Gatineau-based writer Benoit Chartier is a quirky cat. If you look on the back cover of his debut book The Calumnist Malefesto: And Other Improbable Yarns, you will find a short bio in which he claims to be, “training a wild monkey army to carry out his tasks.”
At first I assumed this was a joke. After reading his innovate stories, however, I am no longer sure. After all, this is someone who describes himself as a Canadian madman who writes off-the-wall prose.
But as any lover of literature knows, crazy writing can sometimes be quite good. This is especially true when you add in interesting plot twists, as is the case with the The Calumnist Malefesto, a self-published collection of 12 imaginative stories.
“The first thing that comes to mind is a nugget of an idea, no plot, no twists, and I try to fit a narrative over that core idea,” says Chartier, when asked how he develops his wide-ranging plots. “The stories themselves are a reflection of that idea, and grow organically out of it, plot and twists together.”
The dozen tales in this collection are incredibly varied. There is the story of a man who speaks with Death as he nears the end of his life. Another describes how an alien tries to survive in Bogota, Colombia. A third recounts the adventure of a girl in Afghanistan who finds an extraterrestrial pet with magical powers. While a fourth is narrated with the voice of an abusive husband who beats his wife, only to result in a completely unexpected ending.
Each story in the collection stands on its own as a separate piece. That being said, several of the tales do contain space aliens.
“I am a huge sci-fi fan, and like to explore the theme of ‘the Other’, whether this creature is from another planet, or simply classes of people we, as humans, marginalize,” says Chartier.
Benoit Chartier
“It was my attempt to demonstrate the ‘human’ side of aliens (no offense meant to extraterrestrials reading this, of course), while turning the trope of humanity as being necessarily ‘Good’ in comparison, on its head.”
If you want to read new writers from the National Capital Region, then consider taking a look at Chartier’s work. His stories not only reveal a great imagination, but also someone with a strong sense of humour – e.g. who worries about insulting space aliens in an interview with Apartment613?
Looking forward, the Gatineau-writer is hoping to publish a novel through a regular publishing house, although there is no firm publishing date at this time.
“My works now tend towards the full-length novel,” says Chartier. “This one is about a future Tokyo, where a young man’s brother is kidnapped and he must rise from the slums to the Heights of the vertical city to save him…. The other novel I am working on is set in present-time Ottawa and Japan (I do so love that country), and is about a middle-aged man pursued by a demon which follows him around the world until he meets a mythical creature named a kappa, who will give him the tools to fight it.”
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