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Readopolis
From award-winning writer Bertrand Laverdure comes Readopolis , a novel translated by Oana Avasilichioaei.
It's 2006 and down-and-out protagonist Ghislain works as a reader for a publishing house in Montreal. He's bored with all the wannabe writers who are determined to leave a trace of their passage on earth with their feeble attempts at literary arts. Obsessed by literature and its future (or lack thereof), he reads everything he can in order to translate reality into the literary delirium that is Readopolis—a world imagined out of Chicago and Montreal, with few inhabitants, a convenience store, a parrot, and all kinds of dialogues running cinematic, epistolary, theatrical, and Socratic.
In the pages of Readopolis (Lectodôme in the original French), Laverdure playfully examines the idea that human beings are more connected by their reading abilities than by anything else. Funny and sardonic, whimsical and tragic, this postmodern novel with touches of David Foster Wallace and Raymond Queneau portrays the global village of readers that the Internet created, even before the 2.0 revolution.
It's 2006 and down-and-out protagonist Ghislain works as a reader for a publishing house in Montreal. He's bored with all the wannabe writers who are determined to leave a trace of their passage on earth with their feeble attempts at literary arts. Obsessed by literature and its future (or lack thereof), he reads everything he can in order to translate reality into the literary delirium that is Readopolis—a world imagined out of Chicago and Montreal, with few inhabitants, a convenience store, a parrot, and all kinds of dialogues running cinematic, epistolary, theatrical, and Socratic.
In the pages of Readopolis (Lectodôme in the original French), Laverdure playfully examines the idea that human beings are more connected by their reading abilities than by anything else. Funny and sardonic, whimsical and tragic, this postmodern novel with touches of David Foster Wallace and Raymond Queneau portrays the global village of readers that the Internet created, even before the 2.0 revolution.
- GenresFiction
264 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 1, 2008
2 people are currently reading
86 people want to read
About the author
Bertrand Laverdure
24 books39 followersNé en 1967, Bertrand Laverdure est un auteur prolifique : poète, romancier, wikipédiste, librettiste. Il s’intéresse à la multidisciplinarité en littérature. Il a été le Poète de la Cité de Montréal (2015-2017).
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
January 26, 2018
Merde alors!
This may be an outdated expression, learned when I was just beginning to study the French language, but it aptly describes the sinking feeling I got realizing that I was out of my depth in attempting this spirited cornucopia of literary obsession and delirious whimsy, stumbling over the multitude of culturally significant references. Not a book for the careless reader, nor one who needs a plot. It doesn't read like fiction and the characters are not remarkable or endearing. But oh the delicious bon mots!
Literature...that scuffed and ancient leather bag, still exists and is never more present than among its enemies: human indifference, laziness, and ignorance. p16
I read, ergo I think, ergo I am. p162
Everyone knows that reading alone makes you seem suspicious, disrespectful. or treacherous....We all need to pray for those who read. p253
This may be an outdated expression, learned when I was just beginning to study the French language, but it aptly describes the sinking feeling I got realizing that I was out of my depth in attempting this spirited cornucopia of literary obsession and delirious whimsy, stumbling over the multitude of culturally significant references. Not a book for the careless reader, nor one who needs a plot. It doesn't read like fiction and the characters are not remarkable or endearing. But oh the delicious bon mots!
Literature...that scuffed and ancient leather bag, still exists and is never more present than among its enemies: human indifference, laziness, and ignorance. p16
I read, ergo I think, ergo I am. p162
Everyone knows that reading alone makes you seem suspicious, disrespectful. or treacherous....We all need to pray for those who read. p253
November 3, 2017
Québécois literature is not widely celebrated beyond the borders of this French speaking Canadian province. If asked to name even a single author I would struggle and I’m including the author of the book I’m currently reviewing as I’ve forgotten it already I’m sorry to say. The general impression I had of French Canadians prior to reading this novel was that they had a bit of chip on their shoulder but coming from Scotland I completely get that: we don’t have a chip, we have a whole fish supper. That said I can’t really imagine a Glaswegian writer like myself only reading writers from Glasgow any more than I can imagine a Dundonian only reading writers from Dundee. And yet I do get the feeling from this book that the protagonist, Ghislain, who earns a living (in part) by reading book manuscripts for $30 a pop, sees himself very much as the “saviour of Quebec literature.” As he puts it:
Parts of the book held my attention. I enjoyed Extractor 568. I enjoyed the Laverdure the parrot. I enjoyed most of the exchanges—verbal parrying’s always entertaining—but somewhere along the line the book lost direction. It was pretty aimless from the start and I didn’t have much of a problem with that but I did expect it to get somewhere but it never seemed to and then it was over.
The question then: What exactly is Readopolis? This was, after all, what attracted me to the book in the first place. Readopolis is a realm in which the practitioner enters “a complex state of concentration that enables [them], by decoding a series of written or printed letters, to reproduce at will the sense of being detached from the world.” For them literary language is “not a tool but an environment.” That I get. I think any serious reader would get that. The problem was the environment that this book conjured up was too alien for me. I’m too attached to a legacy of British, American and European literature and although I desperately want to appreciate experimental literature I rarely do. This was, quite simply put, too Québécoise for me. And that’s a shame because I so wanted to love it.
I am Ghislain the reader, tired of rejecting manuscripts, newly convinced that Quebecois literature needs to be promoted by means other than the usual channels, an employee of the Couche-Tard dep [a convenience store] at the Joliette subway stop and an unrepentant consumer of Yum Yum cheese sticks, preferably the 270 g bag.He namechecks and quotes endlessly from authors I’ve never heard of who may or may not be real; it doesn’t really matter. The way his “transient friend” Maldonne describes him is quite apt: “Ghislain is a sectarian, a Jehovah’s Witness of the Quebecois book.” That I get. And, I suppose, admire. What Ghislain imagines is…
…a Quebecois literary success more phenomenal than Harry Potter. He could see those in the literary crowd—reticent, timid—devoting themselves to the sport of interviews, proliferating amusing comments, appearing at the international launch of the Quebecois book’s English translation. Global media would invade Quebec’s winter, straight-laced celebrities would wander around the city, Oprah Winfrey herself would come to record a special show…Not impossible but unlikely as he keeps rejecting the manuscripts sent to him to assess. His goal is “to increase the rate of quality reading” but I don’t care what city he lives in or what language they speak that was always going to be an uphill struggle, an on-going fight against “illiteracy, poverty, primary school education, and overwhelming lack of interest…” You can imagine how frustrating this might be. His friends try to be sympathetic:
maldonne: He needs a girlfriend. Or someone to persuade.but he doesn’t make it easy for them, any easier than Laverdure—I didn’t remember; I had to look—makes it for his readers. Readopolis is presented to us in the form of a straightforward narrative, numerous emails, dialogues, letters and even a complete thirty page “novel” called Extractor 568 by someone called Mime Wotan which describes “a greedy, rotten world, inclined to excess. A large strip of land called the Quebec Isle” filled with “angry, disappointed, proliferating writers, beating a path to posterity, who, over the years and due to overcrowding … would have earned the right to temporarily kill their critics.” It can be hard to follow.
pascal: Ghislain’s definitely heavy-handed. The problem is that he imposes his anxieties on us, as if we needed them. The other night, I felt like I was talking to a depressed politician who’d lost his grip.
maldonne: What’s he done to you that you’re bitching about him like this? He just needs some help, like everyone else.
pascal: He needs a shrink.
maldonne: It’s not as bad as that. He just needs a nice girl. He’s like a baby. You need to give him lots of attention, coddle him a bit, listen to him. I like reading too, but I’m not caught up in his religion…
Parts of the book held my attention. I enjoyed Extractor 568. I enjoyed the Laverdure the parrot. I enjoyed most of the exchanges—verbal parrying’s always entertaining—but somewhere along the line the book lost direction. It was pretty aimless from the start and I didn’t have much of a problem with that but I did expect it to get somewhere but it never seemed to and then it was over.
The question then: What exactly is Readopolis? This was, after all, what attracted me to the book in the first place. Readopolis is a realm in which the practitioner enters “a complex state of concentration that enables [them], by decoding a series of written or printed letters, to reproduce at will the sense of being detached from the world.” For them literary language is “not a tool but an environment.” That I get. I think any serious reader would get that. The problem was the environment that this book conjured up was too alien for me. I’m too attached to a legacy of British, American and European literature and although I desperately want to appreciate experimental literature I rarely do. This was, quite simply put, too Québécoise for me. And that’s a shame because I so wanted to love it.
April 7, 2023
I am in perhaps the worst reading slump of my life. Fiction's exhausting and non-fiction is tedious, and, frankly, vice versa. Unfortunately, it's books just like this one that are keeping me there: this is intentionally up its own ass, but I'm tired of meta literature being precious -- these formal experiments with a throughthread of loose self-reflexive commentary are not inspiring or insightful or even interesting. They're just masturbatory, and you can dress it up as much as you want, but there's no audience for your book about books not having an audience, and that says it all.
Actually, no: what says it all is the fact that the best thing about this book was the lists of dep purchases. And even that was probably Montreal nostalgia. Ugh.
Actually, no: what says it all is the fact that the best thing about this book was the lists of dep purchases. And even that was probably Montreal nostalgia. Ugh.
November 7, 2019
Not your typical novel. I had a friend ask me what this was about shortly after I had started, and I couldn’t come up with a proper description aside from, it is a story about a man who I think likes to read, but also probably does not. Now having read it, it’s a tad easier to describe. Lectodôme/ Readopolis is a tale about Ghislain, a reader for a publishing house in Montreal. Obsessed with literature but cynical towards writers, he reads anything to help himself connect to Readopolis. Disheartening to read, but with some interesting revelations to consider.
November 19, 2017
an absurdly whimsical literary obscurio, this book won the GG for Translation, which gives me hope. for those who love reading, depanneurs and parrots.
November 29, 2023
“I read, ergo I think, ergo I am.”
Ghislain is a Reader with a capital R: his whole life is reading. He survives on his work as a convenience store clerk in Montreal while reading prospective manuscripts for publishing houses, all the while hoping that among the piles of rejected books, there is one novel that will save Québécois literature.
“Ghislain imagined a Québécois literary success more phenomenal than Harry Potter. He could see those in the literary crowd - reticent, timid - devoting themselves to the sport of interviews, proliferating amusing comments, appearing at the international launch of the Québécois book’s English translation…Oprah Winfrey would come herself…”
Ghislain spends the plot meandering through a series of escapades and dialogues with his friends about French-Canadian literature, the arts, and suchlike without ever finding that promised book. The dialogues are snappy, witty and full of verbal sparring but the plot does not go anywhere. We see snippets of the books that Ghislain rejects, ostensibly to save Québécois literature from itself, but there isn’t any sense of progress. Instead, it becomes apparent that there is a substantial chip on the shoulders of both Ghislain and the author, bemoaning the lack of recognised French-Canadian authors (honestly this is first time I have ever read a book by an author from Quebec and I’d be hard pressed to name even one other without looking it up).
Both the lack of substantial plot and the feeling that this is both a provincial D. F. Wallace imitation constrain Readopolis, which is a shame. There is certainly a promising kernel here but it doesn’t go anywhere. Movies and novels where little plot happens are premised on strong characters but that is lacking here too. The only thing French-Canadian literature needs saving from is purists like Ghislain who condemn far more than they commend.
Ghislain is a Reader with a capital R: his whole life is reading. He survives on his work as a convenience store clerk in Montreal while reading prospective manuscripts for publishing houses, all the while hoping that among the piles of rejected books, there is one novel that will save Québécois literature.
“Ghislain imagined a Québécois literary success more phenomenal than Harry Potter. He could see those in the literary crowd - reticent, timid - devoting themselves to the sport of interviews, proliferating amusing comments, appearing at the international launch of the Québécois book’s English translation…Oprah Winfrey would come herself…”
Ghislain spends the plot meandering through a series of escapades and dialogues with his friends about French-Canadian literature, the arts, and suchlike without ever finding that promised book. The dialogues are snappy, witty and full of verbal sparring but the plot does not go anywhere. We see snippets of the books that Ghislain rejects, ostensibly to save Québécois literature from itself, but there isn’t any sense of progress. Instead, it becomes apparent that there is a substantial chip on the shoulders of both Ghislain and the author, bemoaning the lack of recognised French-Canadian authors (honestly this is first time I have ever read a book by an author from Quebec and I’d be hard pressed to name even one other without looking it up).
Both the lack of substantial plot and the feeling that this is both a provincial D. F. Wallace imitation constrain Readopolis, which is a shame. There is certainly a promising kernel here but it doesn’t go anywhere. Movies and novels where little plot happens are premised on strong characters but that is lacking here too. The only thing French-Canadian literature needs saving from is purists like Ghislain who condemn far more than they commend.
August 20, 2021
I despised and loved this peculiar and outrageous book. I give it every rating from one to five stars, but I’ve landed on four because of the parts I “got” — it’s not the book’s fault that it’s smarter than me! Originally written in French, this book could be one long inside joke that will leave all Québécois literati rolling on the floor in hilarity. Because it’s insanely clever, I bookmarked approximately 50% as deeply profound and/or highly quotable, or simply delightful, with joyful, madcap wielding of words:
“For me, reading has become a kind of ritual of existence. I am obsessed with practicing this art form, as it is one.”
“Her epistemological metabolism worked perfectly.”
“Living beings congregate, assemble, spread disease, invent regimes, complain, vote, become indifferent, and disseminate ideas through media.”
“Every lateness elicits an analysis. No lateness is trivial…. Every temporal punishment, from life imprisonment to a short delay, is the sign of a wrongdoing that must be atoned for, paid for. Making someone wait unexpectedly is always a punishment. We inflict dead time.”
“Every normal individual over 30 has constructed their identity based on one or two well-kept secrets. … Each one of us EITHER has something to feel guilty about OR invents something to feel guilty about.”
“A writer. A first-class noticer.”
“Who is right: the reader or the writer?”
The riff on Martin Scorsese (“a sadistic moralist”) and the entire Oprah Winfrey show — and afterparty? — were on another level altogether.
The audiobook was awesome and is a must-listen-to. But I wonder if having the text in front of one would help keep track of which gear had been shifted into.
“For me, reading has become a kind of ritual of existence. I am obsessed with practicing this art form, as it is one.”
“Her epistemological metabolism worked perfectly.”
“Living beings congregate, assemble, spread disease, invent regimes, complain, vote, become indifferent, and disseminate ideas through media.”
“Every lateness elicits an analysis. No lateness is trivial…. Every temporal punishment, from life imprisonment to a short delay, is the sign of a wrongdoing that must be atoned for, paid for. Making someone wait unexpectedly is always a punishment. We inflict dead time.”
“Every normal individual over 30 has constructed their identity based on one or two well-kept secrets. … Each one of us EITHER has something to feel guilty about OR invents something to feel guilty about.”
“A writer. A first-class noticer.”
“Who is right: the reader or the writer?”
The riff on Martin Scorsese (“a sadistic moralist”) and the entire Oprah Winfrey show — and afterparty? — were on another level altogether.
The audiobook was awesome and is a must-listen-to. But I wonder if having the text in front of one would help keep track of which gear had been shifted into.
February 2, 2019
Readopolis (Lectodôme in French) is a standalone comedic contemporary written by Bertrand Laverdure and translated by Oana Avasilichioaei. This novel chronicles the daily life of Ghislain, a lowly reader for a publishing house.
This book serves as an entry (A book in translation) in the Toronto Public Library Reading Challenge 2019. This book was one of the first books that peak my interests as I read the blurb online – I mean a book about a book reader, who could turn that down?
Ghislain, a poorly paid reader for a publishing house, also works as a cashier at the Couch-Tard convenience store beside the Joliette Métro station. He feels superior to most writers he has to read, but admires anyone who can finish writing a book. Books – reading and thinking about reading – are his life.
Readopolis is an imaginary state that he enters through reading and through connections with other readers. The novel contains multitudes: on-going dialogues between different characters, ranging from the banal to the intensely philosophical.
Readopolis is a well written and translated book. Readoplois is a wonderful and surreal realm where readers go when they start reading. This realm falls somewhere between the spiritual and aesthetics domains where readers go when they are entrenched in a book.
All in all, Readopolis is a wonderful book for book lovers, particularly anyone who loves to read and could find a job in that particular field.
This book serves as an entry (A book in translation) in the Toronto Public Library Reading Challenge 2019. This book was one of the first books that peak my interests as I read the blurb online – I mean a book about a book reader, who could turn that down?
Ghislain, a poorly paid reader for a publishing house, also works as a cashier at the Couch-Tard convenience store beside the Joliette Métro station. He feels superior to most writers he has to read, but admires anyone who can finish writing a book. Books – reading and thinking about reading – are his life.
Readopolis is an imaginary state that he enters through reading and through connections with other readers. The novel contains multitudes: on-going dialogues between different characters, ranging from the banal to the intensely philosophical.
Readopolis is a well written and translated book. Readoplois is a wonderful and surreal realm where readers go when they start reading. This realm falls somewhere between the spiritual and aesthetics domains where readers go when they are entrenched in a book.
All in all, Readopolis is a wonderful book for book lovers, particularly anyone who loves to read and could find a job in that particular field.
November 15, 2017
This is strange book, certainly not a novel as we have become to expect. The author claims....that "literature is ultimately only the vitalization of ideas in the form of hyperrealist stories or tales." Readopolis is dada and surrealist with twists and turns of ideas and images.
February 7, 2020
Fun. Very engaging.
January 31, 2022
J’ai d’emblée apprécié l’écriture, le ton, le propos et l'intelligence de ce roman paru en 2008. Les réflexions sur la lecture m’y ont profondément interpelée et je pense que tous les amoureux des livres devraient se plonger dans ce singulier et savoureux roman. Au gré des narrateurs et des variations de formes, les personnages, individuellement et entre eux, s’alimentent et s’enrichissent de leurs questions et de leurs réflexions, tout en demeurant étrangement lucides. J’ai parcouru les 315 pages particulièrement lentement, par souci de ne rien échapper, j’ai fait de nombreux allers-retours au fil des pages et, chose que je ne fais habituellement JAMAIS, j’ai souligné, surligné et annoté de nombreux passages. Je ne me rappelle pas avoir autant feuilleté un livre dont la lecture était mon propre choix!
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews