Well Tony...

Great e-mail!!!!

Fisrt, Am I a great fan of Mickey Rourke... man what a comeback and he has that Chet Baker ravaged look, looks like he has been on junk for the last 10 years... and the clothes he wears kink of zuit-suit and pimp... if I would be 2- pound slimmer I would kind of dress a bit like that for my shows although I am so used to my urban cowboy style... but I have grown those sideburns gypsy style long and thin... I have to see The Wrestler... I have been raving about it since I saw Rourke on tv talking about it!!! He is in the Brando and Nicholson league... with Depp, Penn, and some others... About FAST AND FURIOUS, you had the chance to see a trailer... I did not! Anyway it was an evening with Virginie... I just drove her to a friend's place... very rich people that I do not know... She has her crowd and is doing great!

You know Tony I was in the street when I was 14, in 1964 or something and in New York, a run away from home, probably one of the first... and the youngest beatnik in Greenwich Village! I made it by myself... with a little bit of help from some friends and mentors... but mostly by myself... If I had been in the States or in France I would be filthy rich! I managed to make the most out of a small place like Quebec... All those cars and bikes and other stuff that I own and that house and stuff in California is great to have, although I do not enjoy them anymore... my life burn out and methadone down and you know I paid my dues and it has taken its toll on me... Luckily I still look ok, do not look 60, do not feel like it, never was in hospital... but my soul is so tired and old... I was told that I am a very old soul at the end of my reincarnation... Maybe... and the concept of «soul» is not even Buddhist... it is Christian... And I despise all that judeo-christianism... but I had Virginie baptized... because I belong to catholism... hate it but I am what I am and was born in that religion... I do not drive my cars nor my bikes anymore... sometimes I go and look at them, smoke a joint and remember all the rides that I did... Today I saw a clip on TV about surfing in California and I almost cried... I was surfing a lot in the past...well up to 6 years ago... but after H and methadone all that lost its appeal... or I lost the urge to do those things... drive and surf... and even travel... I was in France 4-5 months a year and in California 3 months a year... Haven't been to France since 6 -7 years and California 3-4 years... I was there last summer because Virginie made me go... It's like I am in my bubble and I am kind of happy there but the Francoeur that I was still comes and is hunting me... and I have spasm of nostalgia... it hurts so much I want to cry or scream... but the methadone keeps me in line... me the rebel... the Freak of the Underground... kept in line by a substance... well you got to go with your karma and destiny... there must be a reason behind that... If I am there and brought me there... It has a meaning, a «raison d'être» and I have to go along with it... I never fought the impossible... always was wiser and I am still there...

About the Sokka Gakaï it is a great organization... but it is made of people and you know what and or people are... but the teaching and practice is great...Tina Turner and Herby Hancock are members... they have centers all over the world and are despised for that... other Buddhists say that it is a millionaire sect... But they make it possible for anyone to practice without having to be a millionaire like Richard Geere and have the luxury to go to Tibet with the Dalai Lama... or having to renounce everything, family and friend and career and go to a monastery in the mountain... The Sokka makes it possible to practice wherever you are... Anyway it did me good for 10 years when I was practicing every day, morning and night... and loved it... reciting the Sutra of the Lotus in Sanskrit... and the mantra: NAM MYOHO RENGE KYO... They have a website so take a look... It is a very personal choice and I made it but the after 10 years I got sloppy under H and stop the practice... but I still light the candles and make the offerings and burn the incense... and it makes me feel connected to something greater than this reality... But the best practice is the love of our child.... Loving Virginie change my life... I would probably be dead had she not come into my life! So, so far so good... I guess we have the life that we make for ourselves... but I have problem with that when I think of Africans etc... And all the misery in the world... but Buddhism has a better explanation of all the religions... it is not even a religion: but a philosophy... I God exist and he is all powerful he must be mad or vicious to permit or better to have created all that misery and if a Christian says that he gives us liberty as the best gift of all I say well if he is all powerful how come he give to a being of his creation the choice of good or bad when he perfectly knows that that being cannot make that choice because he has created him imperfect and knows that he (us) cannot make the right choices... tank about that I say to Christians «friends» of mine! Buddha has created nothing...
and he is not powerful but he has found some truths and has taught them... nothing more... All the beats were into that... and Nietzsche said it was the most intelligent and rational of all religions! Him being an atheist!

Well o well... Here is a little anecdote... I read every day at the Coffee Shop and write in my notebooks... and I see that as a private moment... and my friends if they are my friends respect that and if they want to come and see me they do it very politely... But do I hate those fucking buggers and beggars that come and do not respect that it means that they do not think that reading (and for that matter books) are worth the respect I think they mean to me... and when they say: «May I borough a bit of your time?» I do not even raise my eyes and if they do not go I raise them and they see fire... or I tell them like I did this morning tell to one of those assholes: You are a liar and he says why and I say you cannot borrow me a bit of time or 5 minutes or whatever because you will never give it back to me so tell the truth at least and ask if you may steal some of my time and maybe I will accept to lose that time on the basis of honesty... man the guy looked at me and he knew who I was and just went numb and said he was sorry and left... And I could not go back to my reading! >But I at least proved a point for the sake of showing some truth to someone who does not respect the privacy of a reader or writer or whatever... But most of the times I do not even register their presence... Christ! Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir were everyday at the Deux-Magots and nobody would dare disturb them... When I read I am in my world and accept only my real friends into it and they know how to come into my privacy... or any good looking chicks... there you go! That's the rock poet talking! Well I think you would do the same Tony! A foxy chick has all rights! Must have or this life isn’t worth shit!

I was reading this morning my second book of Jim Thompson and was kind of into it when that guy came and made me lose my concentration... but I got some good out of it because I realized that I had read 80 pages without getting the meaning of what I was reading so later in the day I reread those pages and saw that I was reading a fucking good book... The first one was good but it was not a thriller and I did not understand why they say it is a thriller... not even a noir novel... so that second book gave me the same impression and I was getting mad and starting to hate him for not being a thriller writer and being identified as one... all his books are in the mystery thriller section... and although it is not a real thriller it has the elements of one and it is very well written sot I will keep on reading him... I read all French literature and all American... I mean the classics and the avant-garde up to the 80's... But 5 years ago I got into the roman noir and cinema noir and jazz a lot... And when I get into a writer, like let's say Ross Macdonald or John D Macdonald I buy all their books... it means a lot of books to buy and then read but I am like that and I have to read them chronologically... So you can imagine all the books of that genre that I have to read... David Goodis, Chandler, Hammett, Connolly, Parker, Pronzini, Crumley, Burke, Reichs, Muller, Highsmith etc etc... And when I am fed up all go back to the classics or regulars and recent writers... but for a while I am into that literature... And I know that Kerouac and Burroughs had read them... And all the French writers since the 1920s... as a matter of fact weren't not for the French writers 80% of the thriller-noir-pulp writers of usa would have been lost... The French intellectuals had a crutch on those American thriller writers... Sartre saw in Chandler and Hammett and Goodis etc the real existentialist’s writers... and Camus wrote l'Étranger (the Stranger) trying to imitate James Cain (the Postman...) and he did not make it but he won the Nobel prize for a flunked thriller that became a master piece of absurd literature!!!! How that for an example of the strange ways life makes things is happen!

Well I will let you go and if you come in Montreal we will have at least a coffee and we will talk about life and writings and whatever...
Talk to you later Tony
Hope it is not too long… and boring… read what you can! Ciao! Lucien

Letter to Tony O'Neill

Ok Tony
back home
read the story

it is a great read! Very well translated: I was scared before reading it because, for us québécois writers, those French translations were and still are, as far as «hip-beat-books» are concerned, badly and poorly and painfully done! The early translations of Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs (especially!) were so depressing... How can I explain Tony: it would be like reading a translation of Céline done by a British writer instead of an American writer... tight in the ass if I may say... A very good friend of mine, Claude Pélieu (married to artist Mary Beach and a French member of the Beat Generation and a smack user till is death) was the first translator of Burroughs and it was aggravating and I told him... But now they (the French) do a better job and your story is perfectly translated... It gets bad usually when they try to match the slang... it would sound better in «Quebecois«... but the market for such translation is to limited: so better a few bugging words in French-slang to reach a wider market. A hip book that would be translated by a Quebecois writer would read better but could not make it in the French market, but a book translated even badly by a French writer will sell in Québec! So your story has the best of both world: very well translated with no ridicule French-slang, and «Notre Dame...» will sell in all the francophone territories!!! There you go! And by the way, thank god (or Buddha) Burroughs is being or has been translated again and it is a good read! What is hard to match in the translation of American avant-garde books, is the slang: french-québécois is closer to the American idiomatic slang than «french argot»! But we do not have the market for such hip books...

Re-reading my precedent email, I noticed a lot of typing mistakes...hope it did not give y our to much trouble Tony! And by the way I thought it was touching to think of you feeding your daughter: brought back souvenirs here... As long as you can kiss the little feet of your daughter, you are safe... When you will have to stop doing it: watch out! be aware... she will be close to adolescence... and then you have to be on your toes (how do we say: «no pun intended»)! They go through their teenage years so early these days... It starts at 12... Surely due to the cell phone, Internet, reality TV etc etc and having a single daughter is very special... in all the meanings of the word! If you want to have an idea of what my little Virginia whose feet I was tenderly kissing turn out to become, type her name on Google or Facebook... Until 13, she was grunge, roots, and then... foxy Virginie, in love with a Latino rapper and delinquent! Ti stay close to Virginie, I got myself involve with her Urbano, got him in the studio recording is raps on music played by my musicians and took him on the road with me were he came on the stage at the end and did after letting him do his thing with one song we would do a rap number together and I got him some airplay on the radio! After 4 years of that relation, Virginie dumped him and came back to be our little baby at 18! And listen to this: We have 10,000 books in the house but she doesn't read (except when I find her a disturbing life bio about teenagers in distress or a young woman in hell bound skid...) Tony, You are having the best years now with you daughter... hold on to it! Think of it, how old is she ?... under 6? 5?

Like I said, and surely repeating myself: can't wait to receive the «parcel» you are sending me, and can't wait to read you upcoming novel... When you say that you find it hard to get the critic attention or something like that... Shit there are so many books being released every week (not to mention all the cds now that we can record on a laptop!)... How can one draw attention... but I think that your are doing well: man I found your book at Urban Outfitter, a hip-cool clothing store downtown Montreal! You are thus far you are one of the hot avant-garde elected selected few! They had on the shelf both colors cover... I choose the yellow one although red coca-cola is my color! But the yellow cover was the first one that caught my eyes!

In you email you mention 2-3 writers that I am going to look into! I read all Bukowski... Wow! I just re-read all Kerouac... You know, Tony, talking of not being noticed as much as we wishes, well I find it discussing to not find Kerouac in some major scalar anthology! Jesus-Christ the man changed totally the contemporary literature! And some of those university assholes do not find him worth being in their anthology... I my dreams I spit HIV saliva in their ignorant eyes! Kerouac man! Burroughs, Ginsberg, Corso were found of him to the point of saying that he was the mastermind of all the beat and modern literature! So we have ourselves a long way to go... Myself, I got it made in Québec being studied in all school levels... but although I have published in France, and made my mark in the avant-garde, I have still a lot of work to do... and time is running out... I am healthy but I am sixty... ( those Beatles lyrics come to mind...)

You are so right (right?) when you say that the intelligentsia only take notice of «reality books)... but they fade away fast... and the type of writing that you do will stay! All you need is keep at it... Man look at Patricia Highsmith, she was not recognised in her own country until after 40 years of publishing best sellers... Then if you would get a bestseller you would be comfortable money wise but under so much press ion by the business to come up with a follow up that would sell as much or more!

Sorry for again writing so much... But I know one thing for sure Tony: do it while you feel it! Because nothing last! My appreciation of you work and feeling toward you personally as much as professionally will last... but the «heart pouring writing» will not last... We will go on with life individually... but we will have at least something to show in demonstration of what we are and feel for each other work and life trajectory... I took a chance sending you an email and here we are sharing like old friends...

I now have to go drive my daughter downtown Mtl, - I bought her a Jeep Liberty but daddy has to still drive her... I prefer that because it is Saturday and Saturday night tends to be a big night... Better not being stuck with a vehicle parked somewhere and the temptation to drive it high... Last year Virginie had a very bad accident: she wrecked bumper to bumper the Mustang GT that I had given her for her 18 birthdays: when I saw the car, I started shaking... I could she come out of it without a scratch... plus the fact that she was under the ... And the cups knew me and let her go without a test... When I saw the movie «Taken» 2 week ago, it shooked me to my soul... Go see it Tony but do not bring your wife: she will lock you d daughter in her room and will not let her out of her sight! But what a great movie!

Take care Tony
give my best to your wife and daughter

(I mentioned reading your book on Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, Blogger, etc... might not mean much but I felt like doing it...)

les gitans reviennent toujours
sur les lieux de leurs amours

Francoeur xx
(I should re-read myself for mistakes, grammage... but to lazy!