Hello Gentle Reader
Archipelago Books is a wonderful publisher. They are independent and a not-for-profit organization that is devoted to the excellent publications of translated pieces of literature contemporary and classic. In their first eight years they had brought out more than seventy books from more than twenty languages. The best part of their biographical/mission statement is the following:
“Artistic exchange between cultures is a crucial component of global understanding. It has never been more important for voices from around the world to be heard in this country—less than three percent of new literature published the United States originates outside its borders. By publishing diverse and innovative literary translations we are doing what we can to change this shameful reality and broaden the American literary landscape.”
It is the devoted followers, and revolutionary thinkers, like the people and publishers of Archipelago Books that allow for the exchange of ideas and values via world literature and transcendence language barriers, that work towards a continuous dialogue of world literature. Without Archipelago Books nearly forgotten lands like the Scrublands of South Africa, and Chukchi lands of Siberia have found a home in the west, but also the Spanish Basque Country has begun to gain relevance as well as an identity all its own. Other countries like Lebanon have allowed their own unique voices and perceptions to be seen by western readers: from the unstable country of Lebanon, to the cat haunts of Montreal Quebec. Archipelago Books has brought to light authors from around the world, and authors even close to home – Jacques Poulin for example is a French speaking Canadian author who is largely not known outside of the French region of Canada. Also new authors have also been able to find their debut in English speaking countries because of Archipelago Books. Dominique Fabre is one of those authors. A French author who is described as writing about the: “individuals who live on the margins of society.”
However Dominique Fabre might consider what he writes in a different light. At least itself not some easily pigeon holed. Though he agrees that he does write about the contemporary people who live on the margins of society, Mister Fabre would also add that he writes about the quiet dignity that these people express in their daily lives. Dominique Fabre is the kind of author who sees how the most unextraordinary people and can have the most extraordinary lives or rather have the most extraordinary stories to tell in the least extraordinary way. What is so strange and wonderful than about his only published piece of work in English? Nothing. There are no incredible moments of wonder and awe. Quite the opposite really, in this piece of work Dominique Fabre is the epiphany of the anti-climactic, author; and it works for him. It is what makes the authors voice in his musings about the realistic depiction of life and its struggles with such impressionistic observations, potent. This potency is what gives the character Pierre his characterization. His causal observations; his day to day drudge, which isn’t really depicted as some dirge or elegy of the destruction of the human soul. It is described as a fact of life. Pierre is no different than anyone else in the respects of how his life is operated. Though the details vary from each individual and how their lives are lived, in the end each one works to live. Each one is bound by mortality and by financial needs. This is what allows Pierre to radiate such empathy with the reader – because his daily mundane tasks are full of the sacramental rituals we all perform on a day to day basis.
“The Waitress Was New,” covers three days of a bar man’s life. Pierre is an average middle aged man at the age of fifty six years old. He has been working since he was nineteen years old, and at the age off forty-four he almost threw himself into the Seine. He has done work as a bar man throughout his entire life, and obviously finds the work and its routine comforting and or at least appropriate enough for him to continue doing such work. When this poignant little novella begins, it’s easy to see that the day to day routine has been upset. Sabrina the single mother and usual or at least the permanent waitress at the café has called in sick, leaving for a forty year old waitress to take her place, who goes by the name of Madeline. It is this first paragraph that introduces Pierre a casual observer of life, and of other people. Though one who does not wish to intrude or interlope into the boundaries of other people’s lives.
“I don’t look outside too much because everything that matter to me in life always ends up sitting down at my bar, but just then I had a feeling, and I looked out towards the street. Yes its going to rain.”
That quote is one of my personal favourites by Pierre. It describes him perfectly as the casual observer of life. Life passes him bye, and he nonchalantly watches it pass bye, without much of a thought or care, in the fact that it just passes him bye. It is almost borderline apathetic how he chooses not to make any step in walking beside or near the lives of others. Rather Pierre choose to let those who choose to come to him, and even then he only gives half an ear, choosing not to take any responsibility in advising or getting to close or comfortable with others in their lives. That is why being a bar man in a café suits him. People give him their orders. Their desires or their want’s. A bottle of Perrier water; a beer; a coffee; a sandwich or a salad – for Pierre it is just his job; and it suits him fine. He compassionately describes people who come into the café. From the young man always dressed in black and has his nose in a book, to the wealthy client who experiences moments of wanting to undress and take a dive into the Seine.
However on these days that cover the entire novella, it is clear something is seriously wrong at the café. The owner who Pierre often calls the Boss, but whose name is Henri is unsettled, and when the new waitress Madeline comes into the café he takes off. When his wife comes down to take charge of the cash register, she becomes increasingly nervous of his sudden and unexpected disappearance. Pierre tries to shrug it off as middle age mid-life crisis, which the boss must be experiencing. Though there is no denying that it is certainly usual that he goes missing when the full time waitress Sabrina is off sick – and it’s a common though not talked about fact that the boss has been a part of some extra marital activities that do not includes his wife. Without the boss, though life at the café can get a bit hectic and stressful. People want their food on their lunch break. A coffee now please. A bottle of water is necessary at this exact moment. Though it is safe to assume that Pierre and Madeline though feeling the pressure of the rush, they handle the demands of their cliental with grace and dignity.
“The bosses wife had pretty blue-framed glasses with rhinestones at the corners; they sort of made you think of a Caribbean moth, I’d seen them in the window of the optician’s on the Maurice-Bokanowski.”
Pierre’s observations can be from the foreign in the commonplace. These simple observations and glimpses into the interior life of Pierre this casual and compassionate man, who really does not want to get too involved in anyone’s life, but also his own:
“Some days I’d rather not have to come out from behind my bar at all, but there’s no getting around it, life is still on the other side.”
Of course this about as much Pierre really divulges about his own personal life. It can become apparent though that Pierre at the age of fifty-six is like everyone else, working to get bye in life, and working towards retirement – as it becomes clear throughout the novella. He however divulges a few personal quips about himself. He was once married. Though it ended in divorce. Three years ago his most current and last relationship ended. It becomes increasingly wondering in the end if Pierre has relationship issues himself; his cynicism towards relationships in general and young love lead one to see him as a man whose been around the block obviously once or twice; however it does come across that he is the kind of person, that feels uncomfortable in a relationship. I doubt Pierre knew how to communicate and that life itself comes down to business, and the minimalist discussions that keep life just trucking on.
“I hang out my white shirts on the curtain rod in the shower, I get out my space heater to make sure they’d be nice and dry the next morning. I like these moments of my life, and a the same time I am afraid them, because sometimes, with one thing leading to another, I forget that a fifty-six year old guy and then I start asking myself questions. I remember my past, more than forty years ago.”
It is a potent little novella, full of causal and compassionate observations. It is a character study of a middle aged man whose life has not gone the way he wanted or at least expected it to go. The path he has taken has been treaded so long down the line that by the time he may have actually wanted to get off the path, it was too late, and he was stuck finishing the ride. Now he works and looks forward to his retirement which will most likely be a quiet and uneventful retirement. His death would be unceremonious, and his passing over looked, tucked away in the back pages of the obituaries. Though this novella does track the life of a man whose life has been reduced to the marginalized world of a common place unskilled (generally speaking) worker, whose own particular and peculiar talents have been honed through the years, this is not a novella about the grotesque. It’s not like looking at the Diane Arbus photograph, which depicts in an artistic and truly revolutionary way, and documents the grotesque life of the people who go unnoticed because they choose to linger on the very margins and limits of society – and transporting the mundane there. Oh the contrary with Dominique Fabre he sings for the unsung heroes, plucking his lyre, and telling of their mundane and banal trivialities and accomplishments.
Thank-you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
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M. Mary
