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- Toronto Globe, March 30, 2005
Gerard Bessette, Writer, 1920-2005
Novelist whose works were compared to that of Albert Camus twice won the
Governor-General's Literary Award
By M.J. STONE, Special to The Globe and Mail, Wednesday, March 30, 2005
Montreal -- As the author of nine novels, a collection of short stories and poetry, Gerard BESSETTE was a two-time winner of the Governor-General's Literary Award.
Mr. BESSETTE, who retired from Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, in 1979, also produced numerous critical works that delved into the psychology of Quebec literature in the 20th century. He may well have examined his own writing, namely Le Libraire. One of his most recognized works, it is an existentialist novel about a book-store employee that takes a harsh look at the cultural conditions of small-town Quebec in the 1950s. Considered a Quiet Revolution classic, Le Libraire is frequently compared with Albert Camus's L'Étranger.
Gerard BESSETTE was born in a village on the South Shore of the St. Lawrence near Montreal. In 1944, he graduated from the École normale Jacques-Cartier and was later one of the first scholars to obtain a doctorate in French literature from Université de Montréal in 1950.
He began his career as a poet in 1947. His poem Le Coureur was awarded second prize at the Concours littéraires du Québec, and he went on to represent Canada in the poetry section of the 1948 Olympic Games. But his fascination with verse suddenly evaporated. "I quit writing poetry at the age of 25 or so... Then there was a long silence as far as creative writing was concerned. I started again when I was 36 or 37."
He liked to describe how language and class informed his writing. "I was still torn, not only on levels of language, but also on levels of society. I was from a lower-class milieu, but because of my studies, I was out of it." His first novel, La Bagarre, exposed the symbiotic relationship at work between those elements he divined within. Eventually, his command of voice and his sense of self as an academic were intensified as a consequence of his prose writing.
La Bagarre (1958), Le Libraire (1960) and Les Pédagogues (1961) all explored a similar Quiet Revolution theme of the repressive influences of culture and tradition in Quebec society during the 1950s.
Regarding the popularity of Le Libraire and its lead character, Hervé Jodoin, who resembles the anti-hero Mersault in Camus's L'Étranger, Mr. BESSETTE wrote: "I think that in a way he is the forerunner of the revolt among the young. You know at the beginning he has dropped everything. And had trouble with the Catholic church. Then he gets into the book business and again has trouble with the church. And then he throws everything away and mocks the old regime."
All of his novels are tinged with rebellion, directly and indirectly challenging the status quo and exploring the role of the individual in relation to the expectations of the culture they inhabit. To Steven URQUHART, a doctoral student at Queen's University, Mr. BESSETTE's work uses a great deal of symbolism that is related to phantasmagorical imagery.
"In fact, those who are considered or depicted as monstrous at first are nothing more in reality than human," said Mr. URQUHART, whose doctoral thesis examines grotesque representations and allusions to the notion of monstrosity in Mr. BESSETTE's novels. "The authority figures in his novels end up being the real monsters."
Mr. BESSETTE's later style was inspired by the nouveau roman experimental literary form created by French novelists in the 1950s that included Alain Robbe-Grillet and Nathalie Sarraute. Part of the nouveau roman technique is to eliminate character, plot development and authorial subjectivity to present the reality as pure and uncontaminated as possible. Mr. BESSETTE was a devout advocate of the Freudian psychocritique school of criticism developed by the French scholar Charles Mauron. His works of literary analysis include Littérature en ébullition in 1968 and Trois romanciers québécois in 1973. Regarding his exploration of Freudian literary theory, Mr. BESSETTE once said that psychocriticism gives the reader a feeling of power: "You have an impression and/or illusion that you are discovering things that the writer himself did not know. That's a great satisfaction."
His writing was influenced by a teaching career that began at the University of Saskatchewan in 1946. He also taught at Duquesne University and Royal Military College Kingston, as well as at Queen's. In 1982, he was an invited professor at Yale.
Mr. BESSETTE received the Governor-General's Literary Award for L'Incubation in 1965 and Le Cycle in 1971. He was elected to the Royal Society of Canada in 1966 and, in 1980, was awarded Quebec's Athanase-David Literary Prize.
Gerard BESSETTE was born on February 25, 1920, in Ste-Anne-de-Sabrevois, Québec. He died on February 20, 2005, in Kingston, Ontario He is survived by his wife, Irene BAKOWSKI- BORYS.
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Bassett Family Association Database
1920 - 2005 (84 years)