Description
The black spruce, glory of prehistory, is an antenna connecting us to eternity. It instills in us a somber wisdom, a long-term melancholy. It is the tree I lean on, where I rest my mind, my broken back, my dead legs. The tree under which I drink my cup of tea, resolute, tired, happy before the small fire that smells so good. Black spruce of Sainte-Corneille, spruce of the raven's echo, firewood, dead spruce, pole of the conical house, spruce of the comforting smoke, dense and precious wood that consumes the fuel of the solar rows: you are the North in all its thorny truth.
This posthumous book by Serge Bouchard follows L’Allume-cigarette de la Chrysler noire (2019) and Un café avec Marie (2021). Like these two collections, it is composed of short texts, written and read by Serge Bouchard on the weekly radio show C’est fou…, co-hosted with Jean-Philippe Pleau, who wrote the preface to this book. It features the same poetic sensitivity and mocking wisdom that characterize Serge Bouchard's prose, centered around themes that always inspired him: nature, human solidarity, friendship with Indigenous peoples, the oddities of the modern world, beauty, and melancholy. One can once again hear the unique voice of a major writer of our time who, until the very end, was keen to share with his audience his reflections on what gives meaning to our very existence.
