Prochain épisode

[JBI]

Has anyone here read Prochain épisode (Next Episode) by Hubert Aquin? Etienne mentioned it on another thread, and after just going through a re-read, I am increasingly more interested in discussing it. Has anyone read it / heard of it?I am curious as to reactions/comments/opinions of the work.

[John Goodman]

I read it a few years ago and remember loving it, but I don't recall actual details in the books to be able to discuss it. I read it in French so I couldn't tell you how good the translation is (I'm assuming you read it in translation?).

[JBI]

Yeah I read it in translation (the newest one by Sheila Fischman). It's about Quebec, and a young artist - I am not particularly concerned with how good the translation is, more on impressions/ interpretations.

[Etienne]

I'll only post something short as I have a lot of studying to do, but I'll probably go and pick some studies on the novel at the library this week (which was something I meant to do for a while, or take the annotated version of the novel, which is about 600 pages of annotations for the not even 200 pages novel!).

An interesting feature of the novel, I though was that everything in the story is based on four different planes: the writing, the revolution, the actual action narrated, and the love story between K and the narrator.

One might have to be acquainted with a few biographical notes of Hubert Aquin too. He was a fervent Quebec separatist, and shortly became active as a terrorist, before being arrested for illegal possession of weapons. He wrote this novel at 36 years old, during his detention in a psychiatric hospital where he stayed for four months before being released. He killed himself in 1977 at the age of 48 years old.

So one can see that the different main themes of the book are really not just "any theme" he chose for the book, but some of the most important that shaped - and ended - his life.

[Etienne]

Tomorrow is my last exam for the week, I'd be interested in discussing the book if you are still interested yourself JBI then, perhaps you could tell me what you thought of the book, I'd like to hear about it.

[JBI]

Yeah, I am interested in discussing it still, especially the last bit, where the terrorist fails in his mission, and comes to the conclusion that his whole life was a meaningless failuew. What does that say about Aquin, and about Revolution in general, or people in general? What does the act of writing say about revolution, especially in the context of Quebec sovereignty. The novel is puzzling, because it doesn't separate what is, and what may be - it sort of blends together fiction, reality, the act of writing, and the author's background.

[Etienne]

Ok well now I have a few days off. I wanted to get some literature about Prochain épisode, but I didn't, might get some if needed later.

There's quite a few things which are puzzling in that book.

and comes to the conclusion that his whole life was a meaningless failuew. What does that say about Aquin, and about Revolution in general, or people in general? What does the act of writing say about revolution, especially in the context of Quebec sovereignty.

Well, I believe that Aquin has projected his vision of the Quebecois nation in the narrator and the story. This would mean that he had a very pessimistic view of the success of sovereignty (remember that one year before the publication he took arms, and was arrested right after, and he wrote the novel while being detained).

Another curiosity is the characters:

Who is Hamidou? He makes him the hero of his novel (the novel in the novel) at the beginning, and seems to be just a character in the imagination of the narrator, part of the blur between the reality and the fiction (the reality in the fiction and the fiction in the fiction ) but K. mentions him in her letter at the end. There is a few other references to him in between.

Then H. de Heutz, or any of his other names, seems to be in a way a projection of the narrator. The narrator associates himself very much to him (the conference which he wanted to attend, the decoration of the castle, etc. etc.), also, the mirror scene where when the narrator has H. de Heutz at his mercy, the latter repeats the same "alibi" as the narrator a few moments ago. And at the end, H. de Heutz who also has a rendez-vous at the same hotel (with K? most probably, but what is under that?)

Then K. Is she a double-agent (which is most probable)? And the blond women accompanying H. de Heutz, who is she?