When they called me a few months back to ask if I’d take part in a special tenth anniversary edition of Le Combat des livres, I said ‘oui’ on the spot. Le Combat des livres is a books contest on La première chaine of Radio-Canada – a contest that is the Franco equivalent of CBC Radio literary slug-fest Canada Reads. This year Le Combat runs March 18-22 on the Premiere chaine literary show Plus on est de fous, plus on lit, which airs daily at 1 p.m. on 95.1 FM.
So I was in from the get-go. Now I’m realizing I actually have to read a bunch of big books with big words – en francais no less! And of course I’m behind schedule. That’s my trademark. So with less than three weeks, I need to finish Il pleuvait des oiseaux by Jocelyne Saucier, Aminata by Lawrence Hill (that’s the Canada Reads winner The Book of Negroes), Arvida by Samuel Archibald and La fiancée americaine by Éric Dupont. My book is Lullabies for Little Criminals, Heather O’Neill’s totally brilliant novel about a girl growing up in the ‘hood with a drug-addled dad. Though it’s a French contest – mais oui! – so I’ll actually be defending the version of Lullabies in the language of Tremblay – La ballade de Baby.
My competitors are former Grands Ballets Canadiens dancer Geneviève Guérard (she’s defending Il pleuvait des oiseaux), former Quebec premier Bernard Landry – ! – (Arvida), comic Dominique Lévesque (La fiancée americaine), and bicultural singer-songwriter Thomas Hellman (Aminata).
So the reading is a slog but I know the contest is going to be a blast. I know cos I’ve done it before. I was on the 2009 edition duking it out in honour of Rawi Hage’s masterpiece De Niro’s Game – Parfum de poussière for the Rad-Can audience – and did I mention that I won it all? I was the first bloke to win this French-language contest, which was pretty darn cool. And in the spirit of good old-fashioned competition, wouldn’t it be even cooler if the English dude won it a second time?
