Jacques Poulin

Background

Jacques Poulin was born on September 23, 1937 in Saint-gédéon, Canada, moving to Quebec City when he was eighteen.

Education

Jacques Poulin graduated from the Université Laval in Quebec City, where he studied psychology and arts.

Career

Jacques Poulin began his career as a guidance counsellor in a college, then spent several years as a commercial and government translator. After making his living as a translator, he published his first, very short, novel, Mon cheval pour un royaume, at the age of thirty. It was the first volume in a trilogy known, in its English translation, as The "Jimmy" Trilogy; Mon cheval pour un royaume, a title that reversed a famous quote from Shakespeare, means My Horse for a Kingdom. In these three early novels, Poulin displayed a debt to J. D. Salinger.

Poulin’s 1974 novel Faites de beaux rêves did not appear in English translation. His next, Les grandes marees (1978) was translated by Fischman as Spring Tides and published in 1986. In Spring Tides the hero is a shy commercial translator who lives on an island. Periodically, his boss flies down in a helicopter to pick up the hero’s translations of American comic strips and to leave new material and groceries. The hero, Teddy, is happy on his island, but when the boss sends him a series of disturbing guests, including a lovely woman and a deaf professor, his equilibrium is unsettled.

Volkswagen Blues, published in French in 1984, was released in English four years later. It tells the story of Jack Waterman, a somewhat successful Canadian novelist in crisis who, in the midst of writing his latest novel, feels a compulsion to drive off in 2 Volkswagen minibus in search of his long-lost brother, Theo. He succumbs to the impulse, and, on the way, meets a woman of mixed Indian and white descent who is mechanically adept, erudite, and nurturing.

Poulin’s 1989 Le vieux chagrin, a title literally translated as "the old sorrow," was published as Mr. Blue in its 1993 translation. As in Spring Tides the hero is a literary man living alone by the water: Jim is writing a love story when he discovers, as Robinson Crusoe does in a different book, footprints in the sand. These footprints turn out to be those of a woman living in a nearby cave.

During the 1990s, Jacques published Autumn Rounds, about an itinerant librarian who develops a love relationship with a woman during a voyage between Québec and the North Shore. In Wild Cat, published in 1997, the narrator plays a detective on the streets of Quebec who by chance meets a young girl. Although unsought, she ends up occupying a growing role in his life. Poulin published Translation is a Love Affair in 2006. It takes place on Île d'Orléans, about a young translator meeting a writer whose works she must translate.

Three Poulin’s latest books L'Anglais n'est pas une langue magique, L'Homme de la Saskatchewan and Un jukebox dans la tête, which was published in 2009, 2011 and 2015 accordingly, are not yet translated.

Achievements

• Poulin's works are studied widely in both French and English Canada. His book Volkswagen Blues was selected as a candidate in the CBC's 2005 edition of Canada Reads. Several of Poulin's novels have won awards in Canada and abroad. Le Vieux chagrin was awarded the Prix Québec - Paris in 1989, and the Prix France - Québec - Jean - Hamelin in 1991. He was granted the Prix Athanase - David in 1995, the Prix Molson des Arts du Canada in 2000, and the Prix Gilles - Corbeil in 2008.

Works

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  • Spring Tides

    (Peacefully employed on an uninhabited island, Teddy Bear,...)

    1978
  • Mister Blue

    (One of Jacques Poulin’s masterpieces, this tender and per...)

    1989
  • Translation Is a Love Affair

    (A quietly affecting modern fairy tale told with humor and...)

    2006
  • Wild Cat

    (Jacques Poulin's wonderful novel about a professional wri...)

    1998
  • Volkswagen Blues

    (In this classic road novel, Jacques Poulin tells the stor...)

    1984
  • Autumn Rounds

    (A quiet man, living in an apartment in Quebec City, hears...)

    1993
  • My Sister's Blue Eyes

    (Jack Waterman is a writer who owns a bookstore in Quebec ...)

    2007
  • The Jimmy Trilogy 1979
  • Mr. Blue 1989

Views

Jacques Poulin's novels are sparely written, lean in syntax and style, and simple. He tells of characters in search of themselves and others, wounded rather than torn by the desire to (re)discover themselves, and the almost complete impossibility of doing so. The favorite subjects of a writer are thoughtful solitude, love marked by tenderness and ambiguity, quiet despair that haunts the characters in their quests. Jacques concerned with human frailty including the banalities of daily life. His works also deal with personal and political history as well as with the beauty of Quebec City and St. Lawrence.

Personality

Jacques Poulin is fluently bilingual.