Louisiana imagination this way:
Poems as culinary and cultural narratives contribute to the communal and perpetual effort of defining ethnicity and stor(y)ing collective memory and provide a space for writers to find their voice and connect with other writers and readers from within and outside their own community.1
While in this critical text Cormier exposes the nature of this relationship, in Mal he brings it to life. The gesture of writing feeds on cuisine as a source of inspiration. Carefully juxtaposing cooking and writing, Cormier seamlessly moves from one space to the other, as in this passage where Perroquet suggests that story, prayer, and broth should all be created with the same kind of creative attention:
« Une prière chantée est une prière doublée », m’a toujours dit ma mère. Le court-bouillon gargouille. Son odeur ramène l’œil de mon imaginaire là, au milieu du souvenir, et je pense à la manière dont on concocte les histoires. (71)
[“‘A prayer sung is a prayer doubled,’ my mother always told me. The court-bouillon gurgles. Its smell takes my imagination back there, to the middle of memory, and I think about how we concoct stories.”]
Like cuisine, language contributes to anchoring the narrative in a specific cultural territory. Cormier employs regional terms, familiar turns of phrase, and a specific lexicon. This recourse to orality, common in “small literatures,” often aims to give voice to the writing. Here, the use is measured: it gives tone to the text without turning into linguistic experimentation, or veering so deeply into dialect that it becomes a purely political statement, as is often the case with texts written in Québecois joual.
However, the Louisiana regionalisms may pose a barrier for some readers. To facilitate reading, a glossary of fourteen words appears at the end of the book, a mediating attempt between the unintelligible and the sayable, which Paré describes as the passage “dans l’univers du traduisible.” Cormier confides in the aforementioned interview that he did not want a glossary, but the minimal inclusion of words like cheuve (shovel), charrer (chat), or baribara (noise) represents a judicious compromise between accessibility and fidelity to the original language.
Paré observes that in marginal literatures, “Écrire, c’est donc se faire entendre écrivant,” that is to say these literatures often write about the act of writing itself. Indeed, one of Cormier’s major themes is writing itself. Some of the book’s most powerful passages arise from acute awareness of the writing gesture. When Perroquet evokes his father, who has distanced himself from his cultural roots, the text gains depth:
Admettre que mes os sont aussi les os de mon père, que sa chair et aussi ma chair et celle de Mal. Chair et os délicats comme une arête dans une sauce piquante. Ça me fait peur de me voir disparaitre, fondre dans le passé. Jour après jour, je suis après faire boucherie comme une scie qui ne s’arrête jamais de crier sa peine. Faire couler du sang sur le plancher ou faire couler l’encre sur le papier. Autour de moi, il n’y a que des tables éclaboussées par le sang rouge. (64)
[To admit that my bones are also my father's bones, that his flesh is also mine, and Mal's. Flesh and bones as delicate as a fishbone in hot sauce. It scares me to see myself disappear, melt into the past. Day after day, I am just butchering like a saw that never stops screaming in pain. Making blood flow onto the floor or ink flow onto paper. Around me, there are only tables splattered with red blood.]
Writing thus becomes a mode of transmission, a means of cultural survival. If the Father has moved away from his origins, the act of writing allows Perroquet (and the author) to explore his connection with the past beyond the confines of butchering.
The intergenerational tension evoked here touches any marginalized community facing the erosion of its traditions. It is likely no coincidence that only two characters bear proper names: Mal and Perroquet. The others become archetypes, referring to a collective experience. The grandparents as guardians of tradition, the parents in rupture for various reasons (social pressure, addiction, assimilation), and the youth seeking memory without losing hold of the present. Mal, the Father, and Perroquet subtly embody these roles. The text, while evoking a family intimacy, manages to resonate with a shared reality.
Notes
Chase Cormier, “Recipes, Poems, and Memory in Contemporary Louisiana Francophone Literature,” Contemporary French and Francophone Studies, 2023, 27:4, 560-569, DOI: 10.1080/17409292.2023.2237800