The poet, novelist and essayist Élise Turcotte was awarded this year by the City of Montreal the Grand Prix du livre de Montréal, a literary award accompanied by a $15,000 grant.
With Self-portrait of another (Alto, 2023), there are 8e novel, she is thus the fifth person to win this prize for the second time since its creation in 1965, having already received it for Guyana (Leméac, 2011).
The jury, this year composed of Daniel Grenier, Marie-Pascale Huglo, Josianne Létourneau, Luba Markovskaia and Akos Verboczy, under the presidency of Carole David, saw in Self-portrait of another “an exploration of the self very skillfully turned towards the other in fluid and captivating writing”.
This is a prosperous year for the writer born in 1957 in Sorel, who also received last October the prestigious Athanase-David literature prize, a distinction awarded by the government of Quebec, which rewarded a lifetime devoted to writing. “I feel strange,” confides Élise Turcotte. I really didn’t expect it, considering I had already received it. This is a really important book for me. I didn’t think he would make it this far. »
Self-portrait of another attempted to patch up the pieces of the singular destiny of Denise Brosseau (1936-1986), the aunt of the writer, friend in particular of Pauline Julien and Gérald Godin, of Gaston Miron and Roland Giguère, who arrived at 17 in Paris before There, a few years later, she married the Franco-Chilean artist Alejandro Jodorowsky and moved to Mexico with him.
The book, which also discusses his mental health problems and his tragic death in Montreal, is both the path and the destination of an investigation “into the blind spot in our lives”.
The path traveled by Self-portrait of anothermore than a year after its publication, somehow made the book spill over into reality. Many readers, explains Élise Turcotte, have come into contact with her. Some of them knew Denise Brosseau or are in possession of documents and photographs which concerned her. “It touched people in a way that I can’t explain. »
In Mexico too, the book resonated. Organized in collaboration with the Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico, an exhibition dedicated to the surrealist works of Alan Glass (1932-2023) will be on display at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA) in spring 2025. artist of Montreal origin, mentioned in the novel and who lived most of his life in Mexico, was close to Denise Brosseau, who was also married to the painter Fernando Garcia Ponce. “I have a friend who went to this Alan Glass retrospective last fall in Mexico, and it seemed like everyone there was talking about my book and passing it around. All sorts of things happen. It’s as if the constellation that was in my book was expanding. It’s crazy,” marvels the writer, who however does not intend to make a sequel.
At a time when first novels — which are sometimes also their last — receive a lot of attention, it seems to have become difficult for writers to last, to make a career. “It’s a price that comforted me,” says the writer about the Athanase-David. It freed me from something, without really knowing how to explain it. It’s as if my entire family of books had been gathered around me, as if we recognized all the work I’ve done, all these years of writing and stubbornness. »
“I insist on writing exactly what I want to write, on looking for forms and on being completely in a sort of freedom when I write. I didn’t make any concessions. I’ve never done it. I think this is the way to last,” believes the writer, who published her first book more than forty years ago. Because literary success, in his eyes, is measured neither by the number of books sold, nor by invitations to television.
“I always need to find new forms. Writing, for me, is a kind of movement. I have a searching head. I want to surprise myself. Curiosity is perhaps my greatest quality. Besides, I haven’t written much in the last year and I’m starting to feel claustrophobic. Writing is a bit like leaving the house and being inside at the same time. »
For Élise Turcotte, writing means paying sustained attention to the world around her. A world that appears more and more dehumanized to him. “Writing is perhaps the only thing I can do to continue to make this world habitable,” confides the woman who sees herself as an eternal beginner.
An ethic of creation which is embodied in her “a little quotationist” writing, through which the writer strives to show, she says, “that there is art around us, that it there are people who resist a language that does not contain us. »
