The Heart Is an Involuntary Muscle

Marguerite Andersen is a professor of French studies at the University
of Guelph.

If I was to make a drawing to summarize Monique Proulx’s The Heart Is
an Involuntary Muscle, I might simply reproduce the computerized drawing
of an electrocardiogram, using the peaks to indicate remarkable events
or stylistic prowess. But, in fact, the entire novel is a collection of
peaks, a masterpiece of linguistic virtuosity. Two master translators,
David Homel and Fred A. Reed, collaborated in a translation that does
justice to the original work.

There is no chronological tale of logical events. The novel is like a
tapestry in which threads of many colours create complex images that
engrave themselves in the reader’s memory. Three quotations from works
by Réjean Ducharme form the epigraph leading into this magical mystery
in which Florence, a web designer and future writer, tries to understand
her father’s death while at the same time pursuing a writer who, like
the legendary Réjean Ducharme, maintains his privacy by avoiding public
appearances.

The novel reflects on the relationship between children and parents, on
death, and on writing. Delicately, the writer speaks of “the monstrous
event” of September 11 in a chapter titled “The Fall of the
Skyscrapers” “All worlds are destined to collapse. It is just a
matter of time” is her desperate conclusion.

According to the narrator, many books are simply too long: “In a
three hundred page book, there are always 250 pages too many,” filled
with “indolent development, small talk and redundancy.” But then
there are books where “the plot is no more than a brass plate upon
which to serve the main course, and the main course is wild emotion
carried along by the words themselves.” These are the books worth
reading, and The Heart Is an Involuntary Muscle is one of them.

With the help of the “invisible” writer that Florence pursues, she
realizes that a writer must possess curiosity, must forget about her- or
himself, must observe without judging or too much emotion, and must be
able to feel “suspended above empty space,” experiencing “a
terrifying rush of vertigo.” Proulx show her readers how this can be
done.