Intimate Journal

by Nicole Brossard

A memoir à la Stein and de Beauvoir, Intimate Journal is a trip around the world, a journey through time, and an exploration of the consistency of the individual, experiential and accumulative. Love, Japan, Paris, exhilarating moments of epiphany, motherhood and adventure are combined in this vivid portrait of existence lived in the search for ecstasy. Nicole Brossard is well-known for her non-fiction, poetry and fiction, and she is one of the earliest and most consistent transgressors of the lines between genres. Originally published in French, Intimate Journal has been translated into Japanese (2000) and Spanish (Argentina, 2003).

144 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1984

About the author

Born in Montreal (Quebec), poet, novelist and essayist Nicole Brossard published her first book in 1965. In 1965 she cofounded the influential literary magazine La Barre du Jour and in 1976 she codirected the film Some American Femnists. She has published eight novels including Picture Theory, Mauve Desert, Baroque at Dawn, an essay "The Aerial Letter" and many books of poetry including Daydream Mechanics, Lovhers, Typhon dru, Installations, Musee de l'os et de l'eau. She has won the Governor General award twice for her poetry (1974, 1984) and Le Grand Prix de Poesie de la Foundation les Forges in 1989 and 1999. Le Prix Athanase-David, which is for a lifetime of literary acheivement, was attributed to her in 1991. That same year she received the The Harbourfront Festival Prize. In 1994, she was made a member of L'Academie des Lettres du Quebec. Her work has been widely translated and anthologized. Mauve Desert and Baroque at Dawn have been translated into Spanish. In 1998 she published a bilingual edition of an autofiction essay titled She would be the first sentence of my new novel/Elle serait la premiere phrase de mon prochain roman(1998). In 1989, a book of her poetry in translation, Installations, was released, translated by Erin Moure and Robert Majzels. Nicole Brossard lives in Montreal.

Reviews

[Jill · Rating 2 out of 5]

Kind of pretty but mainly boring and pretentious. I think I just find publishing journals self-indulgent (especially when they're COMMISSIONED?! wow, so genuine). Meh.