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    Drama Queens
    Drama Queens
    Drama Queens
    Ebook144 pages2 hours

    Drama Queens

    By Vickie Gendreau and Aimee Wall

    ()

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    About this ebook

    At the book fair in Rimouski, a woman picked up my first book to read the back cover. She put it back down, avoiding my eyes. It's heavy, cancer and death and all that. I wish books were more interactive. Like video game controllers. They could vibrate at the end of each chapter. But that's not how life works. I wonder what death is like. Do you vibrate? Do the words GAME OVER appear?

    In 2012, Vickie Gendreau was diagnosed with a brain tumour and wrote a book narrating her own death. Testament could have been Gendreau's first and only novel, but she kept writing, furiously, until the very end.

    Published posthumously after Gendreau's death in 2013 at age 24, Drama Queens continues her exploration of illness and death that began in Testament, but with even greater urgency and audacity. In her singular voice, Gendreau mixes genres and forms, moving from art installations to fantastical little films to poetry, returning again and again to a deeply raw and unflinching narrative of her increasingly difficult days.

    With rage, dark humour, and boundless spirit and imagination, Drama Queens, translated by Aimee Wall, records the daily life of a young woman living with a failing body, the end in sight, and still so much to say.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBookhug Press
    Release dateOct 24, 2019
    ISBN9781771665230
    Drama Queens

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      Book preview

      Drama Queens - Vickie Gendreau

      Title page: Drama Queens by Vickie Gendreau, translated by Aimee Wall. From the Literature in Translation Series, Book*Hug 2019

      first english edition

      Published originally under the title: Drama Queens © 2014 by Le Quartanier

      Published with permission of Le Quartanier

      Introduction © 2019 by Mathieu Arsenault

      English translation copyright © 2019 by Aimee Wall

      all rights reserved

      No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

      library and archives canada cataloguing in publication

      Title: Drama queens / Vickie Gendreau ; translated by Aimee Wall.

      Other titles: Drama queens. English

      Names: Gendreau, Vickie, author. | Wall, Aimee, translator.

      Description: First English edition. | Series statement: Literature in translation series

      Series: Literature in translation series.

      Originally published in French under the title: Drama queens.

      Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20190192356 | Canadiana (ebook) 20190192364

      isbn 9781771665223 (softcover) | isbn 9781771665230 (html)

      isbn 9781771665247 (pdf) | isbn 9781771665254 (Kindle)

      Classification: LCC PS8613.E535 D7313 2019 | DDC C843/.6—dc23

      The production of this book was made possible through the generous assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. Book*hug Press also acknowledges the support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit and the Ontario Book Fund.

      Logos: Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, Government of Canada, Ontario Creates

      We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the National Translation Program for Book Publishing, an initiative of the Roadmap for Canada’s Official Languages 2013-2018: Education, Immigration, Communities, for our translation activities.

      Book*hug Press acknowledges that the land on which we operate is the traditional territory of many nations, including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples. We recognize the enduring presence of many diverse First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples and are grateful for the opportunity to meet and work on this territory.

      Introduction

      In the winter of 2013, Vickie Gendreau’s tumour returned after barely five months of remission, during which she had published Testament, been recognized as a real writer, and become a celebrity of the small literary world of Quebec. She had also continued writing. The doctors decided on a particularly gruelling chemotherapy treatment for the relapse, and by early March, the treatments and the constant doses of cortisone had left Vickie extremely weak. I went to see her one afternoon, and we talked about how little time she likely had left, given the diagnosis. She told me that her biggest wish before dying was to hold the book she was working on in her hands. She said she couldn’t finish the manuscript—the fatigue was too intense and her morale too low. I told her I could take what she’d written up to that point and contact Éric de Larochellière, the managing editor at Le Quartanier, to see if it would be possible to put together and print a single copy. I left her place with a set of documents on a USB key. When I arrived home, I got in touch with de Larochellière to ask what would be possible. He said that, apart from the cover, which could only be printed in large print runs, the single copy would be identical to other Le Quartanier books—the layout, the size, the paper. He told me to come by the next day with the documents.

      The documents Vickie had given me didn’t read like a coherent novel. I did what I could to construct one from them, without writing or rewriting anything. I worked almost non-stop for eighteen hours. The manuscript I put together worked, and I was able to get it to Le Quartanier’s offices on time.

      In the days that followed, Vickie finished her chemo treatments and her health improved a little. I went over to her place one afternoon with a printed copy of the manuscript I’d put together. I was worried my work didn’t reflect her intentions for the book, and so we ended up reading it together page by page.

      A week or two later, she underwent another round of tests. The treatment hadn’t worked. There was nothing left to do, and there was very little time. Vickie, who never wrote better than when she was in the midst of an intense ordeal, picked back up the work I’d done, reclaimed the structure I’d created, and wrote new passages. The team at Le Quartanier and the printer worked quickly, and the single copy arrived in time. She cried with joy when she first held it. We had a little party. But that wasn’t enough for her; she wanted to give a public reading of the book. Her friends threw all their energy into the project, and the public reading of Drama Queens took place in a packed theatre in Montreal one Tuesday afternoon. A hundred and fifty people listened for five hours to the entire text of the novel, which they were hearing for the first time. It was the most intense event I’ve ever attended. The audience listened in silence, they laughed, they started sobbing at the end. The text spoke of events that had occurred, in some cases, just the week before, recounted in a style that made us feel that the book would outlive us all. We were at a literary funeral in the presence of the author. Everyone knew it and nobody wanted to admit it.

      The public reading of Drama Queens took place on April 30, 2013. On May 4, Vickie Gendreau went into palliative care. She died on May 11.

      The book published as Drama Queens is essentially Vickie’s final text, the one read in public. While Testament recounts the experience of illness, but speaks of death in the realm of fantasy, Drama Queens recounts the experience of impending death, and life becomes the fantasy—the life of a double, a sister invented for the book. Vickie had wanted to write a book about the intensity of life, to continue living out her partying twenties vicariously through this novel. But at a certain point, the stage curtain is ripped down, the backdrop crumbles, and we see the sickness lurking in the wings, in all its ugliness: the anxiety, the deformed body, the walker, the wheelchair, the diapers. Everything we’d hidden, she and I, those afternoons at her place, everything we’d hidden so we could keep making sure life had the upper hand on death, she wrote it all, hiding nothing. That refusal to hide anything, ever—it was this that would make Drama Queens a great book, and Vickie Gendreau a great writer.

      —Mathieu Arsenault

      Part One

      anna ketamine, victoria love

      and maggie books invite you to their first group exhibition.

      victoria love, Artistic Director

      Welcome to our first group exhibition. I’m working in visual arts now. Literature too. I should hurry and finish my text before my head starts spinning. Thankfully, once it’s printed, it’s done. I’ll decorate it with a few gemstones. The pleasures of a hot glue gun. Everyone contributes their little something. Anna Ketamine is doing performance art and installations. Maggie Books made these little cinematographic fantasies, and I printed out all my notebooks. I sit in my wheelchair in the middle of the museum. I invite everyone to read the pile in front of me. Men in particular. I’m still hoping for a Prince Charming. My king. For the more visual types, there’s the exhibition. I make out, I die, I do it all.

      They prescribed me fiction. They said it could be good for me. I hide my pill organizer behind my computer. My breakfast is brought to me in bed. On a silver platter. I’d be there, all sexy in a negligee. I should demand tropical fruits. There should be sun filling the room through expensive curtains. There should be. There should always be something more.

      Life runs fast, and death catches up. Life is an elaborate exhibition, and death a play. I’m going to be very sincere in these notebooks. I’m going to reveal it all to you. Give you clues through my work. I’ll even try fiction so you can escape from your daily life too. I’ll talk about Facebook, Google, relationships, this infamous generation. More illness, more fennec foxes.

      You enter the room. The hangar, really. You say: These girls must have cash. These pieces are enormous. All the characters are wearing precious gems. Or, anyway, you can’t tell if they’re fake. Nothing is really that beautiful. It is not a question of should, but must.

      They’re going to freeze me like Walt Disney once they see our exhibition. Francis asked me to spit in my first book instead of signing it. They’ll be able to clone me like that goat. The book is dead. Long live the book.

      We spend so much time thinking about how to decorate our carcasses. A necklace, a jacket. A dress with precious gems around the neck. A little scarf, a pair of earrings. Vintage. Everything vintage. Then we die. It’s over. What to wear in my coffin? I want an urn with a little crown. No. I am not a robot. Yes. I’d like the robot’s life. When I put my Dollar Max crown on the little fountain they never turn on, it looks like Wall-E’s girlfriend. I want to be Wall-E’s girlfriend. Or just his friend that’s a girl. But fuck, I’m only human. I sputter. I prove it once again. For your eyes, and your eyes only.

      My uncle is going to send one of his friends to install a chandelier in my hospital room. I’m going to arrive in a limousine. In the meantime, I welcome you to my exhibition. I have a black heart-shaped shoulder bag. I open it, find pages inside. I tell you to

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