Yves P. Pelletier in Saguenay for this old pleasure of telling stories

It’s at the Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean Book Fair, where he presents his latest, Are you following me?may he share these thoughts with us. Between two jokes. And through some memorable memories.

One of the first to come up in the conversation, when asked about his relationship with literature, is that of his mother’s job at the library. And more precisely of all those books that she brought home with her in the evening.

“My mother came from a fairly modest background, and she didn’t have access to that when she was young. So the books in the library at home were precious objects that needed to be taken care of. You shouldn’t color in it!” remembers Yves P. Pelletier with a laugh.

He was especially interested in Tintin and other comics. At least until we force him to try something else.

It’s another “sharp memory,” he says, than the deal he made with his mother. She would buy him, at his request, this book filled with images and fantastic Walt Disney animals, but he would only be able to open it after he had finished another book. Thicker, less colorful, this one.

“It was Treasure Island of [Robert Louis] Stevenson. I still remember my reaction when I started. I had my flashlight, I was reading under my covers, and I was completely captivated, transported by the story. That’s my first real contact, I would say. Afterwards, I became a compulsive reader.

An author too. Even a designer. “At the time, I was doing drawings for the student newspaper. I would have liked to make comics. In the book DisorientedI’m talking about that. When I arrived in Paris, I went to offer comics to Fluide Glacial, The Echo of the Savannahs et Charlie Hebdo. But it didn’t work!” says the man who would get back on his feet many years later, co-signing two comic book projects.

From then on, there was the idea of ​​putting oneself on stage. To tell oneself.

As he did moreover, in words rather than images, in his first story with an autobiographical flavor, in 2022. And as he still does in Are you following mewhere he invites his readership to go back in time with him, during a great journey around the world.

“When I started to gravitate towards the world of comics, I saw that there were a lot of new generation authors who were emerging, with a bit of an autobiographical side. I said to myself: “Hey, why don’t I tell my travels that way?”

But Yves P. Pelletier quickly realized that he could not talk about his travels without telling “everything else”. Without revealing himself entirely. For better and for worse.

“I try to tell in a fictional form, with as much sincerity and transparency as possible, events that are true. Which are even documented, with dates. It’s just the names of my girlfriends that I changed!”

Everything is brought about through self-deprecation, assures the author, who emphasizes, for example, that his book Disoriented opens in a tone of absolute confidence – somewhere in 1981. “It starts and I say that I am a virgin. And that’s to say that it’s this virgin, two years later, who finds himself on TV making ass gags.”

Even if he is “not always at his best”, Yves P. Pelletier always takes pleasure in diving back into his memories in this way. He who doesn’t really say he’s nostalgic about it.

Because nostalgia often evokes a form of regret. And he doesn’t have any. “If my nostalgia exists, it does not confront my pleasure in the present or my hope for the future.”

There remains only nostalgic people, there are a few among his audience, which is very heterogeneous. Some have been following him since RBO, or even since Girls’ storieshe is surprised. But others, younger, knew him through his projects on screen, or during his appearance in Zénith, recently.

“I went to clown to sing songs, and it reached different generations. That’s my audience!”