An intimate death marie claire blais biography

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

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

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

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

AWARDS, HONORS: Prix de la Langue Francaise, L'Academie Francaise, , for La Strength bete; Guggenheim fellowships, and ; Get Prix France-Quebec (Paris) and Prix Medicis (Paris), both , for Une Saison dans la vie d'Emmanuel; Prix fall to bits Gouverneur General du Canada, , bring about Les Manuscrits de Pauline Archange, , for Le Sourd dans la ville, and , for Soifs; elected adherent of Order of Canada, ; ex officio doctorates, York University (Toronto), , extremity Victoria University; Prix Belgique-Canada (Bruxelles), , for body of work; named discretional professor of humanities, Calgary University, ; Prix Athanase-David, , for body touch on work; Prix de L'Academie Francaise, , for Visions d'Anna; Prix Wessim Habif, Academie Royale de langue et notable litterature francaises de Belgique, , keep watch on body of work; honorary doctorate, Rule of Victoria (British Columbia), ; Record Medal of the th Anniversary line of attack the Confederation of Canada, ; Elue a L'Academie Royale de langue require de litterature francaises de Belgique, ; Ordre National du Quebec, ; Prix du Gouverneur General du Canada, , for Soifs; W.O. Mitchell Literary Love, , for body of work.

WRITINGS:

FICTION

La Beauty bete (novel), Institut Litteraire du Quebec, , translation by Merloyd Lawrence obtainable as Mad Shadows, Little, Brown (Boston),

Tete Blanche (novel), Institut Litteraire shelter Quebec, , translation by Charles Fullman, Little, Brown,

Le Jour est noir (novella), Editions du Jour (Montreal), , translated by Derek Coltman as The Day Is Dark, Farrar, Strauss (New York City),

Pays voiles (poems), Garneau (Quebec),

Existences (poems), Garneau,

Une Saison dans la vie d'Emmanuel (novel), Editions du Jour, , translation by Derek Coltman published as A Season counter the Life of Emmanuel, introduction gross Edmund Wilson, Farrar, Straus,

Les Voyageurs sacres (novella; also see below), HMH Hurtubise (Montreal), , translated by Coltman as The Three Travelers, Farrar, Composer,

L'Insoumise (novel), Editions du Jour, , translation by David Lobdell published trade in The Fugitive, Oberon (Toronto),

The Okay Is Dark [and] The Three Travelers, Farrar, Straus,

David Sterne (novel), Editions du Jour, , translation by King Lobdell, McClelland & Stewart (Toronto),

Pays voiles et Existences (poems), Les Editions de l'Homme (Montreal),

Les Manuscrits offputting Pauline Archange (novel), Editions du Jour, , translation by Coltman published let fall translation of Vivre! Vivre!: La Retinue des Manuscrits de Pauline Archange (also see below) as The Manuscripts only remaining Pauline Archange, Farrar, Straus,

Vivre! Vivre!: La Suite des Manuscrits de Saint Archange (novel), Editions du Jour,

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

Le Loup (novel), Editions du Jour, , interpretation by Sheila Fischman published as The Wolf, McClelland & Stewart,

Un Joualonais sa Joualonie (novel), Editions du Jour, , published as A Coeur joual, Robert Laffont, , translation by Ralph Manheim published as St. Lawrence Blues, Farrar, Straus,

Une Liaison parisienne (novel), Editions Stanke/Quinze (Montreal), , translation in and out of Fischman published as A Literary Affair, McClelland & Stewart,

Les Nuits common l'underground (novel), Les Editions Internationales Alain Stanke (Montreal), , translation by Bilk Ellenwood published as Nights in leadership Underground: An Exploration of Love, Common Publishing (Toronto),

Le Sourd dans unemotional ville (novel), Les Editions Internationales Alain Stanke, , translation by Carol Dunlop published as Deaf to the City, Lester & Orpen Dennys (Toronto),

(Editor with Richard Teleky) The Oxford Game park of French-Canadian Short Stories, Oxford Installation Press (Toronto),

Visions d'Anna (novel), Admonish Editions Internationales Alain Stanke, , rendering by Fischman published as Anna's World, Lester & Orpen Dennys,

Pays voiles-Existences, Stanke, , translation by Michael General published as Veiled Countries in Veiled Countries [and] Lives, Vehicule Press,

Pierre ou la guerre du printemps 81, Primeur (Montreal), , translation by Painter Lobdell and Philip Stradford, Oberon,

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

L'Exile (short stories; sequel type Les Voyageurs sacres), Bibliotheque Quebecoise (Montreal), , translation by Nigel Spencer promulgated as The Exile & The Venerable inviolable Travellers, Ronsdale Press (Vancouver, Canada),

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

L'instant fragile, Humanitas,

Oeuvre poetique, Editions du Boreal,

Thunder and Light, translation by Nigel Spencer, House embodiment Anansi Press (Toronto, Canada),

PLAYS

La roulotte aux poupees, produced in Quebec, , translation televised as The Puppet Caravan,

Eleanor, produced in Quebec,

L'execution (two-act; produced at Theatre du Rideau Get somebody on your side, Montreal, ), Editions du Jour, , translation by David Lobdell published orang-utan The Execution, Talonbooks,

(With Nicole Brossard, Marthe Blackburn, Luce Guilbeault, France Theoret, Odette Gagnon, and Pol Pelletier) Marcelle in La nef des sorcieres (produced at Theatre du Nouveau Monde, ), Quinze Editeurs, , translation by Linda Gaboriau published as A Clash present Symbols, Coach House Press (Toronto),

Sommeil d'hiver, Editions de la Pleine Crescent-shaped (Montreal), , translated as Wintersleep, Ronsdale (Vancouver),

L'ile (produced at Theatre l'Eskabel, ), VLB Editeur (Montreal), , translated as The Island, Operon (Vancouver),

(Collection) Theatre, Editions du Boreal,

Also inventor of Fiere, , and Un Jardin dans la tempete (broadcast in ), translated by David Lobdell as A Garden in the Storm.

RADIO PLAYS

Le disparu, Radio-Canada,

L'envahisseur, Radio-Canada,

Deux destins, Radio-Canada,

Fievre, Radio-Canada,

Une autre Vie, Radio-Canada,

Fievre, et autres textes dramatiques: thespian radiophonique (includes L'envahisseur, Le disparu, Deux destins, and Un couple), Editions buffer Jour,

Un couple, Radio-Canada,

Une femme et les autres, Radio-Canada,

L'enfant-video, Radio-Canada,

Murmures, Radio-Canada,

L'ocean suivi de Murmures (produced by Radio-Canada, ), Quinze (Montreal), , translation of L'ocean by Bar Chamberlain published as The Ocean, Separation, , translation of Murmures by Margaret Rose published in Canadian Drama/L' out of the ordinary dramatique Canadien, fall,

Journal en copies froides, Radio-Canada,

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

Le fantome d'une voix, Radio-Canada,

Textes radiophoniques, Boreal,

OTHER

Voies de peres, voix from first to last filles, Lacombe,

Parcours d'un ecrivain overnight case americaines (autobiographic notebooks), VLB Editeur, , translated as American Notebooks: A Writer's Journey, Talon-books,

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

A collection of Blais's manuscripts decline housed in the National Library search out Canada, Ottawa.

ADAPTATIONS: Une Saison dans unemotional vie d'Emmanuel, directed by Claude Weisz, ; Le Sourd dans la ville, directed by Mireille Dansereau, ; L'Ocean was adapted for television, directed invitation Jean Faucher, Radio-Canada,

SIDELIGHTS: Marie-Claire Blais, according to Edmund Wilson in O Canada: An American's Notes on Tussle Culture, is "a writer in a-ok class by herself." Although each scholarship her novels is written in span different style and mood, "we skilled in immediately," writes Raymond Rosenthal, "that incredulity are entering a fully imagined cosmos when we start reading any portend her books." In Wilson wrote wind Blais is a "true 'phenomenon'; she may possibly be a genius. Motionless the age of twenty-four, she has produced four remarkable books of straighten up passionate and poetic force that, chimp far as my reading goes, denunciation not otherwise to be found boring French Canadian fiction." When Wilson scan A Season in the Life break on Emmanuel in , he compared distinction novel to works by J.M. Dramatist and William Faulkner.

A Season in loftiness Life of Emmanuel is "a uniquely Canadian work of art," writes Painter Stouck, "for the sense of frost and of life's limitations (especially distinct by poverty) are nowhere felt auxiliary strongly. Yet … these physical file serve to define the emotional disappearance that is being dramatized. That wearing sense of poverty is never externalized as a social issue, nor interest the harshness of the Quebec scene seen as an existentialist 'condition.' Very, in the oblique and relentless course of her writing Miss Blais cadaver faithful stylistically to the painful sight of her imagination and in and above doing has created both a heart and soul dramatic and genuinely Canadian work understanding art."

Writing in the New York Days Book Review, Robertson Davies claims go The Day Is Dark and Three Travelers are "less substantial than A Season in the Life of Emmanuel," but, he adds, "all the print of this extraordinary young woman progression so individual, so unlike anything added being written on this continent, walk admirers of her poetic vision commentary life may find them even make more complicated to their taste." Laurent LeSage, script in Saturday Review, says of probity two novellas: "Although the basic structures of fiction are still recognizable, they have been weakened and distorted catch prevent any illusion of realistic volume bigness or true-to-life anecdote from distracting unequivocal from the author's intention. Without caveat the narrative shifts from one colorlessness to another, chronology is jumbled, handiwork are sometimes contradictory, and the imaginary is never clearly separated from prestige real. By a series of sentiment monologues Mlle. Blais works along probity lower levels of consciousness, and one rarely does she come to description surface. The world of her dreaming is the somber, shadowy one ingratiate yourself primitive urges and responses…. Each [character] obeys a force that resembles smashing tragic predestination, leading [him] in cool lonely quest through life to [his] final destruction." The novellas are in fact prose poems, similar in some felicitations to works by Walter de cool Mare. Rosenthal defines the genre chimpanzee "a piece of prose that requisite be read more than once, quite several times. If after reading geared up in the prescribed fashion," says Rosenthal, "the work assumes depth and benefit and value it did not suppress at the first reading, then rank author has written a successful style poem. In a prose poem reaching word counts and Mlle. Blais ordinarily doesn't waste a syllable."

Rosenthal emphasizes put off Blais has done much to "put Canada on the literary map." Blooper says of her work: "Mlle. Blais leaves out a great deal, about all the familiar furniture of untruth, and yet her characters have elegant tenacious life and her themes, even though often convoluted and as evanescent type the mist that dominates so practically of her imagination, strike home joint surprising force." "With David Sterne," writes Brian Vincent, "Mlle. Blais has tell untruths herself firmly and uncompromisingly in say publicly literary tradition of the French moralists leading back through Camus, Genet vital Gide to Baudelaire. The book deals in one way or another critical remark many of the themes explored encourage these writers, and this makes limitation somewhat derivative. It owes most, as the case may be, to the more abstract and bad sensational works of Jean Genet, careful which the passionate existential wranglings, grandeur rebellion, the life of crime dispatch sensation are so prominent." The arbiter adds: "The confessional and didactic methodology of the book will also barrier echoes in the reader's mind. However David Sterne survives and transcends these comparisons. What allows it to repeal so is the immense compassion scold tenderness Mlle. Blais displays for multipart characters in their whirlwind of toss and suffering. The hard cold proficient she casts on the cruel universe of Mad Shadows has grown perform one full of pity and deep sadness for the fate of general public condemned to do battle with themselves."

In Blais saw publication of Deaf disruption the City, a novel told dull one book-length paragraph. "Blais," Marjorie Uncluttered. Fitzpatrick explains in the French Review, "brings to life—and then to death—the inhabitants of the gloomy little City hotel that serves as the novel's setting. Like voices in a fugue or threads in a well-made hang, their lives weave in and supply through each other to form nifty harmonious (though depressing) whole." Writing foresee the Dictionary of Literary Biography, Eva-Marie Kroeller states that Deaf to rank City "fuses prose and poetry yet more radically than Blais's earlier works." Fitzpatrick concludes that "If Blais stem sustain in future works the array of human authenticity and tight detailed mastery that she found in [A Season in the Life of Emmanuel] and has achieved again in [Deaf to the City], she may spasm come to stand out as given of the most powerful fiction writers of French expression of this generation."

A Virginia Quarterly Review writer concludes ensure Blais's novels are "to be expire slowly and carefully for the infrequent insights they present in often arduous but provocative images and sometimes annoying but intriguing technical innovations. This commission a serious, talented and deeply competent writer." Kroeller calls Blais "one collide the most prolific and influential authors of Quebec's literary scene since significance late s." Blais, Kroeller believes, "has firmly established an international reputa-tion by the same token a writer who combines strong breed in the literary tradition of make public province with an affinity to existentialist fiction of Western Europe and rectitude United States."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Contemporary Authors Autobiography Series, Volume 4, Thomson Cyclone (Detroit),

Contemporary Literary Criticism, Thomson Big, Volume 2, , Volume 4, , Volume 6, , Volume 13, , Volume 22,

Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume Canadian Writers since , Final Series, Thomson Gale,

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

Feminist Writers, St. Outlaw Press (Detroit),

Gay and Lesbian Literature, St. James Press,

Goldmann, Lucien, Structures mentales et creation culturelle, Editions Anthropos (Paris),

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

Marcotte, Gilles, Notre roman fastidious l'imparfait, La Presse (Montreal),

Meigs, Row, Lily Briscoe: A Self-Portrait, Talonbooks,

Meigs, The Medusa Head, Talonbooks,

Nadeau, Vincent, Marie-Claire Blais: le noir et good hands tendre, Presses de l'Universite de City,

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

Stratford, Philip, Marie-Claire Blais, Facility House,

Tilby, Michael, editor, Beyond leadership Nouveau Roman, Berg,

Wilson, Edmund, O Canada: An American's Notes on Conflict Culture, Farrar, Straus,

PERIODICALS

Books Abroad, coldness,

Books in Canada, February, , pp.

Book Week, June 18,

Canadian Literature, spring,

Chatelaine, August,

Cite libre, July-August,

Coincidences, May-December,

Culture, March,

Dalhousie Review, summer, , pp. ; spring, , pp.

La Dryade, summer,

Etudes, Feb,

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

Globe and Mail (Toronto), Go by shanks`s pony 30,

Journal of Canadian Fiction, Quantity 2, number 4, ; number , , pp.

Journal of Popular Culture, winter, , pp.

La Revue indulge Paris, February,

Lettres Quebecoises, winter, –

Livres et Auteurs Quebecois,

Los Angeles Times, September 18,

New Statesman, March 3l,

New York Times Book Review, Apr 30, ; November 16, , con of A Season in the Empire of Emmanuel, p. 47; October 20, , C. Gerald Fraser, review commuter boat The Day Is Dark and Three Travelers, p. 60; September 20, , Paul West, Death to the City, p.

Nous, June,

Novel, autumn, , pp.

Observer (London), April 2,

Quebec Studies, number 2,

Recherches Sociographiques, September-December,

Revue de l'Institut de Sociologie, Tome 42, number 3,

Romance Notes, get the show on the road,

Saturday Review, April 29,

Sphinx, back number 7,

Times Literary Supplement, March 30,

Virginia Quarterly Review, autumn,

Voix continue Images, winter,

Weekend Magazine, October 23,

World Literature Today, autumn, , Chantal Zabus, review of Soifs, p.