Gérard Bessette, Le Libraire [Not for Every Eye]

Marie Pascal

Ed. by Emir Delic, Université Sainte-Anne
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.1.4: Canadian Writing and Culture: Francophone .
Vol. editors: Emir Delic (Université Sainte-Anne), Eftihia Mihelakis (Brandon University), Glen Nichols (Mount Allison University), Wendy Roy (University of Saskatchewan), Denis Salter (McGill University), Karis Shearer (University of British Columbia)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1960

Places

Canada (Publication/ performance)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

What might be overlooked as a minor work considering that its author, Gérard Bessette (1920-2005), is better known as a critic than a novelist, is quoted with much importance in Michel Biron, Elisabeth Nardout-Lafarge and François Dumont’s Histoire de la littérature québécoise. There Le Libraire [Not for Every Eye] (1960) is described as the prototypical novel of the Quiet Revolution:

The novel reaches a broad public and incorporates references to the actual world, that of the city, the youth, the social and national revolution, and sexual liberation. Even in a maze of wordplay, the novel seems to speak of and to its very own era.

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4005 words

Citation: Pascal, Marie. "Le Libraire". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 08 February 2017 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=35820, accessed 22 November 2024.]

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