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Excerpts from
“La Littérature Franco-Américaine: Ecrivains et écritures –Franco-American Literature: Writers and their Writings. Sous la direction de Claire Quintal. Worcester, MA, Institut français, Collège de l’Assomption, 1992 Reprinted with the kind permission of the Institut Français
A PEARL OF GREAT PRICE
Gérard Robichaud
[Gérard Robichaud, who had been invited to this colloquium to read from
his work in progress, entitled A Pearl of Great Price, was unable to
attend because of heart surgery. So as not to disappoint the audience, we
were able to obtain the videotape of an interview of Gérard Robichaud,
taped at SUNY Albany in the mid-1980s, thanks to funding from the
National Endowment for the Humanities. The interviewer is Dr. Eloise
Brière of SUNY Albany. She was also the director of the project on
Franco-American funding by the NEH. We reproduce the interview herewith
with her kind permission.*]
E.B. I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about where your
career is as a writer, Gerry, so that we could get a sense of what’s been
accomplished and what remains to be done.
G.R. Well, as you know, I have published two books that deal primarily
with Franco-American lives because I think that it’s the kind of writing
that really moves me, that makes me do my best. I have done other
writing, but it never comes anywhere near propelling me like when I begin
to think of my own Franco-American roots.
E.B. And would you say that the two books that have been published and
the one that you are working on are a result of this delving into
yourself?
G.R. Oh yes, very much. I have always wanted to write, of course. I
always wanted to be a writer. I never wanted to be anything else.
E.B. But you were writing in French.
G.R. Yes.
E.B. Now, when did the transition to English occur, and why?
G.R. Well, first of all, I lived in the United States for quite some time
before I seriously began to write, and I found that I had to learn to
write in English because you can’t be published in French in this
country. It’s too bad that I couldn’t write in my own native language,
but I find now, and I hate to say this out loud, I can express myself
much better in English. I will always venture to say that the English
language, for my purposes, is a much more handy tool than the French
language.
E.B. Can you specify a bit more why this is so?
G.R. The English language is a verb language. It is an action language.
The French language to me – correct me if I am wrong – is more
philosophical, it’s a meditative, it’s an introspective language. I would
like to add two things here that just occurred to me. First of all, when
I write about Franco-Americans I am thinking in French most of the time.
E.B. Interesting.
G.R. And then I have to sometimes go to a French dictionary to find the
English word. Not that I don’t know the word, I am looking for the exact
word. I am looking for the mot juste. And so I do this quite a lot.
I also believe that if you want to be a good writer in the English
language, you have to be a student of the French language because you
will have the discipline of clear thinking, of exact expression, of
precision of words. You get this from the first language.
E.B. I tend to sense from what you write, and the way people have reacted
to reading your works, that you have presented a picture of
Franco-American life in the 20s, 30s, 40s, before the Second World War
that everyone seems to identify with or at least wants to identify with,
even if they have had a negative Franco experience. They feel that what
you have portrayed is so poignant and so rich and so warm, that to them
this is really the way they want our past to have been. This may not be
true of every experience.
G.R. My experience was a happy one. I went to a good school, a good
Catholic school, a very excellent school, with some very backward ideas
also, from which I have luckily escaped, but then after that I went to
New York, and I have lived a very happy life in New York, a very
liberating life in New York while the Depression was going on. And then
the war came on. Some people would say that it is not a lucky thing to go
to war. But I thought it was a wonderful experience and I regret none of
it. Of course, some things were bad, but I didn’t mind. I refused to let
them bother me. Now some Franco-Americans have had some bad experiences,
and they are bitter, and they are very angry about many things. And this
should be written up too, this should be spoken of quite frankly for all
to hear.
E.B. You have lived in both places, in Petits Canadas, Little Canadas, in
the ethnic neighborhoods, and what you seem to be saying is that maybe
there is something in that neighborhood and in the parochial school
experience that would tend to suppress creativity.
G.R. I think that there was a sense that you were not good enough to make
it. You are not given that kind of strength. It is inner strength to go
ahead and do it on your own. But you discover this in a non-sectarian
school, that they encourage you to be your own person, to be able to do
something. There was some sort of a defeatist atmosphere when I was
growing up. And since I was going to a seminary in Québec, I was an
American, when I was in Lewiston and a Canadian at school. But in a
seminary at this time, in my particular milieu, I was somebody
extraordinary. I was breaking the rules. I was doing something that
nobody else was doing, that nobody else thought themselves good enough to
do. I thought myself very good enough to do it. My father gave me that
sense that I was important. And that is one thing for which I am grateful
to him. He made me feel that I was important. So did my mother. Maybe
there was not enough of that in other members of the family, but I would
consider myself important, that I was going there. But this is something
that I got from my parents. I never got it from the school at all,
because the school was an aplatissement. They flatten you out, all to the
same level.
E.B. So you think that potential is almost suppressed, or not recognized
in that kind of a system? We still apologize for who we are. We have no
reason to. We have to tell our people – writers should tell our people,
“You are important, just as good, just as deserving as anybody.”
I think at one point, Gerry, you said that a writer must go home again,
can you explain what you meant by that?
G.R. Robert Cormier, who is a famous novelist, said this once. “You can
only keep your children by losing them for a while.” In other words, the
writer who wants to write about his own ethnic background has to move
away from it in order to recapture it. He comes back with a fresh look on
it. He comes back with a new way of looking at his own people, and at
himself also.
E.B. What about this work that you are involved in? You said you had just
completed it.
G.R. Yes, finished, 240 pages. It’s the story of a man who comes from a
very devout Franco-American Catholic family, and who has left the Church
and who is now facing death. It could be that he might die when they
landed there because the casualty rate on Iwo Jima was very high. Those
of us who came back considered themselves lucky. We have had an
extension, a life extension. And so he faces what a lot of Catholics
today face about their faith. What should they believe? What should they
not believe? How right is the Church? How right is my hero of this story?
He comes from a very strong Catholic family and so far he has lived to
please his family, because they didn’t really expect him to do anything
else but that. So now he wants to be himself, he is looking for freedom
also. His fight is for freedom overseas, but he would like to fight also
for some of his own freedom. And that is, in a sense, the theme of the
book. He will go through this throughout the book. He will find his
answer. He will find his pearl of great price at length in a foxhole with
intense fighting going on around him. That is when he will come up with
the answer. That is the story of the book. So he is placed in a crisis
situation that finally produces a certainty of some kind…
If you dare, it is easy for a man or a person to make a decision in
tranquility, without any crisis around. You can say what you believe. You
can disbelieve anything. But in a crisis situation when you are facing
possible death any minute and you have seen other people who have died
over there, and you face this, this is when you say that what you believe
at that time is what counts.
E.B. Can you imagine yourself writing a short story or a novel of
something without religion in some form or another coming into the
picture?
G.R. I cannot. Of course in the same context I think it has to be said,
and I would like to say it, that your religious experience is an
invaluable experience. It’s an enriching experience; it is a wonderful
experience. There is nothing like Christmas, Midnight Mass; nothing like
some of the consolation that the Church brings to the family that has
just had a death in it. Nothing like it. I just attended the funeral of
my brother sometime in January and the Church contributes to this. And
this is something that a writer has to say also. It’s all very good to
chastise, but you also have to reward when something good is done. And I
think it should be stated that for me, my seminary experiences are the
richest experiences I could ever have had.
E.B. Would you say there is a specific contribution that Franco-American
writers can bring to American literature because you are saying, and
others have said it too, that they can only write about the
Franco-American experience. Someone like Kerouac wrote about it, but also
wrote about other Beat experiences. What do you see the Franco-American
contribution to American literature as being? I mean what is going to
come from it? How is it going to expand or contract?
G.R. Well, if you write only as a Franco-American about Franco-Americans,
you are not succeeding in what you should be doing as a writer. You
should write about Franco-Americans in a Franco-American setting that
appeals to the world. You should speak to the world and not only to your
compatriots. My first book was reviewed by practically everybody but
Franco-Americans, and it was wonderfully received, and I say this only
because this was so. But it is only much later that Franco-Americans
recognized my work. But I was not writing for them. People who have lived
only in New York have read my books and they appeal to them. You have to
write books for everybody. You can’t write books for Franco-Americans.
You have to write for the world.
E.B. Do Franco-Americans have something unique to bring to that total
American literature? Is there a perspective there that is lacking now
that can be brought in? We all know that when Kerouac started writing, he
astonished his readers by that whole mystical side to him which was not
all that much Eastern religion, but really the Franco-American Catholic
experience that no one could quite identify at that time. So I think that
may be one thing that Franco-American literature is bringing to the
world.
G.R. My wife thinks that the Franco-American experience in this country,
in the United States, is something that a lot of other people, a lot of
ethnic groups and other people in this country should read and some of
them who have read my books have absolutely no idea of the
Franco-American experience. They have, for instance, some of the
traditions that we have, that I have written about. They have found
corollaries of their own. And some of the thinking is something that they
have responded to. It is not just a Franco-American thing. It belongs to
everybody. It is a part of the growth and development of this country.
* Our thanks also to David Fuller and VP Film and Tape Productions for
their technical wizardry.
[When the Institut français honored Gérard Robichaud with a Certificate
of Merit, in 1990, he read the following statement about writers and
writing to the gathered assembly.
Quand L’Institut français lui décerna son Certificat de Mérite en 1990,
Gérard Robichaud partagea avec les invités ses pensées sur le métier
d’écrivain.
Je réfléchissais hier à ce diner-gala et je me rappelais avec grand
plaisir mes beaux jours, mes belles années au Séminaire de St. Hyacinthe.
Ca fait longtemps de ça. Oui, j’avais bien jadis l’intention de devenir
prêtre, mais j’ai changé de course.
Ca ce n’était pas de ma faute complètement – il y a beaucoup de choses
qui ne sont pas de ma faute – mais c’est bien au séminaire que j’ai
rencontré toutes sortes de compagnons qui sont devenus mes amis pour la
vie – des amis précieux comme Molière, Virgile, Flaubert, Victor Hugo,
Balzac qui, chacun à sa manière, me préparait pour apprécier plus tard
Sinclair Lewis, Jane Austen, Dostoyevski, Hemingway, Thomas Wolfe et bien
d’autres.
Et c’est pourquoi un beau jour je me suis décidé moi aussi, d’essayer de
devenir écrivain. C’était un peu audacieux, mais ce n’était pas un pêché!
D’autaunt plus que c’est une profession assez agréable, même si on ne
nous gaspille pas avec beaucoup d’argent. C’est pourquoi je veux moi
aussi honorer les écrivains de toujours.
Mais, enfin de me faire comprendre par tout le monde et, pour honorer
l’ancienne politesse de mes parents, je voudrais bien continuer de
parler, non pas dans la langue de mon cœur, et de mon père et de ma mère,
mais dans celle de ma vocation, c’est-à-dire, en anglais.
Reflections on the Writer and his Craft
The priest and the writer, particularly the novelist, have something in common, but I will not carry this thought too far. I do believe, however,
that both vocations demand a natural, instinctive gift of compassion for
the human condition and above all, a special non-judgmental acceptance of
people, as they are, and even more, the practice of the noblest faith I
know, that all human persons may… and can… reach out… and up… and ever
upward to become better than they’d ever hoped, or thought or knew they
could or would be.
When I speak of writers here I do mean, men and women. For women have
also suffered from writer’s block, and they have also published great
literary masterpieces. In fact, the publishing world has welcomed women
earlier than have many other fields of endeavor. Looking to the bottom
line, publishers discovered the simple wisdom of appreciating superior
abilities, of promoting untapped talents and geniuses, without regard to
color, creed, class, origin or gender.
Many writers know, and some would even admit it, that an asset of their
profession is a carefully nurtured, and just as carefully concealed,
giant-sized ego, one might even call it gall, that the world waits with
baited breath for the memorable words that will come tap-tapping from his
word processor. The cure for this Napoleonic complex is a warning on the
blackboard of every creative writing class that reads: REMEMBER WATERLOO.
As he must, the writer works alone. It is the loneliest job in the world.
Above all, however, pity his poor wife. Right now she has just found the
milk container in the broom closet, and the well-thumbed Webster’s
Dictionary (the revised edition) gathering frost in the fridge. A recent
review of the writer’s latest novel has upset him a bit and that may be
why this morning he tried to shave with Crest toothpaste. However, a bit
later, he very nearly avoided brushing his uppers and lowers with instant
foam. By now, of course, his patient, ever-loving wife is once more
suspicious that her writer-husband might be again pregnant – with book.
The average writer is wise enough not to take himself too seriously.
Failure does not deter him, nor does success overwhelm him. At least, not
right away. Only too well does he remember years of rejections in the
form of little multi-colored slips from faceless editors. He also knows
that one best seller can fool many of the people much of the time, but
not everybody all of the time, and sometimes not for long, and sometimes
not at all at $22.85 a copy.
Most writers, at one time or other, have displayed tendencies to become
grouchy. Robert Heinlein, author of The Cat that Walks through Walls,
explains it this way: “There is no way that a writer can be tamed…or
civilized. In a household with more than one person of which one is a
writer, the only solution know to science is to provide the patient with
an isolation room where he can endure the acute stages in private, and
where food can be poked in to him with a stick. Because if you disturb
the patient at such time, he may break out into tears or become violent,
or he may not hear you at all. And if you shake him at this stage, he
bites…”
I remember one day when I was writing a book, as the TV whined, the
vacuum cleaner groaned, and the phones rang, and my beloved wife
chit-chatted of this and that, and then I growled in a low voice, “A
little bit more of this, and I might just return to the seminary.”
As we all do, the writer grows older but, however, he must remain forever
young at heart, forever fresh in outlook, and still energized with the
novelist’s delusion that the world really began the day his first novel
appeared, unannounced as most of them are, before an unsuspecting world.
The novelist is neither man nor women, per se, but he must be at one with
both or either, a man for all seasons and all ages, a ventriloquist with
the gift of tongues, the kind of person who will go that extra mile in
the traditional Indian’s moccasins all the better to get to know yet
another human being. He needs to listen to your stories of joy and
laughter, your eventful days and nights, the glad and the sad days of
your life, of gladness, and sorrow also, for, as Louis Veuillot said many
years ago, “Only those eyes well-washed by tears can best see the anguish
of others.” And, one may add, to tell moving stories.
Whether he wants to or not, the writer hears many confessions. True, he
does not grant absolution, and yet his is another process of psychic
cleansing. This is not an easy task he takes upon himself, and he may
fail here. More often than not, however, he will succeed if he manages to
enter your subconscious, truly feel welcomed there with a good story told
in the simplest of words, tug gently at your own memories and deeper
emotions which, by the way, are pretty much yours and mine all the time,
and trigger a spark of sudden recognition in your soul and heart, and
rueful acceptance of your common identity, common joys, common grief,
compassion and yes, relationship and responsibility for all your brothers
and sisters of the human family under the Fatherhood of God.
The true writer, I do believe, has taken an oath, in pectore, or in
public, to tell the truth, all the truth, and nothing but the truth and
to be a recorded witness to it, especially against the powers that be, be
they political, economic, bureaucratic, ideological, and may I add,theological.
My own favorite writers are those who, from time immemorial, have and
continue today to be the traditional maudite mouche-à-marde who enunciate
in polite society the impolite truth, especially when it is dressed to
look fashionable, who stand in the public square, days in and days out,
to perform the artist’s basic mission: to afflict the comfortable, and to
comfort the afflicted.
Yes, let us honor such writers!
At all turning points in human history, they have been the voice of the
voiceless, the cry of the helpless, the protest of the powerless under
Fascist and Communist tyrants. Some of these voices have been that of
clergymen-writers, fighters all, who with simple words, but brave words,
at times and places most dangerous to life and limbs, have shouted again
and again: “This is NOT right, This is NOT RIGHT, THIS IS NOT RIGHT!”
Such a voice in our own day is that of the President of Czechoslovakia,
Vaclav Havel!
Yes, let us honor such writers, and celebrate such artists in all forms
of communication, especially those, as in The Trumpet and the Swan, by
E.B. White, “Only hope can carry us aloft, can keep us afloat, and a
certain faith that the incredible structure that has been fashioned by
this most strange and ingenious of mammals cannot end in ruin and
disaster. This faith is a writer’s faith, nothing else. And it must be
the writer, above all else, who keeps it alive – choked with laughter, or
with pain.”
Mes chers amis, you have given me in a special manner a renewed sense of
pride and joy in my own chosen vocation. In that spirit, I thank you
again, and do so in the name of my brother and sister-writers, whom I
love and respect. Franco and non-Francos, and all those writers who share
the sweat and tears of the demanding but most gratifying of professions.
Encore une fois, merci de tout mon Coeur!
[Gerard Robichaud has written his own resume. We publish it here exactly
as he wrote it in 1991.]
My father, Michel Robichaud, (1874-1940) was from St., Louis de Kent, New
Brunswick, Canada, from a family of ten. My mother was Célestine Mathieu,
(1874-1919) from St. Evariste, Beauce, P.Q., Canada, also from a rather
large family. They had four sons, Edgar, Louis, Gerard, Joseph, and an
infant daughter, who did not survive.
Gerard was born September 12, 1908 in St. Evariste, P.Q., Canada. Edgar
married Alice Breton in 1924 and had two daughters, Irene and Lucille,
and a son Robert. Joseph married and had one daughter, Claudia. These
children are my only living blood relatives.
My father was a carpenter who went where the work was and took his family
with him, so that my brothers and I were educated in many towns and
cities, in various schools, parochial and non-sectarian in Quebec and New
England. Though full of educational hazards, this experience was good for
me: it taught me the art of fencing with diversity and the value of
eclecticism. The most important of my work as a writer generates from
that period of my life, transitional for my family and for so many French
Canadians, escaping to the south for a happier life and becoming Francos.
My father could not write, could not read books, but he could read
people. My mother, a school teacher, wanted very much that at least one
of her sons would have the glorious benefit of a sound, classical
education, that might or might not lead to a professional career, even
the priesthood perhaps, or at least a rescue from the life with no future
clearly reserved at that time for many Franco-American of my generation.
Today when I see young Francos, jobless, hopeless, glad to pour gas to
manage another day, I remember to tell myself: there you go, chum, but
for the wisdom of your father and mother.
After proper preparation in secondary schools in the USA and in Canada, I
entered a Seminary in Quebec at the age of 14 and a half and there for
many years I relished the gifts of great knowledge given me: a classical
education in French, English, Latin and Greek, and intimate friendships
via books with the truly great writers of western civilization. For this
I remain thankful to this day, but this was, unfortunately, a preparation
for a life in the hereafter, not for this life, in the here and now. The
curriculum lacked any attempt even to grasp the barest inkling of the
basic and beautiful sexual meaning of the human condition. I left at 19,
almost 20, unable to even pretend, for the purpose of getting a degree,
any honest acceptance of this medieval theology. This, of course was in1929.
Has anything changed that much?
I escaped… to Greenwich Village in New York City, to continue my
education in the lively company of future writers, poets, painters,
sculptors, Martha Graham dancers, refined chorus girls, burlesque
comedians, famous and infamous novelists, a new world where lifestyles
were indeed your business and yours alone, a new freedom that, by the
way, was more or less imitated by the 60’s generation, with some
reservations. We did our thing, picketed against the evil of our own day,
but we also hurried to our homes to WORK. To try to create, to think, but
we never thought we had a right to bore les bourgeois with
naval-conscious confessions. Above all we strove to avoid any form of
trivializations that have become the meat and potatoes of some many
published books today. But then, we were not perfect either.
As a happy bachelor, I joined the US Army in 1942, spent some lazy days
on Oahu, Hawaii, some very rough days and nights on Iwo Jima, came home
on medical leave to arrive in my home town, New York City, a day before
VJ day, celebrated with a dancer friend whose husband was a US Army
tanker in Germany. When midnight came, however, my dancer friend, who had
to give a performance that afternoon, had to get some sleep. She phoned a
dear friend and asked her to take over to help my celebration. She did,
met me in the Village and we finished the VJ celebrations together. She
was a distinguished social worker who became my beloved wife for nearly
40 years. He name was Elizabeth Eckard and she was long associated with
the Travelers Aid Society of NY; in time she became the head of it. I was
employed at Citicorps, where I worked for 25 years, at the time of the
arrival of the computer age. During that time I also went to Columbia
University to improve my writing skills in English and took many courses
in creative writing. It was not long after that I published the two books
of which I am most proud, Papa Martel and Apple of his Eye.
The best years of my life were indeed those spent with my wife in the Big
Town as we shared the exciting intellectual and artistic activities of
the theatre, cinema, the Metropolitan Opera and Lincoln Center concerts
and ballets, stimulating friendships with folks of similar or even of
dissimilar tastes, with occasional forays into the Village for refresher
courses into new ideas for our advancing civilization-tomorrow.
When my beloved wife died in 1988, the Big Town lost some of its appeal.
I then decided to relocate in Maine where I now live. There, if only for
therapeutic reasons, I decided to re-write a sequel to Papa Martel,
entitled A Pearl of Great Price. It is now with my agent in New York City.
Meanwhile, I am writing a screenplay, an exciting challenge. I am still
going to school, so to speak. And I am grateful for the many writing
friends I have met since coming to Maine.
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