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    Universal Bureau of Copyrights
    Universal Bureau of Copyrights
    Universal Bureau of Copyrights
    Ebook99 pages1 hour

    Universal Bureau of Copyrights

    By Bertrand Laverdure

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    About this ebook

    From celebrated Quebecois author Bertrand Laverdure comes Universal Bureau of Copyrights , a bold, strange and addictive story that envisions a world where free will doesn't exist, and an enigmatic global corporation buys and sells the copyrights for all things on Earth, including real and fictional characters. Through this novel, which is part poetic narrative, part sci-fi-dystopian fantasy, readers become acquainted with the main character, a man who deconstructs himself as he navigates the mystifying passages of the story. Having no control over his environment, time continuum, or body, he is a puppet on strings, an icon in a video game and, as he eventually discovers within the bowels of the Universal Bureau of Copyrights, the object of countless copyrights. With touches of Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions and Sterne's Tristram Shandy, Universal Bureau of Copyrights packs a multitude of modern cultural references into an audacious exploration of identity and one's place in the world.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBookThug
    Release dateOct 1, 2014
    ISBN9781771660648
    Universal Bureau of Copyrights
    Author

    Bertrand Laverdure

    Né en 1967, Bertrand Laverdure est poète, romancier, performeur, blogueur, « technicien coiffeur », recherchiste et chroniqueur pour l’émission littéraire Tout le monde tout lu! à MAtv. Il s'intéresse à la multidisciplinarité en littérature. En poésie, il a notamment publié Rires (Noroît 2004), Sept et demi (Le Quartanier, 2007) et Rapport de stage en milieu humain (Triptyque,2014). Ses romans, dont Gomme de xanthane (Triptyque, 2006), Lectodôme (Quartanier, 2008), J’invente la piscine (roman pour adolescents, La courte échelle, 2010), ainsi que Bureau universel des copyrights (La Peuplade,2011), ont tous reçu un accueil critique chaleureux. Il a participé à plusieurs collectifs d’auteurs, dont Être un héros (La courte échelle, 2011), deux collectifs au Quartanier et Bienvenue aux dames (VLB, 2014). La traduction en anglais de Bureau universel des copyrights est parue chez Bookthug à Toronto en octobre 2014. Il a obtenu le prix Joseph S. Stauffer, décerné par le Conseil des arts du Canada, en 1999. Il a également reçu le prix Rina-Lasnier en 2003 pour son recueil Les forêts (Noroît, 2000), recueil qui fut aussi retenu comme finaliste au prix Émile-Nelligan en 2000. Son livre Audioguide (Noroît, 2002), a aussi été en nomination pour le Grand Prix du Festival international de Poésie de Trois-Rivières en 2003.

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      Book preview

      Universal Bureau of Copyrights - Bertrand Laverdure

      MILLET

      1

      At the Cirio in Brussels.

      I just woke up.

      Slept for about thirty minutes. That’s all. Yet my entire life passed before my eyes like it does for the dying in an operetta. Only now, I had the feeling of really waking up, as if for the first time ever.

      Everyone learns this at some point or other. Nature has no secret plan. Nature is not a kind organizer. Nature doesn’t give a shit. She does her thing. Drops us through the hole, then waits.

      Problem is, we all have illusions. We’d all love a purpose. Love to have our roles all set out, envision a grand plan, imagine that context, time, technology give us the benefit of distinction or even education, give us our blue blood, our late-night trysts, our heritage. All bullshit. Infantile drivel. There are never any options. We fall in and that’s all.

      As soon as we step outside we speed up the process. Think before you step.

      Everything around me has taken on this tinge. Even the Italian waiter with his aggressive look and biting tongue seems more real.

      We often live twofold, in our heads, then in our bodies. It’s normal, natural; nature is complicated. Yet in waking I had the strange sensation that I live here and now, without a second of time difference. At last, at the focal point of a typically blurry objective. I don’t ask myself who watches through the viewfinder though I know that most often we are outside the frame or absent. Then suddenly, I’m there and fall in step with the present’s speed.

      Event: the swinging door of the local jams up. One of the waiters goes to rescue the stuck customer. From afar I can’t make it out well, but a large blue and white splotch greets the owner. I forget about my Rodenbach. A few customers begin to fuss over this fanatic in disguise. Several raise their glass as he passes. Sharp, pseudo-jackass eyes, corruption in his wake, this is a strange regular, I tell myself. I’m not dreaming either; this thing comes towards me. I refuse, at first, to identify him.

      But resign myself to look at him. It’s Jokey Smurf.

      I use this major diversion to leave aside the impolite Italian waiter whom I’d love to knock out. Jokey Smurf deserves my full attention.

      The Smurf hands me a present. The box we all know: yellow with a red ribbon. I feel like striking up a conversation with him.

      He explains that he’s never known what makes the box explode, but he’s never had any doubt that it will explode. This Smurf is a notorious tautologist. In truth, he sees no further than his nostrils and this bugs me.

      Me and Jokey Smurf, it just doesn’t add up.

      Since his conversation leads nowhere, a repetitive loop of two or three lax commonplaces, I quickly become supremely bored.

      He seems disappointed by my irrepressible yawns. Between two takes of the same sample text monotonously recorded by a sullen actor, he re-hands me his present. I’m struck dumb.

      Oscar Wilde predicted it: the only way to resist temptation is to succumb to it. There, it’s done. I accept the present.

      Naturally, the present explodes. Jokey Smurf bursts out laughing, as he should. Then, all of a sudden, I’m no longer there.

      2

      I reappear.

      Blink my eyes two or three times to realize that my clandestine passenger body is resting on the cloth of a comfortable hammock. A bed of fortune held up by two solid straps, each wrapped around a trunk. I’m balancing between two trees with ludicrous nonchalance. Sausage of feet and legs, thorax and head, gently bound in its canvas skin.

      I rest, relieved by my situation.

      A few seconds is all it takes to realize the origin of the leafage around me and, incidentally, identify the source of various noises—the tennis balls and cars, the slight mayhem of picnics and baseball games: La Fontaine Park, southeast side, close to Sherbrooke Street.

      I’m in Montreal, Quebec, surrounded by buildings, Notre-Dame Hospital, a statue in honour of Charles de Gaulle—a genuine blue knife of cement piercing the clouds or an immense sundial, it depends.

      From a leafy fold, the shadowy corner of a branch, I glimpse a squirrel, head lowered, suddenly advance. In a fury. A formidable fury. Piercing, magnetic sounds—like a badly playing track in a CD player or digitally treated noise—escape its snout. Annoyed by this unbearable monologue, I untangle myself from the hammock.

      Then I walk away, heart in my throat.

      The city abounds with numerous excessively subtle melodies, teeming sound curves. I’m all ears. Like Ulysses, let myself be carried away by the merchant murmur, the dense drone of the neighbourhood.

      My new outlook and the ambient odours intermingle to form an ethereal mosaic. I feel protected. Walk leisurely along, like a great holy man or a stork.

      We get used to everything. First to Mondays, then Tuesdays, then the rest of the week, the need to sleep, to amuse ourselves, then death. There is no universal truth, but cultivating our own truth helps pass the time. Mine doesn’t correspond to yours but makes up for all the rest.

      — Press play . . .

      The squirrel panics. Hops up to me and grips onto my leg. More aggressive than a wolverine, its downy body a small docile bomb, it clutches at my skin with solid harness-claws. Its cutting teeth, a makeshift blade with anaesthetizing powers, begin to gnaw at the epidermis, dermis, then the muscles, the bone. My leg detaches, a flower unfolding.

      I fall into a dark coma.

      3

      Crippled, I need to figure out how to fix my deficient locomotion. End up ripping off the pant leg, so that the loose threads (skin and fabric) won’t hinder my movements.

      Suddenly, a crowd gathers. They bemoan my unlucky lot, call the paramedics, take their time to faint, write sad verses, speculate on the causes of my predicament. Upset by my condition, an amateur musician stops noodling on his guitar, abandons it under a tree in the park, then helps me to stand and, declaring that he’ll fix my problem, offers me the comfort of his car. Wearing a plethora of charms and trinkets, he seems versed in the occult sciences. Naively, I ask him about it. He replies that, to be more precise, he’s a collector.

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