Next Episode (16 page)

Although
Next Episode
is set in Switzerland, this story of a Québécois terrorist on a mission to murder a counter-revolutionary whose identity and role remain problematic is imagined and narrated by a terrorist who was arrested and sent to a psychiatric institution before he had the opportunity of setting out on his own destructive mission. The narrator’s predicament in the novel mirrored that of Aquin himself at the time he wrote
Next Episode
: he was being held
at Institut Albert-Prévost after being arrested for driving a stolen car and carrying an illegal firearm. Upon being arrested and asked his occupation, Aquin had stated that he was a revolutionary. In less felicitous circumstances, he would later publish an essay titled “Profession: Writer.”

At the time of his arrest, Aquin was well known as a producer and director of radio and television programs for Radio-Canada and documentaries for the National Film Board. He had also been a member of the editorial board and, for a few years, the editor of the literary magazine
Liberté
. Aquin was thus closely associated with the institutions that defined and nurtured Quebec’s literary elite.

Though a brilliant intellectual who wrote some of the most illuminating essays in Quebec literature, Aquin remained somewhat of an outsider. His novels were highly acclaimed in Quebec, but rather than the traditional image of the writer, he more closely resembled, at least outwardly, the stockbroker that he was for a while, or even the banker or businessman that he aspired to be – he was the founder and president of a company that tried to organize Grand Prix racing in Montreal – if not the race-car driver he dreamed of becoming.

Through all that, how was
Prochain épisode
read? Aquin is an author on whom an exceptional number of monographs, theses, and articles have been written – though not as many as on Nelligan, naturally. The question remains, however: Was Aquin’s novel really read? And if so, how?

If you are reading this afterword, it probably means you have resisted the lure of mythology and have ventured into reading the novel, unless you are cheating. But how did you read the novel?

I remember my own sense of amazement the first time I read this novel. I was immediately fascinated by the power and beauty of the opening sentences. With its internal echoes and intriguing, contradictory images, the first sentence will forever be imprinted in my mind: “
Cuba coule en flammes au
milieu du lac Léman pendant que je descends au fond des choses
(Cuba is sinking in flames in the middle of Lac Léman while I descend to the bottom of things).”

The resounding images, altogether visual, intellectual, historical, and deeply personal, which flow from the opening metaphor, set the tone for a flamboyant narrative alternating between reflective chases and vertiginous immobility. But is it a quest for hope, a narrative of defeat and despair, or an affirmation of collective will and a blueprint for revolutionary action?

No interpretation excludes all others, but I have difficulty understanding how this novel could be read otherwise than as a modern fable of Romantic despair. Unless, of course, its meaning is presumed to follow from the purported revolutionary intentions of the author.

Everything in
Next Episode
is set in counterpoint and inverted images. The narrator imagines dashing figures of revolution and counter-revolution in vivid contrast to his own desperate situation. Yet the characters he creates are strangely ineffective and constantly shackled by doubt and ambiguity; they flounder about, without a clear purpose, in a world that is painfully beautiful and where nothing is truly what it seems.

“I am the fragmented symbol of Quebec’s revolution, its fractured reflection and its suicidal incarnation,” writes the narrator of
Next Episode
. The inescapable paradox of the novel, however, arises from the fact that collective identity is a source of depression and, ultimately, of defeat and despair, rather than the foundation for revolutionary action. Because it is dictated by the collective disability, the novel itself becomes a form of suicide: “I give in to the vertiginous act of writing my memoirs and I start writing up the precise and meticulous proceedings of an unending suicide.” Thus, the writing of the novel, however accomplished, does not generate a form of liberation; rather, it is a measure of defeat.

The true test, however, is not whether the meaning of the novel is to be found in its traditional ending or in its reference to the “next episode,” or whether one interpretation is more convincing than the other. The true test remains the reading of the novel as a unique combination of style and structure, beyond whatever images of its author’s circumstances.

ESSAYS

Point de fuite
[
Vanishing Point
] (1971)
Blocs erratiques
[
Erratic Blocks
] (1977)

FICTION
Prochain épisode
[
Next Episode
] (1965)
Trou de mémoire
[
Blackout
] (1969)
L’Antiphonaire
[
The Antiphonary
] (1973)
Neige noire
[
Hamlet’s Twin
] (1974)
L’Invention de la mort
[
The Invention of Death
] (1991)