Which Soil?

Should French Canadian writers follow French traditions or strike out in their own way, even if it is a North American way? For two years the question has sparked a lively debate among French Canadian intellectuals.

Rene Garneau, Montreal critic and devoted apostle of French letters, sounded the first sharp note. With apprehension he had watched the rise of such French Canadian writers as Gabrielle Roy, whose Bonheur d'occasion (Accidental Happiness) became a U.S. best-seller as The Tin Flute (TIME, March 17). Her story of a Montreal slum showed unmistakable U.S. influences. Wrote Garneau, in the 1946 literary supplement of Montreal's Le Canada: "We cannot escape the zone of influence of a mighty literary power. If it is not France it will be America." French Canadian authors, said he, should turn to France. Besides, "[Americans] do not like literature."

Retorted Robert Charbonneau, Montreal writer and publisher: "Let the facts talk. If Americans do not like literature, how then explain the success of writers like Hemingway, Steinbeck, Faulkner, Dos Passos, Thomas Wolfe, Eugene O'Neill?"

After that, it was anybody's fight. Roger Lemelin, author of Au Pied de la Pente Douce, a story about Quebec City, took the middle way. Obviously, he argued, French Canadians have the intellectual characteristics of their race, but it is natural that they should write about their North American surroundings.

Last week Charbonneau sounded off again. He told La Societe des Editeurs Canadiens du Livre Franc,ais: "It is by being Canadians and proud of it that our writers will assert themselves. . . . While modern French literature is in full decadence, while its techniques are obsolete . . . why should our younger writers continue to tie themselves exclusively to it?"

In the literary todo, more than artistic attitudes was at stake. During the war, such Quebec publishing concerns as Charbonneau's Les Editions de I'Arbre had a free hand in launching French Canadian novels that might otherwise have gone to Paris. Quebec wants to keep the business. French publishers, on the other hand, squirm as Quebec-printed books run into big editions. Said a Paris critic: "[French] Canadians should be ostracized. They are going to ruin our market."

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