One evening a few years ago, I attended a reading at the Village Voice Bookshop. Michael Ondaatje was to be reading from the work of Mavis Gallant, and Gallant herself was slated to attend. I have been a fan of Ondaatje for years (no, haven’t read Divisadero yet or even gotten my hands on a copy), and have even had the honor of hearing his sonorous voice on the other end of the telephone, when I worked as an assistant to his literary agent, but with Mavis Gallant I was slightly less familiar. I owned the NYRB edition of Paris Stories
, and had read one or two without feeling very pulled in; still, I kept them at hand, assuming the day would come when I’d free up enough room on my mental hard drive to give them an attentive reading.
That night at the Village Voice I felt like I had been smacked in the face with a wet noodle: I realized why –and this is a disclosure of my thickheadedness– why it can be thrilling to listen to authors read their own stuff: because they will read it for you in a way the little reading voice in your head could never do. Mavis Gallant has a wicked sense of humor, and to hear her read her own stories infused them with a voice that made my own little reading voice sulk in the corner. Reading out these sentences which had otherwise lain innocuously on the page, using her voice, her wit, the power of the pause, she found all the little nooks and crannies that makes a sentence like this– "Peter’s wife had loved him in Paris"– heartbreaking and sardonic.
"Heartbreaking" and "sardonic"– in fact, add "derisive" and "empathetic" to the list of words which describe Gallant’s work and you’ll be getting closer to putting your finger on what it is that makes her such a master of short narrative. I left the Village Voice that night a hardened fan, but when I went back to the stories a few months later, I found couldn’t hear her voice. And I wanted to hear her voice. I only wanted Gallant as read by Gallant. I put them back on the shelf.
Recently, I came across this article by Randy Boyagoda in The Walrus, which made me start thinking about Gallant again. So I started poking around the internet to see if I could find her reading her work (I did; see below). But I also found that, miraculously, I had advanced to a point where I could read her work without the benefit of her reading voice. I could take my time and let the phrases curl and creep as they would. I dipped back in to Paris Stories two weeks ago, and have since ordered several other collections on Amazon (Varieties of Exile and Paris Notebooks). Is this the result of having finally written a full-length work myself? Have I learned to listen to language differently? I think yes. I have learned to slow down, and in so doing, to appreciate the sly genius of a first sentence like this one:
Although an epidemic of haunting, widely reported, spread through the Fifteenth District of our city last summer, only three acceptable complaints were lodged with the police. ("From the Fifteenth District")
Or this one:
After three years, Mathilde and Theo Schurz were divorced, without a mean thought, and even Theo says she is better off now married to Alain Poix. (Or "Poids." Or "Poisse." Theo may be speaking the truth when he says he can’t keep in mind every facet of the essential Alain.) (From "Scarves, Beads, Sandals")
One can learn a lot from reading Gallant– about writing or about life– but only by quieting one’s mind and listening to the inevitable pause. She describes, in a wonderful diary she kept for Slate (see link below), how the sound of Paris is always attached to words, for her: "Cars moving along Rue de Vaugirard are like gushing water, turned on
and off. But a work site with a drill sounds like a work site with a
drill." In other words, she knows when something is evocative of something else, and when it is evocative of itself. Michael Ondaatje writes in his introduction to Paris Stories that he knows a few writers who refuse to read Gallant when they’re writing: "Nothing could be more intimidating." I can attest to the truth of this– but all with writers feel this, I’m sure, with the work of certain other writers. Woolf felt that way about Proust, and she managed to channel her reading of him into The Waves. But then, none of us are Virginia Woolf.
Gallant, who was born in Montreal in 1922 and moved to Paris for good in 1950, published her short stories in The New Yorker before the New Yorker short story became synonymous with a formulaic text emitted from the trained pen of an MFA graduate. She has, in fact, published more stories in The New Yorker than almost any other writer. In The Walrus interview, she seems to want to say something about the decline of New Yorker fiction– she intimates a critique of the influence of Tina Brown and then David Remnick on the book– but holds back. She is frequently compared to Alice Munro, another Canadian short story writer of her generation, but is nowhere near as well read in her native Canada. Boyagoda suggests this may have to do with a Canadian fondness for literature which reinforces its sense of identity: "Munro’s life and work represent an emphatic and sympathetic commitment to verifiably Canadian concerns and settings, whereas Gallant comes across, in personality and sensibility, as detached." She has, he argues,
"created a body of work that reads as a basic rejection of the Canadian
literary commitment to imagining the humble virtues and humbling vices
of modest local lives."
But Boyagoda also said this:
People don’t read Mavis Gallant so much as know they ought to. In preparing for the interview, I canvassed well-read friends, academic colleagues, editors, and fellow writers about their responses to her work. Her name elicited high regard in both Canadian and American settings. But across the board, there was comparatively little in the way of particulars. “I love ‘The Ice Wagon Going Down the Street.’ It was in an anthology. I really should read more of her stuff.” “I enjoy her stories. They used to come in the New Yorker all the time, years ago. But I never knew what to make of them by the end.” “Gallant? Oh yes, she’s one of those writer’s writers…”
Is is true that Gallant is a writer’s writer who no one else really reads or has heard of? If so, what a pity.
Hear her for yourself– an interview with Gallant, featuring her reading, at NPR, and a televised interview here (in French) There is, as well, a documentary that was aired on Bravo! Canada that I would like to get my hands on, if anyone can tell me how. And here’s the diary Gallant kept for Slate.
Michael Ondaatje, by the way, will be reading from Divisadero on September 6th at the Village Voice. The reading starts at 7 pm but get there early, as the place will fill up quickly. I will be in New York, regrettably, but go there for me, ok? 6, rue Princesse, 75006. Metro: Mabillon. I guess this is as good a place as any to point out that I will be in New York not just on September 6th but on all the nights of September, October, November, and December, with the exception of a visit in October. The reason is that the Americans need me, they can’t go another semester without my presence, and they’ve begged me to return for a one-semester engagement. Ok, that’s a lie; in fact I have to finish my PhD coursework and start forming an orals committee. Maitresse will continue on its usual schedule and I will be back in Paris in January.
