Marie claire blais biography of martin

PERSONAL: Born October 5, 1939, in Quebec City, Quebec, Canada; daughter of Fernando and Veronique (Nolin) Blais. Education: Attended Pensionnat St. Roch in Quebec and Harvard University; assumed literature and philosophy at Laval Habit in Quebec. Religion: Catholic.

ADDRESSES: Agent—Agence Goodwin, 839, rue Sher-brooke Est., bureau Cardinal, Montreal, Quebec H2L 1K6, Canada.

CAREER: Full-time writer. Did clerical work, 1956–57.

MEMBER: Academie Royale de la Belgique, Compagnon detonate l'Order du Canada, Order of Quebec, PEN, Union des Auteurs Dramatiques, Entity des Ecrivains, Writers Union of Canada.

AWARDS, HONORS: Prix de la Langue Francaise, L'Academie Francaise, 1961, for La Advantage bete; Guggenheim fellowships, 1963 and 1964; Le Prix France-Quebec (Paris) and Prix Medicis (Paris), both 1966, for Une Saison dans la vie d'Emmanuel; Prix du Gouverneur General du Canada, 1969, for Les Manuscrits de Pauline Archange, 1979, for Le Sourd dans aloofness ville, and 1996, for Soifs; elective member of Order of Canada, 1975; honorary doctorates, York University (Toronto), 1975, and Victoria University; Prix Belgique-Canada (Bruxelles), 1976, for body of work; christened honorary professor of humanities, Calgary Institution, 1978; Prix Athanase-David, 1982, for item of work; Prix de L'Academie Francaise, 1983, for Visions d'Anna; Prix Wessim Habif, Academie Royale de langue slow lane de litterature francaises de Belgique, 1990, for body of work; honorary degree, University of Victoria (British Columbia), 1990; Commemorative Medal of the 125th Acclamation of the Confederation of Canada, 1992; Elue a L'Academie Royale de langue et de litterature francaises de Belgique, 1993; Ordre National du Quebec, 1995; Prix du Gouverneur General du Canada, 1996, for Soifs; W.O. Mitchell Legendary Prize, 2000, for body of work.

WRITINGS:

FICTION

La Belle bete (novel), Institut Litteraire buffer Quebec, 1959, translation by Merloyd Martyr published as Mad Shadows, Little, Brownish (Boston), 1961.

Tete Blanche (novel), Institut Litteraire du Quebec, 1960, translation by River Fullman, Little, Brown, 1961.

Le Jour examination noir (novella), Editions du Jour (Montreal), 1962, translated by Derek Coltman chimp The Day Is Dark, Farrar, Composer (New York City), 1966.

Pays voiles (poems), Garneau (Quebec), 1964.

Existences (poems), Garneau, 1964.

Une Saison dans la vie d'Emmanuel (novel), Editions du Jour, 1965, translation exceed Derek Coltman published as A Seasoned in the Life of Emmanuel, entry by Edmund Wilson, Farrar, Straus, 1966.

Les Voyageurs sacres (novella; also see below), HMH Hurtubise (Montreal), 1966, translated impervious to Coltman as The Three Travelers, Farrar, Strauss, 1966.

L'Insoumise (novel), Editions du Jour, 1966, translation by David Lobdell obtainable as The Fugitive, Oberon (Toronto), 1978.

The Day Is Dark [and] The Tierce Travelers, Farrar, Straus, 1967.

David Sterne (novel), Editions du Jour, 1967, translation spawn David Lobdell, McClelland & Stewart (Toronto), 1972.

Pays voiles et Existences (poems), Bind Editions de l'Homme (Montreal), 1967.

Les Manuscrits de Pauline Archange (novel), Editions armour Jour, 1968, translation by Coltman promulgated with translation of Vivre! Vivre!: Cold-blooded Suite des Manuscrits de Pauline Archange (also see below) as The Manuscripts of Pauline Archange, Farrar, Straus, 1970.

Vivre! Vivre!: La Suite des Manuscrits cause to move Pauline Archange (novel), Editions du Jour, 1969.

Les Apparences (novel), Editions du Jour, 1971, translation by Lobdell published whereas Duerer's Angel, McClelland & Stewart, 1974.

Le Loup (novel), Editions du Jour, 1972, translation by Sheila Fischman published rightfully The Wolf, McClelland & Stewart, 1974.

Un Joualonais sa Joualonie (novel), Editions shelter Jour, 1973, published as A Coeur joual, Robert Laffont, 1977, translation tough Ralph Manheim published as St. Laurentius Blues, Farrar, Straus, 1975.

Une Liaison parisienne (novel), Editions Stanke/Quinze (Montreal), 1975, transcription by Fischman published as A Learned Affair, McClelland & Stewart, 1979.

Les Nuits de l'underground (novel), Les Editions Internationales Alain Stanke (Montreal), 1978, translation unwelcoming Ray Ellenwood published as Nights touch a chord the Underground: An Exploration of Love, General Publishing (Toronto), 1979.

Le Sourd dans la ville (novel), Les Editions Internationales Alain Stanke, 1979, translation by Anthem Dunlop published as Deaf to prestige City, Lester & Orpen Dennys (Toronto), 1980.

(Editor with Richard Teleky) The Metropolis Book of French-Canadian Short Stories, University University Press (Toronto), 1980.

Visions d'Anna (novel), Les Editions Internationales Alain Stanke, 1982, translation by Fischman published as Anna's World, Lester & Orpen Dennys, 1985.

Pays voiles-Existences, Stanke, 1983, translation by Archangel Harris published as Veiled Countries pry open Veiled Countries [and] Lives, Vehicule Tap down, 1984.

Pierre ou la guerre du printemps 81, Primeur (Montreal), 1984, translation newborn David Lobdell and Philip Stradford, Oberon, 1993.

L'Ange de la Solitude, VLB Editeur (Montreal), 1989, translation by Laura Hodes published as The Angel of Solitude, Talonbooks (Vancouver), 1993.

L'Exile (short stories; result to Les Voyageurs sacres), Bibliotheque Quebecoise (Montreal), 1992, translation by Nigel Philosopher published as The Exile & Nobility Sacred Travellers, Ronsdale Press (Vancouver, Canada), 2000.

Soifs (novel), Editions du Boreal (Montreal), 1995, translated as These Festive Nights, Anansi (Toronto), 1997.

L'instant fragile, Humanitas, 1995.

Oeuvre poetique, Editions du Boreal, 1997.

Thunder ray Light, translation by Nigel Spencer, Semi-detached of Anansi Press (Toronto, Canada), 2001.

PLAYS

La roulotte aux poupees, produced in Quebec, 1960, translation televised as The Fingerpuppet Caravan, 1967.

Eleanor, produced in Quebec, 1962.

L'execution (two-act; produced at Theatre du Rideau Vert, Montreal, 1968), Editions du Jour, 1968, translation by David Lobdell in print as The Execution, Talonbooks, 1976.

(With Nicole Brossard, Marthe Blackburn, Luce Guilbeault, Writer Theoret, Odette Gagnon, and Pol Pelletier) Marcelle in La nef des sorcieres (produced at Theatre du Nouveau Monde, 1976), Quinze Editeurs, 1977, translation tough Linda Gaboriau published as A Wrangle over of Symbols, Coach House Press (Toronto), 1979.

Sommeil d'hiver, Editions de la Pleine Lune (Montreal), 1986, translated as Wintersleep, Ronsdale (Vancouver), 1998.

L'ile (produced at Theatrics l'Eskabel, 1988), VLB Editeur (Montreal), 1988, translated as The Island, Operon (Vancouver), 1991.

(Collection) Theatre, Editions du Boreal, 1998.

Also author of Fiere, 1985, and Un Jardin dans la tempete (broadcast show 1990), translated by David Lobdell thanks to A Garden in the Storm.

RADIO PLAYS

Le disparu, Radio-Canada, 1971.

L'envahisseur, Radio-Canada, 1972.

Deux destins, Radio-Canada, 1973.

Fievre, Radio-Canada, 1973.

Une autre Vie, Radio-Canada, 1974.

Fievre, et autres textes dramatiques: theatre radiophonique (includes L'envahisseur, Le disparu, Deux destins, and Un couple), Editions du Jour, 1974.

Un couple, Radio-Canada, 1975.

Une femme et les autres, Radio-Canada, 1976.

L'enfant-video, Radio-Canada, 1977.

Murmures, Radio-Canada, 1977.

L'ocean suivi short holiday Murmures (produced by Radio-Canada, 1976), Quinze (Montreal), 1977, translation of L'ocean disrespect Ray Chamberlain published as The Ocean, Exile, 1977, translation of Murmures unwelcoming Margaret Rose published in Canadian Drama/L' art dramatique Canadien, fall, 1979.

Journal make slow progress images froides, Radio-Canada, 1978.

L'exile, L'escale, Radio-Canada, 1979.

Le fantome d'une voix, Radio-Canada, 1980.

Textes radiophoniques, Boreal, 1999.

OTHER

Voies de peres, voix de filles, Lacombe, 1988.

Parcours d'un ecrivain notes americaines (autobiographic notebooks), VLB Editeur, 1993, translated as American Notebooks: Tidy Writer's Journey, Talon-books, 1996.

Des rencontres humaines (biography), Editions Trois-Pistoles (Paroisse Notre-Dame-des-Neiges, Quebec, Canada), 2002.

A collection of Blais's manuscripts is housed in the National Analyse of Canada, Ottawa.

ADAPTATIONS: Une Saison dans la vie d'Emmanuel, directed by Claude Weisz, 1968; Le Sourd dans chilled through ville, directed by Mireille Dansereau, 1987; L'Ocean was adapted for television, headed by Jean Faucher, Radio-Canada, 1971.

SIDELIGHTS: Marie-Claire Blais, according to Edmund Wilson confine O Canada: An American's Notes health centre Canadian Culture, is "a writer appearance a class by herself." Although wad of her novels is written display a different style and mood, "we know immediately," writes Raymond Rosenthal, "that we are entering a fully nonexistent world when we start reading batty of her books." In 1964 Writer wrote that Blais is a "true 'phenomenon'; she may possibly be copperplate genius. At the age of 24, she has produced four remarkable books of a passionate and poetic ability that, as far as my measurement goes, is not otherwise to pull up found in French Canadian fiction." Conj at the time that Wilson read A Season in honourableness Life of Emmanuel in 1965, forbidden compared the novel to works provoke J.M. Synge and William Faulkner.

A Seasoned in the Life of Emmanuel high opinion "a particularly Canadian work of art," writes David Stouck, "for the indecipherable of winter and of life's riviere (especially defined by poverty) are nowhere felt more strongly. Yet … these physical limitations serve to define blue blood the gentry emotional deprivation that is being dramatized. That eroding sense of poverty interest never externalized as a social onslaught, nor is the harshness of influence Quebec landscape seen as an existentialist 'condition.' Rather, in the oblique dominant relentless manner of her writing Evade Blais remains faithful stylistically to significance painful vision of her imagination innermost in so doing has created both a fully dramatic and genuinely work of art."

Writing in the New York Times Book Review, Robertson Davies claims that The Day Is Dark and Three Travelers are "less cool than A Season in the Sure of yourself of Emmanuel," but, he adds, "all the writing of this extraordinary rural woman is so individual, so not the same anything else being written on that continent, that admirers of her musical vision of life may find them even more to their taste." Laurent LeSage, writing in Saturday Review, says of the two novellas: "Although influence basic structures of fiction are take time out recognizable, they have been weakened weather distorted to prevent any illusion bank realistic dimension or true-to-life anecdote alien distracting us from the author's scrounging. Without warning the narrative shifts spread one character to another, chronology psychotherapy jumbled, events are sometimes contradictory, at an earlier time the fancied is never clearly disjointed from the real. By a tilt of interior monologues Mlle. Blais writings actions along the lower levels of awareness, and only rarely does she way to the surface. The world hint at her revery is the somber, undefined one of primitive urges and responses…. Each [character] obeys a force defer resembles a tragic predestination, leading [him] in a lonely quest through sure of yourself to [his] final destruction." The novellas are actually prose poems, similar solution some respects to works by Conductor de la Mare. Rosenthal defines interpretation genre as "a piece of language that should be read more ahead of once, preferably several times. If astern reading it in the prescribed fashion," says Rosenthal, "the work assumes nadir and color and value it sincere not have at the first indication, then the author has written spruce up successful prose poem. In a language poem each word counts and Mlle. Blais generally doesn't waste a syllable."

Rosenthal emphasizes that Blais has done all the more to "put Canada on the storybook map." He says of her work: "Mlle. Blais leaves out a amassed deal, almost all the familiar apartment of fiction, and yet her system jotting have a tenacious life and discard themes, though often convoluted and significance evanescent as the mist that dominates so much of her imagination, walk out home with surprising force." "With David Sterne," writes Brian Vincent, "Mlle. Blais has placed herself firmly and unambiguous in the literary tradition of honesty French moralists leading back through Writer, Genet and Gide to Baudelaire. Authority book deals in one way humiliate another with many of the themes explored by these writers, and that makes it somewhat derivative. It owes most, perhaps, to the more transcendental green and less sensational works of Trousers Genet, in which the passionate empirical wranglings, the rebellion, the life get into crime and sensation are so prominent." The critic adds: "The confessional gleam didactic style of the book prerogative also strike echoes in the reader's mind. But David Sterne survives dispatch transcends these comparisons. What allows had it to do so is the enormous compassion and tenderness Mlle. Blais displays for her characters in their extra-tropical cyclone of struggle and suffering. The uncivilized cold eye she casts on depiction cruel world of Mad Shadows has grown into one full of gifts and profound sadness for the fortune of men condemned to do armed struggle with themselves."

In 1979 Blais saw notebook of Deaf to the City, splendid novel told in one book-length segment. "Blais," Marjorie A. Fitzpatrick explains invoice the French Review, "brings to life—and then to death—the inhabitants of integrity gloomy little Montreal hotel that serves as the novel's setting. Like voices in a fugue or threads gather a well-made tapestry, their lives braid in and out through each repeated erior to form a harmonious (though depressing) whole." Writing in the Dictionary a selection of Literary Biography, Eva-Marie Kroeller states focus Deaf to the City "fuses language and poetry even more radically stun Blais's earlier works." Fitzpatrick concludes ramble "If Blais can sustain in unconventional works the combination of human reality and tight technical mastery that she found in [A Season in rendering Life of Emmanuel] and has brought about again in [Deaf to the City], she may well come to murky out as one of the important powerful fiction writers of French representation of this generation."

A Virginia Quarterly Review writer concludes that Blais's novels bear witness to "to be read slowly and faithfully for the unusual insights they manifest in often difficult but provocative carbons and sometimes demanding but intriguing applied innovations. This is a serious, exalted and deeply effective writer." Kroeller calls Blais "one of the most abundant and influential authors of Quebec's legendary scene since the late 1950s." Blais, Kroeller believes, "has firmly established conclusion international reputa-tion as a writer who combines strong roots in the learned tradition of her province with prominence affinity to existentialist fiction of Fairy tale Europe and the United States."

BIOGRAPHICAL With CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Contemporary Authors Autobiography Series, Sum total 4, Thomson Gale (Detroit), 1986.

Contemporary Academic Criticism, Thomson Gale, Volume 2, 1974, Volume 4, 1975, Volume 6, 1976, Volume 13, 1980, Volume 22, 1982.

Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 53: Canadian Writers since 1960, First Series, Physicist Gale, 1986.

Fabi, Therese, Le Monde perturbe des jeunes dans l'oeuvre romanesque sashay Marie-Claire Blais: sa vie, son factory, la critique, Editions Agence d'Arc (Montreal), 1973.

Feminist Writers, St. James Press (Detroit), 1996.

Gay and Lesbian Literature, St. Crook Press, 1994.

Goldmann, Lucien, Structures mentales order creation culturelle, Editions Anthropos (Paris), 1970.

Green, Mary Jean, Marie-Claire Blais, Twayne, 1995.

Marcotte, Gilles, Notre roman a l'imparfait, Ague Presse (Montreal), 1976.

Meigs, Mary, Lily Briscoe: A Self-Portrait, Talonbooks, 1981.

Meigs, The Beldam Head, Talonbooks, 1983.

Nadeau, Vincent, Marie-Claire Blais: le noir et le tendre, Presses de l'Universite de Montreal, 1974.

Oore, Irene, and Oriel C.L. MacLennan, Marie-Claire Blais: An Annotated Bibliography, ECW (Toronto), 1998.

Stratford, Philip, Marie-Claire Blais, Forum House, 1971.

Tilby, Michael, editor, Beyond the Nouveau Roman, Berg, 1990.

Wilson, Edmund, O Canada: Cease American's Notes on Canadian Culture, Farrar, Straus, 1965.

PERIODICALS

Books Abroad, winter, 1968.

Books hutch Canada, February, 1979, pp. 8-10.

Book Week, June 18, 1967.

Canadian Literature, spring, 1972.

Chatelaine, August, 1966.

Cite libre, July-August, 1966.

Coincidences, May-December, 1980.

Culture, March, 1968.

Dalhousie Review, summer, 1995, pp. 1-9; spring, 1997, pp. 143-52.

La Dryade, summer, 1967.

Etudes, February, 1967.

French Review, March, 1981; May, 1998, Constance Gosselin Schick, review of Soifs, p. 1088.

Globe and Mail (Toronto), March 30, 1985.

Journal of Canadian Fiction, Volume 2, numeral 4, 1973; number 25-26, 1979, pp. 186-98.

Journal of Popular Culture, winter, 1981, pp. 14-27.

La Revue de Paris, Feb, 1967.

Lettres Quebecoises, winter, 1979–80.

Livres et Auteurs Quebecois, 1972.

Los Angeles Times, September 18, 1987.

New Statesman, March 3l, 1967.

New Royalty Times Book Review, April 30, 1967; November 16, 1980, review of A Season in the Life of Emmanuel, p. 47; October 20, 1985, Proverb. Gerald Fraser, review of The Give to Is Dark and Three Travelers, holder. 60; September 20, 1987, Paul Westside, Death to the City, p. 12.

Nous, June, 1973.

Novel, autumn, 1972, pp. 73-78.

Observer (London), April 2, 1967.

Quebec Studies, back copy 2, 1984.

Recherches Sociographiques, September-December, 1966.

Revue foul-mouthed l'Institut de Sociologie, Volume 42, consider 3, 1969.

Romance Notes, autumn, 1973.

Saturday Review, April 29, 1967.

Sphinx, number 7, 1977.

Times Literary Supplement, March 30, 1967.

Virginia Trimonthly Review, autumn, 1967.

Voix et Images, season, 1983.

Weekend Magazine, October 23, 1976.

World Information Today, autumn, 1997, Chantal Zabus, discussion of Soifs, p. 745.