50th anniversary of On the Road - Kerouac wanted to write in French: Difference between revisions

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Here and there, Kerouac also inserts comments which refer to Quebec: "There are families in Quebec who take one of their sons and place him in a seminar to become priest, so that the family may all go to Heaven. I could not have acquired that. I would have always climbed up the fence at night to go check out the girls. I would have been a mixed up priest."
Here and there, Kerouac also inserts comments which refer to Quebec: "There are families in Quebec who take one of their sons and place him in a seminar to become priest, so that the family may all go to Heaven. I could not have acquired that. I would have always climbed up the fence at night to go check out the girls. I would have been a mixed up priest."


Like he does with English, Kerouac molds the French language to his hand, by inserting English and Franco-American expressions in it. He in fact shows a greater command of his mother tongue than the few French phrases that he inserted in his English novels would have let us predict. His short stories have a good rhythm and a humour that is typically French-Canadian. Like when he tells the first time he got drunk: "Me and my friends, 2 Canadians Roland and Henri, and a Greek our famous G.J., we drank a good dozen glasses each. It was thought we had discovered the Good God. We were grabbing all the old drunks by the neck and were telling them they were the Good God. We sang it in the toilets and in the streets. 'All men are the Good God.'" Thus, several years before [[Wikipedia:Joual|joual]] emerged in [[Wikipedia:Quebec literature|Quebec literature]], Kerouac, instinctively, used the beauty and the authenticity of the oral language of the people to describe the colourful daily life of the Franco-Americans in his native Lowell.
Like he does with English, Kerouac molds the French language to his hand, by inserting English and Franco-American expressions in it. He in fact shows a greater command of his mother tongue than the few French phrases that he inserted in his English novels would have let us predict. His short stories have a good rhythm and a humour that is typically French-Canadian. Like when he tells the first time he got drunk: "Me and my friends, 2 Canadians Roland and Henri, and a Greek our famous G.J., we drank a good dozen glasses each. It was though we had discovered the Good God. We were grabbing all the old drunks by the neck and were telling them they were the Good God. We sang it in the toilets and in the streets. 'All men are the Good God.'" Thus, several years before [[Wikipedia:Joual|joual]] emerged in [[Wikipedia:Quebec literature|Quebec literature]], Kerouac, instinctively, used the beauty and the authenticity of the oral language of the people to describe the colourful daily life of the Franco-Americans in his native Lowell.


'''A French-Canadian writer'''
'''A French-Canadian writer'''
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This period which he describes in this French novel is practically missing in the remainder of his work. But the most touching part of ''La nuit est ma femme'' is perhaps that in which he tells the moving of his parents to [[Wikipedia:New Haven, New York|New Haven]], near New York, in a house giving on the Atlantic. His father, Léo, sees it as a sign from his Breton ancestors: "Ti-Jean, I have returned to the sea", my father said to me with tears in his eyes. I always knew that one fine day I would live on the side of the sea of my ancestors from Brittany. It is in my blood, as in yours, it is for that reason that you were swimming as you did in a storm. All turned out well in the end. Sometimes, it is worth living, my Ti-Choux."
This period which he describes in this French novel is practically missing in the remainder of his work. But the most touching part of ''La nuit est ma femme'' is perhaps that in which he tells the moving of his parents to [[Wikipedia:New Haven, New York|New Haven]], near New York, in a house giving on the Atlantic. His father, Léo, sees it as a sign from his Breton ancestors: "Ti-Jean, I have returned to the sea", my father said to me with tears in his eyes. I always knew that one fine day I would live on the side of the sea of my ancestors from Brittany. It is in my blood, as in yours, it is for that reason that you were swimming as you did in a storm. All turned out well in the end. Sometimes, it is worth living, my Ti-Choux."


All these French documents throw a completely new light on the work of Kerouac. A light which let us glimpse at a writer who was more attached to his mother tongue, his Franco-American milieu, and his Quebec roots than it was possible to suspect up until now it. Kerouac even becomes to some extent a true French-Canadian writer, who laid down on paper a portrait of his time, not so far behind, when French was spoken and living on a large scale a little everywhere in New England, in the Quebec of down below.
All these French documents throw a completely new light on the work of Kerouac. A light which let us glimpse at a writer who was more attached to his mother tongue, his Franco-American milieu, and his Quebec roots than it was possible to suspect up until now. Kerouac even becomes to some extent a true French-Canadian writer, who laid down on paper a portrait of his time, not so far behind, when French was spoken and living on a large scale a little everywhere in New England, in the Quebec of down below.


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