Author: Stanley

Novels

“Papa” by Régis Jauffret

Post author By Stanley
Post date 4 February 2022

Both Sorj Chalandon, in his novel “Enfant de salaud”, and Régis Jauffret in “Papa” try to grasp the enigmatic personality of their father. Sorj Chalandon’s father is said to have been a Resistance fighter and a traitor at the same time, while Régis Jauffret’s father is said to have been filmed coming out of a Gestapo interrogation session, terror on his face. Where does the truth lie? Who are these fathers really?

In a previous text, I presented the book “Enfant de salaud”. Now it’s the turn of the novel “Papa” by Régis Jauffret.

As one might expect with Régis Jauffret, the writing style differs radically. The author is the winner of the Goncourt short story prize (2018) for his novel “Microfictions 2018”. His sense of synthesis, black humour and even cynicism makes this return to the father’s past a literary as well as historical adventure. The reader quickly understands that the author takes pleasure in presenting his discoveries. He even adds a bit of fiction when necessary.

True to my habit when it comes to Régis Jauffret, I will present his book through selected quotes. Indeed, the interest of the book lies as much in the content as in the way Régis expresses himself to enlighten his subject. Here are a few quotes (translated as best as possible) that may help to grasp the tone of the book:

“I took communion.

Someone pointed out to me on the way out that I wasn’t a believer.

– That’s right, a wafer or chips.

I smiled, but after this blasphemy I was not very happy. When you have been educated religiously, you always keep the terror of God in the back of your mind”.

“He had just had a stroke which, far from handicapping him, seemed to have cheered him up”.

“She told me that the moisture had blown away the veneer [of the coffin]. All that was left was a box of blackened boards. I wasn’t in a good enough mood to call the funeral home lady to invoke the eternal guarantee that such metaphysical products undoubtedly enjoy”.

“One of those happy memories that make you feel good that you never went to a gun shop to buy something to shoot yourself in the head”.

“Alfred was instructed to clench his teeth during coitus without sighing, while she remained as stoic as when the dentist teased one of her molars with the tip of his drill without anesthesia”.

“Through the vast copper bell of a gramophone perched on a pedestal whose statue had been stolen, Édith Piaf shouted ‘J’ai dansé avec l’amour’ (I danced with love) while the cries of the martyrs rose from the basement”.

“Writing about oneself is a form of incontinence”.

“We are condescending to deaf people without status or talent, but we prefer to deal with them sparingly. When you haven’t seen them soon enough to have hidden behind a construction machine or a bulky man, you greet them from afar as you walk away”.

“If I had not seen these images, you would have remained in the sewers of my memory”.

“If I last as long as Madeleine, I will be a centenarian who will unexpectedly ruminate on his father in his dried-up brain like a currant while an orderly built like a colossus swings my emaciated body in the air to change my diaper”.

“Pitiful descendant of protozoa that have become multicellular beings with brains, humanity has no reason to show off”.

“It is heroic in times of war to assume the role of the executioner, even if it means being wrong sometimes, because in extreme situations doubt never benefits the accused”.

“He talked from morning to night. Anyone he met on the street was showered with language like a careless person on a pier on a stormy day by a surge of water. In his office, everyone was soaked. So much so that people ran away from him, but he always managed to find someone who was kind enough to let himself be flooded”.

“I never heard him talk about his day either. The weather had been fine, it had snowed, it had rained, a chamois had crossed the trail in a tail, a man hit by a storm had burst into flames, a lady had fallen into a crevasse while singing a cantata by Johann Sebastian Bach”.

“During this time, Jean-Jacques and Honoré undertook the sisters red as blue meat to find themselves in the presence of two boys whose pants in the fashion of the time moulded the genital apparatus of which they dreaded in advance the sting”.

Click on the link for other novels on my blog.

Title : Papa

Author : Régis Jauffret

Editions : Roman/Seuil, 2020.

ISBN : 978-2-02-145035-4

Tags black humour, books, Europe, France, Gestapo, human behaviour, humor, literature, love, novels, psychology, Régis Jauffret, Second World War, Sorj Chalandon, war

Photos of Canada Photos of Quebec

The promenade Samuel-De Champlain in winter.

Post author By Stanley
Post date 27 January 2022

The photo above shows a portion of the promenade Samuel-De Champlain in Quebec City. People are walking under a temperature of -27 C, but the windchill factor is actually more like -40 C.

Where I was standing, a cliff was blocking the last sunrays. But a little further, the perfectly clear sky and the sun setting diretly in the axis of the St-Lawrence River allowed to obtain amazing color contrasts.

The promenade Samuel-De Champlain with the Adobe "Content Aware" function. — The promenade Samuel-De Champlain with the Adobe “Content Aware” function.

I used the first photo above to familiarize myself with Adobe CC 2022. The software’s “content aware fill ” feature allows you to quickly erase elements of a photo without it being too noticeable. So, I tried the experiment with the person in the foreground. In a few seconds, the lady disappeared without a trace. Artificial intelligence now plays an increasingly important role in the fast and efficient editing of images.

Click on the link for more pictures of Quebec City in winter on my blog.

Tags digital processing in photography, extreme cold, photography theory, Promenade Samuel-De Champlain, Quebec City, Quebec City photos, St. Lawrence Seaway, winter photography

Photos of Canada Photos of Quebec

The new houses of Sillery

Post author By Stanley
Post date 20 January 2022

Sillery was a formerly self-governing municipality that is now part of Quebec City. The architecture of the houses that have been built there in recent years contrasts greatly in style and format with the older dwellings.

The more recent constructions are somewhat surprising in their gigantic size. The new owners want buildings with a modern look and very imposing dimensions, sometimes doubling and even tripling the size of the traditional homes in the area.

The photo below shows the difference in size between a traditional property (on the far right of the photo) and a more modern home.

Below, a traditional house in Sillery simply decorated for the holiday season. The blue light of the little tree is reflected on the front of the house and it looks really nice.

Traditional Sillery house in Québec City 2022.

The traditional house above and its Christmas decorations contrast strongly with another one two streets away (photo below). It’s hard to miss the house (of which we can only see one section) and especially the huge tree decorated in its entirety and which must have required the use of a crane equipped with a telescopic arm.

Modern Sillery house with Christmas decorations in 2022.

A final photo (below) shows another traditional house in Sillery with interesting architecture.

The old and the new are in stark contrast in the area, so I thought it was important to capture some memories of properties with unique architecture before they disappear to make way for modernity. Because today, the fashion favors demolition rather than renovation.

Traditional house of Sillery in Québec City with Christmas decorations. in 2022.

The pictures are from a Canon 5DSR full frame camera with a Canon EF 24-70 lens, all mounted on a tripod to avoid blur. The ISO was set to 200, in order to limit the photographic grain.

Click on the link for more pictures of Quebec City in winter on my blog.

Tags architecture and photography, Canon 5DSR, Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM, Canon lenses, Christmas, full frame camera, grain in photography, night photography, photography, Photography projects, Province of Quebec photos, Quebec City, Quebec City photos, Sillery, tripod, winter photography

Novels War

Enfant de salaud

Post author By Stanley
Post date 10 January 2022

Novel "Enfand de salaud" by Sorj Chalandon — Novel “Enfand de salaud” by Sorj Chalandon

“Enfant de salaud” means “Bastard’s child” in English. Author Sorj Chalandon is a journalist and worked for decades for the French newspapers Liberation and Canard Enchaîné. During his career, he received numerous awards: Albert-Londres (1988), Médicis (2006), Grand Prix de l’Académie française (2011), Goncourt des lycéens (2013) and most recently Goncourt 2021 des lecteurs de 20 Minutes .

“Enfant de salaud” is the true story of the author who tries to shed light on his father’s extremely nebulous past during World War II, in the German-occupied France.

Having had access to official archives, he gradually discovers that his father went through the war by enlisting in five armies, which he all deserted. He served the enemy in every way, but always made sure that the few things he was doing for Francewere listed somewhere in case of an investigation after the war.

The head of the Sûreté nationale de Lille who questioned the father after the war said of him: “This individual is a liar endowed with an astonishing imagination. He must be considered very dangerous and treated as such.”

Between the reflections and the discoveries of the son on the past and the psychology of the father, the reader participates in parallel to the trial of Klaus Barbie , psychopath and great war criminal, who died in prison in France in 1991. Passages of the book are blood curdling, although we know what to expect when it comes to Nazis, SS and members of the Gestapo.

When the survivor Isaac Lathermann takes the stand during the Barbie trial, he announces: “[in the concentration camps], at breast height, there was no more bark on the trees, everything had been eaten. No more grass either. Eaten too.” (p. 238)

The reader discovers the resistant Lise Lesèvre who, even tortured by Klaus Barbie for days, doesn’t give up a single name: a phenomenal example of courage and patriotism.

“Enfant de salaud” is the author’s decades-long inner journey. The fact that he relates a real-life story further reinforces the intensity of the narrative.

Enjoy!

Title: Enfant de salaud

Author: Sorj Chalandon

Edition: Grasset et Fasquelle, 2021

ISBN: 978-2-246-82815-0

Click on the link for other novels on my blog.

Click on the link for other books on war on my blog.

Tags books, concentration camps, Europe, France, Germans, history, human behaviour, journalists, novels, police, psychology, psychopath, real life stories, resistance, Second World War, security, true story, war, war crimes

Controversial subjects Graphic novels and comics

Mégantic – Un train dans la nuit.

Post author By Stanley
Post date 3 January 2022

We have all heard of the tragedy experienced by the inhabitants of Lac-Mégantic in 2013, when a driverless oil train from the CP railway company pulling hundreds of cars of explosive petroleum derails in the middle of the night, explodes and kills 47 inhabitants of the city.

The comic book (or graphic novel according to some) “Mégantic – Un train dans la nuit ” adds to the information that we already knew about this tragedy. It also exposes several key pieces of information overlooked by the media.

Author Anne-Marie Saint-Cerny worked for years on the file and, in order to convey the content and the emotions in images, enlisted the help of Christian Quesnel. The result is extremely interesting. The formula works: the drawings are very precise, the layout leaves room for the reader to reflect on the events, the colours are appropriate.

In the train explosion in Lac-Mégantic, there are multiple factors to consider, among others:

1) Executives of the CP company making catastrophic choices.

2) As always, a desire to meet the demands of shareholders. There is a reduction in staff and the company self-assesses when it comes to safety.

3) One driver only is allowed for a train carrying hundreds of tanks of explosives.

4) Politicians agree to the new cuts proposed by the company.

5) There is some magical thinking involved: if something goes wrong with the driver, the train stops on its own thanks to a mechanism which, however, is always likely to fail eventually.

6) Dated rails.

7) The transport of dangerous goods is granted to the MMA, a company with a dubious reputation .

8) The DOT-111 tanks are too fragile for hazardous materials and targeted in more than 25 surveys.

9) There is an agreement to tamper with the oil bill of lading. Instead of indicating the code PG1 (the most dangerous, the most explosive) as it should be, it is instead PG111 (not dangerous) that is written.

10) The lead locomotive is terribly worn.

11) The driver reports a problem with his old locomotive. He is ordered to continue on his way.

12) In Lac-Mégantic, the train is heating up. The driver is ordered to apply the brakes and let the engine run. The driver is then allowed to leave the premises and go to bed. This is one of the repercussions of allowing a single driver on a train.

13) During the night, a fire starts on the lead locomotive, the one that had problems. The firefighters shut down the engine. “By turning off the engine, the air pressure in the air brakes is released. Eventually, the train will start to move on its own and descend the slope towards Lac-Mégantic.”

With just one driver gone to sleep somewhere, there are now 5,000,000 litres of explosives starting to move on the rails and no one will stop them.

“Firefighters believe they are fighting low flammable oil. They are unaware that the CP and World Fuel have falsified the papers, camouflaging their oil classified as the most explosive and dangerous.” There are 47 dead, including several suicides.

Now that there has been a disaster, those involved directly or indirectly are passing the buck, as is the custom in tragedies. The graphic novel mentions, at the political level, the names of Denis Lebel, Lisa Raitt, John Baird and later Marc Garneau. At CP, the author mentions Hunter Harrison. The MMA’s CEO Edward Burkhardt is also mentioned.

Changes happen, but not the ones you would think…

Naomi Klein analyzes the “shock strategy” devised by Milton Friedman. In step 1, “we take advantage of what the population while it is still dazed: they will not be able to oppose what we want to impose on them.” The zoning is being quickly changed to include the expropriation of houses that are totally outside the disaster-affected area. There are some people who are interested in these properties…

In step 2 of the “shock strategy”, we “use the excuse of mandatory decontamination to wipe out the Old World. Excluding the population from the scene of the tragedy, so that they cannot cling to it, so that there is no going back. “

Finally, step 3: “Faced with a population whose shock has been exacerbated by the destruction of its landmarks and habits, we can launch a reconstruction or reinvention which will be received with resigned acceptance“. We have the case of people living in Fatima, a remote area spared by the disaster: owners must quickly sign their expropriation or they shall lose everything. When the former owners are finally gone, a Jean Coutu pharmacy comes to settle on the vacated land.

On the legal side, the small players are targeted and the investigation is limited as much as possible. Takeovers are carried out and returns to shareholders multiplied.

The book flaunts some of the political and entrepreneurial maneuvers aimed at protecting the railway companies. Even at the dawn of 2022, eight years later, the rails still pass through downtown Lac-Mégantic.

“MMA-Canada, essentially bankrupt, has paid nothing and has not been sued.“

“Nothing has changed in rail laws in Canada since the tragedy: companies self-regulate, self-monitor and, in the event of an accident, self-investigate. Thus, it was the CP itself that investigated the deaths of three of its employees in an accident in February 2019 in British Columbia. The CP investigator, prevented from investigating, denounced his employer and called for an independent investigation by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and the Transport Safety Board (TSB), an investigation immediately accepted by the chief investigator responsible for the case at the TSB. That same day, this TSB investigator was dismissed from his post. The CP investigator concluded on a CP no-fault.”

Title: Mégantic – Un train dans la nuit

Author: Anne-Marie Saint-Cerny

Edition : Écosociété, 2021

ISBN : 978-2-89719-686-8

Click on the link for more graphic novels and comic books on my blog.

Human behavior

Religious discourse in Boston

Post author By Stanley
Post date 26 December 2021

In the foreground, two women are discussing and a man is paying full attention to his cell phone while, behind, the preacher and his devotees do what they can, through a religious discourse, to bring the citizens back in the right path: two worlds exist in parallel in this Boston park. If “the message is the medium”, as Marshall Mc Luhan once said, the communication method should possibly be reviewed, as the medium does not seem to work very well!

Click on the link for other street photography articles on my blog.

Tags human behaviour, human relations, religious discourse, United States

Photos of Canada Photos of Quebec

Houses of Old Québec in winter.

Post author By Stanley
Post date 18 December 2021

Old Québec houses on Couillard street in winter.

Winter view of the houses on Couillard street in Old Québec in winter. The photo was taken in the middle of the afternoon. The light is still good enough to illuminate all buildings without creating reflections that are too strong in places where the sun hits the houses directly.

Click on the link for other pictures of Québec City in winter .

Tags Old Quebec, Quebec City photos, winter photography

Novels

A whole life.

Post author By Stanley
Post date 11 December 2021

While searching high and low in various bookstores in Quebec, I often make very interesting discoveries. I recently found a book by Robert Seethaler, originally published in German under the title of ,, Ein ganzes Leben ” and which in English is translated by “A whole life“.

It is a small book of only 145 pages, but the concise writing has the power to immediately propel the reader into the early 1900s, in the middle of the Austrian mountains. It was the period when the construction of the first cable cars began, a period that would change the whole dynamic of the society by gradually allowing more and more tourists to occupy a territory that was once sparsely inhabited.

The author tells the story of Andreas Egger, a simple and endearing man whose strength of character allows him to stand up to any ordeal. He is not distinguished by his intelligence, which is quite ordinary, but rather by his ability to survive and his desire to always move forward. He is a human being that we love and wish only good for.

Here is what the publisher said about Robert Seethaler: “A whole life, elected book of the year (2014) by bookstores across the Rhine, thus confirms the depth of his talent as a writer, capable of leading with great simplicity his reader as close as possible to his emotions”.

This is a very refreshing read for all!

Title: A Whole Life

Author: Robert Seethaler

Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux (2016)

ISBN 9780374289867

For other novels on my site, click here: Novels

Tags aging, Austria, books, Europe, extreme weather, human behaviour, human relations, novels, risk management, Second World War, survival, technological innovations, worker's world

Photos of Canada Photos of Quebec

Semi-trailer truck and autumn landscape

Post author By Stanley
Post date 9 November 2021

Route 175 in the province of Québec in 2021

The above photo was taken while returning from a photography session in the Jacques-Cartier National Park on Route 175, near Quebec City. The rapid drop in temperatures in the early evening allowed the rapid formation of low clouds in the valley. The autumn colors and the effects of the setting sun on the clouds help bring the landscape to life. Landscape photography is often the result of careful planning; but one should not overlook unforeseen opportunities, as is the case here.

Route 175 is heavily used by semi-trailer trucks for trips between Québec and Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean. So I waited a bit for an eighteen wheeler to get close enough to include it in the photo.

For other pictures of the province of Québec on my site: Québec, Québec City and Île d’Orléans in autumn, Québec City and Île d’Orléans in spring, Québec City and Île d’Orléans in summer, Québec City and Île d’Orléans in winter.

Tags autumn colors, landscape photography, photo session, Province of Quebec photos, Québec