I started writing for newspapers like Le Devoir and The Montreal Gazette, with pen and notepad in hand, running after people and telling linear stories; then I branched out to radio, where I did some of my best work guided along by the BBC, CBC and Radio-Canada, with microphone and tape recorder in hand, creating word pictures, virtual tapestries of sound, and above all of human voices; then I worked in film, with multiple cameras, lenses, filters, battery packs, tripods and microphones in hand, creating a complete experience of dynamic free-floating layered textures, lasting just under two hours … Film is a world where characters have a compelling physical and visual presence, where as director/cinematographer I have to be authentic with them, and where I then have to spin together images (along with my editor, Guillaume Falardeau) to tell a complex story, bringing along sound and voice for the ride.
If I had to characterize these three ways of telling stories, I would say print is for making a statement; radio for creating a layered structure; and film for a happening with diverse interactions.
Now I find with my noir novel, LEF, that I have to move back from those dynamic free-floating layered textures and treat the story as more of an arrow, in which the characters reveal themselves through their actions, where there is a stark economy of words and detail, and where everything goes from A to Z, reaching the author’s predetermined goal, that is, where the novel ends up.
I might put this differently if I were writing about magical realism, but noir is noir! Even Dennis Lehane’s Shutter Island, which has wild passages of schizophrenic delusion!
Readers of noir novels are compulsive page-turners. Deep down, they see noir as a dark world, naturally, but above all they see each novel as a huge puzzle, an intellectual challenge: they want to figure out, to foresee the ultimate outcome, despite the author’s ingenious labyrinth of twists and turns.