Available Light

Marguerite Andersen is a professor of French Studies at the University
of Guelph. She is the author of Courts métrages et instantanés and La
Soupe.

Herménégilde Chiasson is not only Acadia’s best-known poet, but also
a painter, filmmaker, playwright, and essayist. This book of cultural
theory comprises 34 short essays on art and life, writers and their
books, painters such as Picasso and Giotto, photographers such as Diane
Arbus, and the whiteness of snow, among other topics.

It is telling that Available Life was first published in French under
the title Brunante, meaning “dusk” or “twilight” in Acadian
French. Indeed, Chiasson’s meditations on creativity raise more
questions than they answer. They strike a note of melancholy leavened
with humor, and they reveal the astonishing breadth of Chiasson’s
cultural experiences—from Renaissance masterpieces and philosophy, to
modern music, to the cinema of Wim Wenders. Both the author and the
translator of this fine, lucidly written book are Governor General’s
Award winners.