Miss Take

Sixteen-year-old Miles has run away from home, inviting his childhood companion, the fourteen-year-old Inuit orphan Chateaugué, to join him in a rented flat opposite Notre-Dame-de-Bonsecours in Montreal. There they construct a chaste life for themselves, living as brother and sister. They spend their days riding bicycles wildly through the streets of the city, dodging the automobiles that symbolize for them the adult world they despise, a world that has dominated the landscape with its roadmaps of social discourse. They spend hours at the library, laughing with disdain at how the classics have become venerated, how their authors’ words and turns of phrase have become confused with the things and actions they signify. Enthralled by the works of the ＂mad＂ poet Nelligan, Miles begins a journal, determined to free language from the constraints of convention, but finds he cannot write anything without immediately conjuring up its opposite.

To escape the boredom that history seems to have decreed shall be re-enacted endlessly by all grown-ups, Miles and Chateaugué enter into a suicide pact to preserve their childhood freedom and purity from the debasement of the adult roles pre-ordained for them.

Destitute after spending what little money they have, Miles goes to a bar in search of a drink, where he is seduced by an older woman, and suddenly finds himself both attracted and repelled by the pleasures and debasements of the flesh. Having stepped out of their world of childhood innocence, can he return to Chateaugué and consummate their vows, or is this brush with experience irrevocable?

Written in a style that echoes the work of Arthur Rimbaud and William S. Burroughs, Ducharme’s vision is darkly prophetic of a world that has lost its innocence, and on which ＂our lady of good help＂ now only gazes with an inscrutable Mona Lisa smile.

Novelist and playwright Rejean Ducharme was born in Saint-Felix-de-Valois, in the region of Joliette, Quebec in 1941. He spent seven months in the Canadian Air Force in 1962, then worked as a salesman, office clerk and cab driver before travelling across Canada, the United States and Mexico for three years. Ten of his works have been published by Gallimard which is quite an accomplishment, given the prestige of this French publishing company. His first novel, L’Avalee des avalees The Swallower Swallowed (1966), won the Governor General’s Literary Award in 1967 and the French CBC’s Canada Reads competition in 2005. For this work he was one of the nation’s first writers to be nominated for France’s prestigious Prix Goncourt. His second novel, Le Nez qui voque (1967), was awarded the Prix litteraire de la province de Quebec. It is published here under the title Miss Take. These two, plus a third novel, L’Oceantume (1968), were published during the years of the Quiet Revolution in Quebec and made a significant impact. Ducharme wrote the plays, Le Cid maghane and Ines Peree et Inat Tendu in 1968, and Ha ha! which won the Governor General’s Literary Award in 1982 has also been translated into English. He received the Prix Belgique-Canada in 1973 for L’Hiver de force and the Prix France-Canada in 1976 for Les Enfantomes. In addition, he wrote the lyrics of several songs for Robert Charlebois (1976). Ducharme also wrote the screenplay for two very successful films: Les Bons Debarras (1979) and Les Beaux Souvenirs (1981) produced by Francis Mankiewicz. After a fourteen-year silence, Ducharme surprised the world with two novels, Devade (1990) and Va savoir (1994). Rejean Ducharme is considered one of the most significant and original voices in Quebec literary history. He has also exhibited his sculptures and paintings created with found objects, under the pseudonym Roch Plante. He is not only one of Quebec’s most influential playwrights, but also one of the province’s enigmas: the man has not been seen in public for over a decade and there are few photographs of him. He followed his early work with other novels including La fille de Christophe Colomb which has since been adapted for the theatre and translated into English as The Daughter of Christopher Columbus (Toronto: Guernica Editions, 2000). His play Ha! ha! (1978, Theatre du Nouveau Monde /TNM, directed by Jean-Pierre Ronfard ) won him another Governor General’s Award in 1982 and the Grand Prix litteraire du Journal de Montreal. Ducharme’s work is very difficult to categorize; it delights in a kind of dark, childlike fantasy and skates along difficult issues like Quebec Nationalism, language and culture and, of course, personal and social identity. He has also written films and lyrics. In 1994 he won the Quebec Government’s Athanase-David Literary prize. In 1999 he was awarded the Grand Prix national des lettres by the minister of culture for France. He sent writer Roger Grenier to pick up the prize. His novel Gros Mots was published in 2000 by Gallimard. His other plays include: Le Cid maghane (Festival de Sainte-Agathe, 1968), Le marquis qui perdit (Theatre du Nouveau Monde, 1970, directed by Andre Brassard ), Ines Peree et Inat Tendu (Nouvelle Compagnie Theatrale, 1976). In 2001, TNM mounted an adaptation of his novel L’Hiver de force as part of the company’s 50th anniversary celebrations and subsequently toured the production to Paris.

Will Browning holds a Docorate of Modern Langauges in French and Spanish from Middlebury College, and an MA in Spanish from the Universite de Paris. He is currently Professor at Boise State University. Browning publishes French-language reviews and articles, in addition to his translation work.