The theme of the Salon du Livre de Montréal this year was: "The Book, time traveling machine."
Last week was held one of the most important events of the year for Montreal’s book industry: the Salon du Livre de Montréal. It’s a yearly book fair that joins together dozens of publishing houses, hundreds of writers, and thousands of visitors. Last Thursday, G. and I decided to take a break from essay-writing and grad school applications to go take a look at what the Salon had to offer this year. We were looking forward to a book-signing session with French writer Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt — a favorite of ours. Schmitt is a prolific writer of plays, short stories, and novels. He is most famous for a short philosophical novel, Oscar et la dame rose (Oscar and the Lady in Pink), and his masterpiece La Part de l’autre (which, as far as I can tell, has unfortunately not yet been translated into English), a work of counterfactual history that retells the story of Hitler’s life if he had been accepted into the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts (and therefore not become the Hitler we know) in parallel with the actual events of his life.
We went over to Mr Schmitt’s stall and chose what book’s we’d buy to get signed by the author. G. chose Ulysses from Baghdad, and contemporary retelling of the Odyssey, and I went for one of Schmitt’s autobiographical works on music called Ma vie avec Mozart (My life with Mozart), which comes with its own CD! I was immediately won over by its lyric opening:
He is the one who started our correspondence.
One day, during my fifteenth year, he sent me a music. It modified my life. Better: it kept me alive. Without it, I would be dead.
Ever since, I write him often, little notes scribbled on a table corner during the elaboration of a book, or long missives composed at night while a sky without stars hangs above the orange-hued city.
When he feels like it, he answers, during a concert, in an airport lounge, at a street corner, always surprising, always dazzling.
Books signed, we spent the rest of our time at the Salon going around the different publishers’ stalls, trying to resist the temptation of so many great titles, and happy to see that a lot of people are still into books and reading! The section for young readers, in particular, is absolutely enormous — proof of the amazing diversity of books now offered to the YA readership. At Leméac (one of my favorite French publishers), G. helped me find a rare copy of Jacques Poulin’s first novel Mon cheval pour un royaume (My Horse for a Kingdom) and Conversations avec un ami (Conversations With a Friend), a series of interviews with the master bibliophile Alberto Manguel. While we were waiting to pay for our books, G. and I turned around and realized we were standing a few feet away from Michel Tremblay, Québec’s most celebrated playwright. We mustered our courage and went over for a little congratulatory chat. He turned out to be extremely friendly. I mentioned to him that I’d seen an excellent production of his play Albertine en cinq temps (Albertine in Five Times) played in English at McGill’s TNC theatre a few weeks ago and he even expressed his dissapointment at not having been invited to see it! G. also mentioned to him that we’d been surprised to find a copy of one of his books in a bookshop in Dublin last Spring.
Surprise! A copy of one of Michel Tremblay's books we found in a Dublin bookstore last Spring.
We left the Salon joyful and relaxed and went to discuss books and authors we loved over dessert and a glass of porto in a nearby restaurant. A well deserved evening of fun in the cold November darkness.
