Born in Chicago and still an American citizen, the great Montreal writer Catherine Mavrikakis set out on the roads of the United States last summer, traveling the country from east to west and from north to south to write her new book, On the roads. Revisiting her family memories, observing the cities and landscapes and especially the people, noting everything, she paints a confusing portrait of the country, from Chicago to Alamogordo, and does not fail to note many aberrations.
Catherine Mavrikakis publishes “On the roads” with Éditions Héliotrope.
© Éditions Héliotrope
Catherine Mavrikakis made this strange and demanding 31-day trip a few months before the presidential election. A long-time reader of stories and novels inspired by the road – she refers to Jack London, John Steinbeck, Jack Kerouac, Cormac McCarthy – the writer wanted to write on the subject in turn.
She was therefore not sure the road… but on THE roads. In Michigan. In Wisconsin. In Wyoming. Deep in New Mexico. In Tennessee. A sort of pilgrimage… and quite an expedition during which she saw very vulnerable people, bison (finally!), desert expanses, cafes, bookstores, and lots and lots of red caps.
Write fast
Unlike usual, Catherine Mavrikakis wrote this book very quickly, on the fly, partly even while she was on the road. “It wasn’t an obvious method for me. I’m not someone who writes from very vivid impressions yet. I sort things out more. But I said to myself: it’s interesting.”
She didn’t want to make a travel diary or a travel journal. “I wanted to make a text that would put things together: that I could put Arizona with Dakota. I wanted to try to understand what the United States was, from which I feel close and at the same time very far away.
Lots of challenges
Books that talk about travel, about the road, have been with him for a long time. “I love travel journals. I read them all the time. I even gave courses on it.” Her book is a documentary-fiction, she says. “I tell stories.”
“The challenge for me was to be fair, to respect what I saw, while allowing myself thoughts or fantasies that were linked to reality, but which belonged to me. The challenge was to remain faithful and transmit reality, which is not my field because I am in fiction.
When she traveled, her eyes were wide open and her ears drooped… “I had to stay open to what could surprise me. There are ways to write about many things. I had plenty of other chapters to write. I had to ask myself: what struck me the most in all of this? We see a lot in 31 days of travel.”
The pace was brisk and Catherine visited places she had never been. “I had never been to Wisconsin, to Yellowstone. I went to places I didn’t know at all.” Like Sioux Falls…
Difference in mentality
Because she is American by birth and still has citizenship, what bothered her the most was wondering what would have become of her if her parents had lived in the United States. “My mother decided to come back to Quebec because she wanted to speak French. But I have cousins who live there.”
She clearly observed a marked difference in mentality between the two neighboring countries. “Even when I was out west, where they’re pretty close to Alberta, for them it was a whole different culture. They had the impression that we lived in a socialist, communist regime. They didn’t know Quebec.”
On the roads
Catherine Mavrikakis
Éditions Héliotrope
126 pages
- Catherine Mavrikakis was born in Chicago to a French mother and a Greek father.
- She makes the United States the primary setting of her books.
- She is the author of Bay City Skyof Niagara and of On the heights of Mount Thoreau.
- His works have been translated and awarded many times.
- She will be at the Montreal Book Fair.
“From the Michigan of my 1960s and 1970s, I wanted to forget everything, and when I happen to go see a friend in Chicago, I rush into a plane, happy to fly over a part of my life without having to cross it again. I don’t go through American customs in Detroit or Port Huron, but I show my passport to a sometimes nice, often very unpleasant guy in Montreal.
– Catherine Mavrikakis, On the roadsÉditions Héliotrope
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