Ha!: A Self-Murder Mystery

Joseph Jones is a reference librarian in the Koerner Library at the
University of British Columbia.

This massive and unusual work embodies a 26-year undertaking by Gordon
Sheppard. Investigations and reflections move outward from the March
1977 suicide of Quebec writer Hubert Aquin to encompass his life and
works, the nature of Quebec society, Montreal as a city, the separatist
movement, and literary and clinical suicide. Many significant portions
date to the late 1970s. In part Ha! provides English translation of
material previously published in Signé Hubert Aquin (1985).

Filmmaker Sheppard first met Aquin in April 1976 at the release of his
only feature, Eliza’s Horoscope. The 50-some pages of Chapter 20 (the
physical centre of the book) relate the circumstances of their
acquaintance. The form of a script overlays that chapter and recalls a
never-realized collaboration (which would have featured Aquin as writer
and Sheppard as director) entitled Sacrilиge.

Although library records classify Ha! as a biography of Aquin, the
genre label “fiction” appears on the dust jacket. Interviews and
correspondence with known persons occupy much of the volume. The
fictional aspect seems to reside in the form of “self-murder
mystery” and in the blurry boundary between Aquin’s life and art.
(This theme gets addressed briefly in the Chapter 6 interview with Jean
Ethier-Blais.) It seems difficult to rely on the content of this volume
without external verification. Aquin’s widow, Andrée Yanacopoulo,
looms large in the interview material, yet the verso of the title page
states her dissociation following initial collaboration. No elaboration
is provided elsewhere.

Appended authorial comment by Sheppard mentions the impact of media on
Western society as a reason for the work’s “graphically varied
montage.” Extensive illustration, descriptive soundscapes, variation
in layout and typography, intercalated quotations, shifts in register,
and multiplicity of genre add interest to the pages and sometimes
overwhelm them. Standing out among the illustrations are photographs of
the principals: Aquin, Yanacopoulo, and Sheppard.

A strong narrative thread winds through the pervasive interview
material to uncover Aquin’s nature, history, circumstances, and
relationships. By comparison, other materials seem like self-indulgent
accretion (e.g., “O Canada” intercut with meditation on Aboriginal
peoples, collections of analogues for literary suicide, esoteric
speculation). Closing credits mention that an individual’s
“financial generosity” made publication possible.

This verbal shrine pays striking homage to an author whose
self-destructive intermingling of life and art compares with that of
figures like Jack London and Malcolm Lowry.