Storytelling in French is more flexible in its use of tense than in English. Epic narratives in English tend to ascribe more meaning to tense; stories, and myths in particular, are told in the past. They are timeless, occurring now as well as then, and part of their timeless quality is a function of the tense we choose. Our predecessors would tell the story of Theseus as he journeys through the labyrinth for love and glory in the past tense, all the while relating to contemporary audiences of shared values, beliefs, and political challenges. In Running on Fumes, the same holds true. The events we experience serve as a warning for our current challenges. It is in this sense that the myth of Theseus is both timeless and current. In other words, we use the past tense to describe events that might be taking place now. While some contemporary literature challenges the long-held notion of past tense as the only choice for the storyteller, tradition still holds strong in the realm of myth.
Road novels are our modern-day myths. They are the embodiment of Joseph Campbell’s concept of the monomyth. A strong lineage runs from the Odyssey, narrated millennia ago, to Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, written decades ago, or Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, written more recently; they all tell of the hero’s journey as he is called to face a series of trials and is resurrected before reaching apotheosis or atonement. Running on Fumes is no different in the sense that our unnamed hero moves through these classic stages, though in our tale the backdrop of hooves beating dusty ground is changed for the hammering of pistons in a rusted engine.
My choice to use the past tense instead of the present in the translation of this story was not an easy one. In the end, I gave precedence to the fact that the story retells a myth and thus should reflect English-language literary traditions. Ours is a story that can be placed in any setting of time and place and still speak to a shared experience.
I hope Running on Fumes rings as true to you as it did to me, that our hero’s journey seems faithful to our own pathways through scarred landscapes both within and around us, and that you accompanied our damned hero to the end, as he strives to find his way through the labyrinth of our world gone mad.
—Jacob Homel
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Warmest thanks to all those who contributed to this project and helped me keep this novel on the road. From one version to the next, they helped me see the straight lines, the turns, the precipices. They were my guardrails.
So thank you to Catherine Brunet, Nicolas Rochette, Antoine Joie, André Thomas, Réjean Guay, Pierre-Olivier Colombat, Laurence Granbois-Bernard, and Micheline Genest.
And special thanks to the writer Brigitte Caron who gave me her patient support from the very first kilometre.
jacob homel, born and raised in Montreal, has translated or collaborated in the translation of a number of works, including Nelly Arcan’s Hysteric and Breakneck, Frédéric Bastien’s The Battle of London and Hadrien Laroche’s The Last Genet. In 2012, he won the J.I. Segal Translation Prize for his translation of A Pinch of Time by Claude Tatilon. He currently lives in Montreal.
Christian Guay-Poliquin was born just north of the U.S. border in Saint-Armand, Quebec, in 1982. He believes the art of the narrative is grounded in the demands and details of daily life, situated in a world ripe with experience. He is currently developing a doctoral thesis on the hunting narrative and writing his second novel, Le poids de la neige, forthcoming from La Pleuplade in September 2016. Le fil des kilomètres (La Peuplade, 2013), his first novel, was published in both Quebec and France.
Photo by Laurence Grandbois-Bernard
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© 2013 Christian Guay-Poliquin
Translation © 2016 Jacob Homel
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the publisher or a licence from Access Copyright (The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency). For a copyright licence, visit accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.
Talonbooks
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www.talonbooks.com
First printing: 2016
Cover and interior design by Jenn Murray
Talonbooks acknowledges the financial support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund, and the Province of British Columbia through the British Columbia Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.
This work was originally published in French as Le fil des kilomètres by Le Peuplade, Saguenay, Quebec, in 2013. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada, through the National Translation Program, for our translation activities.
library and archives canada cataloguing in publication
Guay-Poliquin, Christian
[Fil des kilomètres. English] Running on fumes / Christian Guay-Poliquin ; translated by Jacob Homel. Translation of: Le fil des kilomètres.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
isbn 978-0-88922-975-4 (paperback). – isbn 978-0-88922-976-1 (epub). – isbn 978-1-77201-054-1 (kindle). – isbn 978-1-77201-055-8 (pdf)
I. Homel, Jacob, 1987–, translator II. Title. III. Title: Fil des kilomètres. English
PS8613.U297F5513 2016 C843’.6 C2015-908253-6
C2015-908254-4
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