Eureka!
I do not know how Parisiennes or Quebecoises pronounce this word -- Americans pronounce it "you REEK ah" -- but I met some Greek professors, and they said Archimedes probably jumped naked from the public bath and ran through Syracuse yelling: "ev-REH-kuh!"
(It's a little more complicated than that, nobody today knows how Ancient Greek was pronounced. And to Athenians, Archimedes' Doric accent would have sounded like Quebecois sounds to Parisians, or like the Australian accent sounds to BBC Londoners -- comment d'it on "hick"? Well, Archimedes was a Very Smart Hick.)
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How is your writing going ? Mine is not easy, and I am full of doubts !
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You spend five weeks trying not to fall into le moulin of the glacier so your frozen corpse will not be seen again for 3000 years. You spend five weeks among the Inuit of Ultima Thule. You spend five weeks trying not to become le dejeuner of l'ours blanc. You spend five weeks under l'aurore ...
I think your roman will be very good, remarkable, rich, delicious. (Maybe Inuit will be bored, but everybody else will be fascinated.)
Merci (ou merci pas) for the Hard Question.
For me and mon roman, this is a Very Unpleasant Moment.
The story is good, and in my private dream, gets better and better.
The characters are good, the characters are real, they are solid now, I can touch them and I can smell them.
They have risen from my rough sketch, and they have become alive and awake. Now they choose their own words, and make their own decisions, which regularly surprise me.
They do not need le romancier anymore -- now all they need is Bob the Fast Typist.
So this is a very uncomfortable, unpleasant moment for me.
For my wife, I want to be a good husband.
For my friends and my neighbors, I want to be a good friend and a good neighbor.
But now my characters want to kidnap me into their world for six months or for a year, and make me live with them (they need a fast typist). They want to take me away from wife, friends and neighbors.
When this happened before, I did not like it.
Well -- I liked it the way the addict likes opium.
The Dream World of the roman becomes so much more wonderful than the World of the Supermarket. Tierra de los Sueños becomes so much more beautiful and interesting than The Land of The Broken Toilet or The Land of the Diabetes Doctor. Real people become annoying, a distraction, a bother, an interruption.
Well -- you asked, and this has been very much on my mind this month. So the news is Very Good. And the news is Very Bad.
My wife was le professeur of literature. She thinks romanciers and poets are crazy people, perverts, sickos, Rimbauds, Baudelaires, Célines, Lord Byrons. She thinks the women are all Pauline Réages.
But she also knows that without these perverts, she would be unemployed. She would have nothing to force her students to read.
So she grudgingly permits Bob to be Céline de temps en temps. She regards it as a Professional Duty, like serving on a jury, or military conscription. Temporary, unpleasant, but necessary.
Now I must return to my horrible Dream Family, their filthy, perverted speeches, their irresponsible, shameful acts. à demain,
Bob the Fast Typist
