Background
André Brochu was born on March 3, 1942, in Saint-eustache, Quebec, Canada. He is the son of Edouard Brochu, a microbiologist, and Jeanne (Lacroix) Brochu.
(Like any young man, Etienne longs for independence and dr...)
Like any young man, Etienne longs for independence and dreams about a bright future. But he's a Tourangeau, part of a sprawling Quebec family that, though destitute, thrives as insecurely as weeds in a well-tended garden, nurtured by a mother whose abundant love is more than maternal. Then he meets Odile, a beautiful young woman from a good family who inspires Etienne to transform his future into something worthy of her. But, like Romeo and Juliet, their wild, pure love for each other cannot last. Though Etienne faces his challenges courageously, destiny will force the young lovers apart.
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André Brochu was born on March 3, 1942, in Saint-eustache, Quebec, Canada. He is the son of Edouard Brochu, a microbiologist, and Jeanne (Lacroix) Brochu.
Brochu graduated from the College of St. Marie as a Bachelor of Arts in 1960. A year later he obtained Master of Arts degree at the University of Montreal. Ten years after that, he finally earned his doctorate from the University of Paris VIII.
While he was still in his mid-teens, in 1957, Brochu collaborated with J.-Andre Constant and Yves Dube on the verse collection Etranges domaines. In 1961 he published the poetry volume Privileges de I’ombre, which focuses on the sufferings of a rebellious adolescent. The following year he served as editor of La Litterature par elle-meme, a collection of essays by writers described by Dictionary of Literary Biography essayist Camille R. La Bossiere as “optimistic secular humanists.”
Brochu worked at the position of a professor of literature at the University of Montreal, during all 34 years of his career, from 1963.
In addition, in 1963 Brochu teamed with Jacques Brault and Andre Major on Nouvelles, a collection of short stories. Among the tales in this volume is Brochu’s “Quand je serai grand”.
Like his rebellious protagonists, Brochu found it necessary to reconcile the often contradictory aspects of life and art. He began to approach his own reconciliation by exploring the Hegelian dialectic, in which the clash of thesis and antithesis leads to synthesis. Brochu’s embracing of the Hegelian dialectic is visible in his Delit contre delit, a volume of autobiographical poetry.
Brochu’s notion of affirmative paradox is exemplified in Adeodat I, his 1973 novel that lampoons contemporary critical theories—including structuralism and deconstructuralism—and culminates in the advocacy of scatology as a principle means of authentic expression. A succeeding volume, the essay collection L’Instance critique, also serves as an examination of synthesized opposites. For Brochu, unity is essential and positive, while the lack of synthesis or reconciliation—even with regard to seemingly disparate objects or subjects—constitutes a sickness.
Throughout much of the 1980s, in works such as L’Evasion Tragique-essai sur les romans d’André Langevin and La Visee critique: Essais autobiographiques et littéraires, Brochu collected his essays on a range of subjects, from his own childhood to his achievements as a literary critic, and from French-Canadian culture to socio-political issues imbedded in Quebec’s drive for separatism from Canada. In 1989, however, Brochu broke from this stream of nonfiction to publish the poetry collection, Les Matins nus, le vent; the next year he produced another, Particulièrement la vie change. He then published La Croix du nord, a novella about a husband whose marriage declines when his wife enters into sexual relations with his best friend.
Among Brochu’s works of the 1990s is Particulièrement la vie change, a volume of surreal, wide-ranging poems. Here the author again examines life’s reconciliations and extols the virtues of acceptance and understanding, particularly with regard to his own experiences.
(Like any young man, Etienne longs for independence and dr...)
Quotations: “A very important event for me happened during the 1980s. A medication, lithium, allowed me to defeat a terrible illness and to finally realize my ambitions as a writer by giving me access to my imagination. Since then, I have tried to explore my interior reality—in connection with simple reality, which is not so different—and to give a literary existence, even a dimension of universality, to this secret flaw which is my destiny and that of many others. Those in the minority (the insane, homosexuals, the infirm, etc.) know as much and often more of human nature than those who can repose in the comfort of the majority.”
Brochu is a member of Quebec Writers Union, and Academy des lettres du Quebec.
Brochu married Celine Cadieux, a musician, on June 24, 1962. They have 2 children - Hugo and Xavier.