Thanks for publishing my letter about the fractured French in your reprint of Catherine Owen’s “Trouvé mort” or “Un Patient est Trouvé Mort: Haikus from the French” (Geist 64). I appreciate seeing the author’s response alongside your own in Geist 65. I give Owen full points for chutzpah. Of special interest is her assertion that the errors in the poem’s French-language citations are entirely attributable to Le Journal de Montréal, which she says is quoted verbatim. So far Le Journal de Montréal has been unable to find such a story in its archives, even when provided with the name of Frank Bonneville [the subject of Owen’s work] and a publication date of March 2, 2003. I referred the question to the newspaper itself for several reasons. It’s hard to believe that Canada’s leading French-language daily would allow nine typos and four glaring errors of expression within fifty-odd words. Some of the quotes can be more easily comprehended when regarded as inept translations from the English than idioms used by a native French speaker. Finally, I’m more impressed by facts than pique. Owen’s advice is to “save your ire for the crass journalists who were too busy capitalizing on a man’s suicide to spell-check!” This from a writer who, it appears, would fabricate an article, use it as the basis for a trendy bilingual re-mix, and exploit an anglo indifference to correct French-language expression to put it over. How high can you stoop?
—S. E. Stewart, Saskatoon
Catherine Owen replies: I am sorry that your illustrious Journal couldn’t locate a copy or even a trace of their typo-riddled reportage (yet another journalistic cover-up?), but it indeed exists. I clipped it out myself when I was in Montreal for FB’s funeral—it’s on page 16 of the issue dated March 2, 2003, under Nouvelles, reported by Dany Bouchard and surrounding a photo of FB’s corpse, beneath a sheet, in the hospital parking lot. I have a copy in my scrapbook. On thoroughly examining this text from Le Journal and comparing it with the piece from Cusp, I see that the publishers, who are not Francophones, did introduce a few errors into the text. These are: no circumflex on the word l’hôpital, “a” instead of “ait,” and “d’un homme” for “de l’homme.” Apart from these typos, easy ones to miss for non-French speakers, the errors you point out stand as written in Le Journal. Apparently, according to your error count, my Anglophone editors made fewer boo-boos than your French journalist. And there was nothing trendy or fabricated about my muse’s suicide, thank you very much.
[These corrections have been made to the online publication.—Ed.]
