The Blue Books

by Nicole Brossard

Nicole Brossard's lucid, subversive and innovative work on language has influenced an entire generation of readers and writers. But three of her seminal works of postmodernism and feminism have been lost to us for years. The Blue Books brings them back. A Book: A novel about a novel; five characters in "search of a narrative, a narrative in search of an author." Brossard's first novel, and a key work in Canadian postmodernism. Turn of a Pang (Sold-out in French): Quebec's 1943 Conscription Crisis and the 1970 War Measures Act weave together to form the texture of a woman's life. French Kiss: a celebration of the energy of women and language in the face of the male authorities of Montreal politics and the physical authority of the printed (and bound) word.The Blue Books collects these three long-out-of-print, groundbreaking Brossard titles, in their original Coach House Press English translations (A Book by Larry Shouldice, Turn of a Pang and French Kiss by the acclaimed Patricia Claxton). Don't be blue: these Brossard classics are back!

Genres: Poetry, Fiction, Canada

352 pages, Paperback

First published April 19, 1999

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

[Nate D · Rating 3 out of 5]

The meaning of a text exists (or perhaps is created) in the space between the printed page and the reading eye. (Between author and reader, too, but more obscurely). Much traditional narrative tries to hold meaning closer to the page, to control it. Brossard, though no less in control of the precise and subtle nuances of her words, often seems intent on pushing meaning as close to the reader as possible. This isn't to say that her prose lacks innate meaning, but that the generation of meaning from her writing is most effective in an act of active readership, when the reader is most attuned to and bent on interacting with the text, letting the words play and breath within the act of reading. And so Brossard writes with an inherent awareness of the reading eye. The reading mind, yes, that's a given, but the eye is its portal. The result is challenging in a certain sense, but moreso invigorating. In the exceptional Mauve Desert, Brossard addressed this interaction directly, by encasing the narrative in a secondary reader's perception of it (obsession with it, and eventual translation of it). Here, the reader is Reader, you, or me, but the text is no less aware.

Fitting, then, that this definitive collection opens with Brossard's first novel, Un Livre, a book, its first chapter an attempt to lay out the terms by which a first chapter may exist.

A text beginning like this
or
the beginning of this text which will bring about the revelation of several attitudes which happen to have been noticed in the past few hours.
Routes to be followed.
Which draw away from certain observation points, which are in no way essential to the arrangement of spaces between which two three and more women and men come to life from without or within become characters, which is to say the usual setting.
The text and several variables.
These few days past women and men touching one another in the crowd inevitably were observed and their participation sought.
The text and the spaces.

Let me also stop this briefly to mention the loveliness of the texture of these printed pages. The pages of this first Coach House paperback edition of The Blue Books are thick and faintly creamy, ridged with a slight surface texturing. For additional interactivity, the Reader may wish to engage touch along with its Reading Eye, by gently stroking the page while reading. (A "blue movie" is a porno. Is a "blue book"? Is the near-sensuous attention to text, language, and reader engagement in the text here a kind of textual pornography? Did I really just suggest that the Reader stroke the page?!)

Later, a day after writing the above, I find, directly addressed, the distance "Between the word and the printed page:". And just after this statement "Words take on meaning behind the eyelids." And so despite Brossard's odd hyper-conceptuality (and my own usual difficulties with heavy theory), I'm apparently not far off from her sending wavelength. Which, in this minimal but dense set of text and situations, feels like a toehold.

Despite intimations of political agitation, bombings, and relationship drama, this is a very abstract text, a very distanced narrative. Which, by seeming design, never pulls free from its surface level of text on a page. I admit, as the non-theory-reader I mention above, I generally look for deeper interactions between narrative, text, and form than for what narrative appears to be almost entirely in service of text and form. But this, delivered in a concise 99 segments that Brossard (paraphrasing here) is not convinced does not constitute A Book, is sleek and thought-provoking enough to work for me. Many writers of the era just before Brossard's concerned their fiction with the act of writing; few if any were so attuned to the process of reading.

Hold the book, reading.
Find the thumb where it touches the text.
Follow the thumb to hand, hand to wrist, wrist to arm and back.
Behind and above the arm a head and the pits of eyes, somewhere in the back of which words take on meaning. There: you have located the reader in the text.

...

Here ends my review of A Book, the first of the three novels included in this omnibus edition. The other two have their own Goodreads entries, so I'll likely review them individually and link them here when the time comes. Stay (at)tuned.

Here're my thoughts on the second of the three novels here, Turn of a Pang.
And the last, French kiss, or, A pang's progress

[Jewel Moore · Rating 3 out of 5]

Okay... this was interesting.

I wanted to like this one and some parts of it I genuinely do. There was a few things that I was struggling with throughout the collection of stories. First, these stories are not entirely stories. It's sort of poetry and fiction combined together. The pages consist of passages that only connect by the characters. All of this doesn't have structure like a chapter book would. However, I didn't hate this. There were many lines I liked from these collections.

A Book: This one was short and only a couple lines per page but was intriguing. It seemed to be about a couple (O.R and Dominique) that seemed sort of toxic in a way but it emphasized city life at the same time. Two other characters appear as friends of her and Dominique's. (Dominique C. and Henri). O.R and Dominque C seem to have a bit of an unspoken thing and sleep together but there is only a small line stating what that could mean for O.R. sleeping with a woman.

A Turn of a Pang: This follows Cherry during a time of historical and political events. It describes a lot about a woman with dyed red hair and what that must mean as for a woman's personality. I started to get confused because snippets of a chapter were showing up and it was here that I couldn't understand the timeline or build of this storyline. I started to question if I was reading an analytic of the story along with a translation.

French Kiss: This follows a group of friends, Marielle, Alexandre, Georges, Camomile, and Lucy, in a big city. At first you follow the relationships between the friends: George's and Lexa's (short for Alexandre), seemingly romantic. Marielle and Lexas, siblings. And Camomile and Lucy who are romantically involved. None of the passages confirm if they are dating but it seems that Lucy is entranced by her, mesmerized even. Giggled at the part - "Camomile and Lucy make love like excited mermaids." I really liked the poetic detail in their relationship and the romance between them.

Overall, there was some things I liked in this book but the poetry, fiction, and unpredictable structure made it a bit difficult to really grasp this. I did officially loose it at the line where it says that Alexandre is in love with Marielle. HIS SISTER. Anyway, I barely made it through this one and I think it's a unique style of writing which Nicole Brossard states at first but if you like fiction but like poetry more than fiction chapter books, this style of writing is perfect.

TW: SA, descriptions of sexual acts, etc.

[Bill Brydon · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Camomille and Lucy making love like excited mermaids, sirens to some, double-takes, topless (voice) and bottomless (pit), membranes dilated beltline high, mouths open and kif-kif (inhale / exhale). Cloud." French Kiss or Pang 's Progress