Free will, predestination, soul transmigration…

He will turn eleven in April. Referred for remedial coaching because of school problems, of course. Hard to ignore the fact some of those problems are related to an inter-generational family history murky enough to set off nods of recognition from ancient writers of classical Greek tragedy. (Of course, they’re all dead, but assuming they weren’t – Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides for instance – all three would nod…then interpret the tragic events in very different ways.)

At our first meeting, the boy and I do the basic getting-to-know you routine. He chooses his personal color code to describe his overall mood for the day. Answers my standard question about his five pet likes and dislikes. Identifies his main school-related problems. His general attitude toward me: cautious, but willing to give me a chance. At the second meeting, we tackle a school task :memorizing a very long fable by Jean de La Fontaine “Le petit poisson et le pêcheur” (The Little Fish and the Fisherman). By hour’s end, he reels off the first half of it without a hitch.

At our third meeting, we tackle the rest. In mid-sentence, he stops and says: “I like poetry.” He says it the way other boys his age tell me “I like soccer” or “I like video games”. He likes poetry. I tell him there’s a lot of poetry available and we’ll explore some of it even outside the curriculum – along with the grammar and the math part of the compulsory program, of course.

The local bookstore opens on Sunday mornings. I buy a small copy of La Fontaine’s better known fables and set it aside for him. Talk pre-Socratic philosophers with the bookstore owner, and choose a title among the freebies he offers me: Joan Didion…

In French translation?*I prefer reading authors in their own language, when I can, but I figure this may be a way to introduce Didion to French speakers. Let’s see (I open at random, as I do with a first look at  a book. I come across this excerpt from The White Album:)**

Q. Et que s’est -il passé d’autre, s’il s’est passé quelque chose. (…)

R. Il a dit qu’il pensait que je pouvais devenir une star, genre Burt Lancaster, vous voyez, ce genre de truc.

Q. A-t-il mentionné un nom en particulier?

R. Oui monsieur.

Q. Quel nom a-t-il mentionné ?

R. Il a mentionné beaucoup de noms. Il a dit Burt Lancaster. Il a dit Clint Eastwood. Il a dit Fess Parker. Il a mentionné beaucoup de noms. (…)

Q. Avez-vous discuté après avoir mangé ?

R. Pendant, après. Mr Novarro nous a tiré les cartes et il nous a lu les lignes de la main.

Q. Vous a-t-il dit que vous auriez beaucoup de chance, ou beaucoup de malchance, ou que s’est-il passé ?

R. Il ne savait pas très bien lire les lignes de la main.

***

*Joan Didion, L’Amérique chroniques 1965-1990  traduites de l’anglais par  par Pierre Demarty

** (“We tell ourselves stories in order to live“) – Joan Didion The White Album, pocket book edition, Farrar Straus and Giroux 2009