Deep-rooted bond: Friendship with a significant influence
André Major, born in 1938 in Quebec, Canada, is a writer of high calibre who has chosen retreat to be more attentive to the world and to himself. Major's writing style is direct, clear, elegant but not ostentatious, and concerned with clarity.
Major's notebooks, a kind of diary composed of reading comments, philosophical musings, and private notes, offer "a naked and wandering word" to the reader, according to him. These notebooks have been published since 2001, with "Between Dog and Wolf", a book published in 2025, covering the period from 2008 to 2014.
The notebooks depict a melancholic writer, retired from the novel and paid cultural work, who reads a lot, mainly from demanding old authors. Major reads a lot from 19th-century Russians, especially Tolstoy, Tourguenev, and Chekhov, and German authors like Mann, Bernhard, Sebald, and Kafka, with Kafka being particularly influential for him.
Major is allergic to metaphorical dazzle in his writing. He finds a model of writing in Kafka that is free from contortions and stylistic flourishes. Kafka's courage to confront existence with implacable lucidity is admired by Major.
Major's notebooks contain expressions of opinions against an overly aggressive identity nationalism, a spoken language burdened by tedious redundancies, Putin's Russia, and those who crush the beauty and fragility of the world. However, Major doesn't settle scores and is sparing with political opinions or moral judgments in his notebooks.
The text reflects the values and position of its author and not necessarily those of Le Devoir, the publication where it appears as part of the Opinion section of its cultural magazine, promoting a plurality of voices and ideas.
Major finds reconciliation in the invigorating presence of his grandchildren, nature walks, manual work, and reading. Pierre Foglia praised Major's prose as "economical and precise" in 2012. Major's wanderings may not make noise, but they are invaluable.
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