What happened when Blue met Bleu (met Azul)?
The 8th “Blue Metropolis Bleu” Montréal International Literary Festival is on, from April 5 to 9. I got a bunch of tickets to various readings, lectures, panels. It’s a great (if short) festival; apparently the only multilingual literary festival in the world. We’re not just talking (and reading) English and French, but also Spanish and — this year — Italian and Russian!
Yesterday I went to see Cuban-born Spanish writer José Carlos Somoza give a reading and talk (en español). He is a psychiatrist (thus writing for the pleasure of it and presumably not for the money ;-) so you can be sure he has some interesting observations on the human mind. I’d already been intrigued by his book Clara y la Penumbra (English version: The Art of Murder), so I took this opportunity to buy it. And yes, I’d decided to fork out the $18 for the book even before he sweet-talked me — he asked how long I’d lived in Spain(!) after hearing my accent.
Today I’m off to see a session called La rue Fabre, le centre de l’univers, about the Plateau Mont-Royal, Montréal’s “mythical literary location”. There’s not much detail in the description, but I assume it’s in reference to Michel Tremblay’s Chroniques du Plateau Mont-Royal characters, whose “universe” revolved around this street. Later I’ll attend a panel that looks intriguing: Metrópolis Azul: Desplazamiento, migración, literatura, which asks a panel of 5 Spanish-language authors: ¿Cuáles son los desafíos para el escritor que vive y trabaja en otra cultura y otro país? (What challenges face the writer who lives in another culture and country?) Among the panelists is the great Spanish-born poet Tomás Segovia. Because of the Spanish Civil War, his family left Spain and he lived much of his life in exile. He greatly influenced culture and literature in his adopted country of Mexico.
Tomorrow I’ll attend an interview with Michel Tremblay (Montréal’s “greatest living writer” and winner of this year’s Blue Met Grand Prix award), and later a reading by Tomás Segovia. Then more on Sunday.
You see, Montréal can be intellectual…uh, sometimes…