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Sous la grêle osée
4 mars 2014

The Good Lord Bird (James McBride)

Bird

Le titre est le surnom (apparemment pas tout à fait exact) du pic à bec ivoire, un oiseau dont l'espèce est éteinte aux Etats-Unis. 

De James McBride, je n'avais lu que The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother où il raconte l'histoire de sa mère et que j'avais beaucoup aimé. The Good Lord Bird est une fiction qui traite de la vie d'Henry Shackelford, un enfant esclave à la peau très claire, libéré contre son gré par John Brown. Il passe plusieurs années de sa vie auprès de lui, déguisé en fille (notre héros est un peu lâche et évite ainsi d'avoir à se battre), jusqu'à l'attaque de Harpers Ferry. James McBride mêle faits historiques et fiction, ce qui rend son roman encore plus prenant. Il présente John Brown comme un homme attachant, parfois ridicule et complètement illuminé. Il est obsédé par l'abolition de l'esclavage, cette institution infâme, et est persuadé que Dieu lui indiquera le moyen d'y arriver.

John Brown... J'ai entendu ce nom pour la première fois dans la chanson John Brown's Body. Je me souviens qu'on chantait une chanson semblable à l'église. Quand j'ai vu les paroles de la « version américaine », je n'ai pas compris comment cela pouvait être un chant d'église aux Etats-Unis. En fait, c'est juste que la musique a été reprise plusieurs fois avec des paroles différentes. Wikipedia nous en dit plus ici. Et lorsque je suivais un cours d'histoire américaine lorsque j'étais assistante dans un lycée américain de l'Arkansas, j'en ai appris plus sur ce fameux John Brown et sur l'attaque de l'arsenal de Harpers Ferry. Cet événement est une des causes de la Guerre de Sécession. (John Brown apparaît, sous les traits de Johnny Cash, dans un épisode de Nord et Sud.)

The Good Lord Bird est un roman magnifique ! Oui, vraiment magnifique. Même s'il traite d'un sujet très difficile, James McBride décrit les événements d'un point de vue original, celui d'Henry qui les subit plutôt qu'il ne les vit. Ce qui donne lieu à des situations loufoques ou tragiques. L'écriture de James McBride est superbe même s'il faut un peu s'habituer au langage utilisé. (La fonction dictionnaire du Kindle ne m'a pas servi à grand chose pour certains mots. Bon courage au traducteur éventuel.) Malgré quelques longueurs (les descriptions de batailles par exemple), ce roman est captivant et difficile à lâcher. Pas étonnant qu'il ait remporté le National Book Award for Fiction l'an dernier.

Extraits : 

This the Old Man took to be some kind of volunteering, for Pa had said "Lawd" and he'd said "Lord," which I reckon was agreement enough. He clapped Pa on the back, pleased as punch.

"Friend," he said, "you has made a wise choice. You and your tragic octoroon daughter here is blessed for accepting our blessed Redeemer's purpose for you to live free and clear, and thus not spend the rest of your lives in this den of iniquity here with these sinning savages. You is now free. Walk out the back door while I hold my rifle on these heathens, and I will lead you to freedom in the name of the King of Zion!"

Now, I don't know about Pa, but between all that mumbling about kings and heathens and Zions and so forth, and with him waving that Sharps rifle around, I somehow got stuck at the "daughter" section of that speech. True, I wore a potato sack like most colored boys did in them days, and my light skin and curly hair to boot made me the fun of several boys about town, though I evened things out with my fists against those that I could. But everybody in Dutch's, even the Indians, knowed I was a boy.

 

I didn't make head nor tails of what he was saying, for I was to learn that Old John Brown could work the Lord into just about any aspect of his comings and goings in life, including using the privy. That's one reason I weren't a believer, having been raised by my Pa, who was a believer and a lunatic, and them things seemed to run together. But it weren't my place to argue with a white man, especially one who was my kidnapper, so I kept my lips closed.

 

No sooner had we roasted those pheasants than the rest of the Old Man's men straggled in. Old John Brown's fearsome army which I heard so much about weren't nothing but a ragtag assortment of fifteen of the scrawniest, bummiest, saddest-looking individuals you ever saw. They were young, and to a man skinny as horsehair in a glass of milk. There was a Jew foreigner, an Indian, and a few other assorted no-gooders. They were downright ugly, poor men. They'd been on a raid of some sort, for they clattered into camp on a wagon that clanged like a dry-goods store, with pots, cups, saucers, furniture, card tables, spindles, leather strips, bits of this and that hanging off the sides.

 

I know this was a whorehouse, but it weren't bad at all. Fact is, I never knowed a Negro from that day to this but who couldn't lie to themselves about their own evil while pointing out the white man's wrong, and I weren't no exception. Miss Abby was a slaveholder true enough, but she was a good slaveholder. She was a lot like Dutch. She runned a lot of businesses, which meant the businesses mostly runned her. Whoring was almost a sideline for her. She also runned a sawmill, a hog pen, a slave pen, kept a gambling house, had a tin-making machine, plus she was in competition with the tavern across the street that didn't have a colored slave like Pie to bring in money, for Pie was her main attraction. I was right at home in her place, living 'round gamblers and pickpockets who drank rotgut and pounded each other's brains out over card games. I was back in bondage, true, but slavery ain't too troublesome when you're in the doing of it and growed used to it. Your meals is free. Your roof is paid for. Somebody else got to bother themselves about you. It was easier than being on the trail, running from posses and sharing a roasted squirrel with five others while the Old Man was hollering over the whole roasted business to the Lord for an hour before you could even get to the vittles, and even then there weren't enough meat on it to knock the edges off the hunger you was feeling. I was living well and clean forgot about Bob. Just plain forgot about him.

But you could see the slave pen from Pie's window. They had couple of huts back there, a canvas cover that stretched over part of it that was fenced all 'round, and once in a while, between my scamperings 'round working, I'd stop, scratch out a clean spot on the glass, and take a peek. If it weren't raining, you could see the colored congregated and bunched up out in the yard near a little garden they put together. Otherwise, if it was raining or cold, they stayed under the canvas. From time to time I'd take a look out the window to see if I could spot old Bob. Never could, and after a few weeks I got to wondering about him. I spoke to Pie about it one afternoon while she sat on her bed combing her hair.

 

True to his word, we was met up at the Boston train station by two of the finest, richest-looking white fellers I ever seen. They treated him like a king, fed us well, and drug him along to a couple of churches for some speechifying. He pretended he weren't for it at first, but they insisted it was already arranged-and he went along as though it come as a surprise. At the churches he gived boring speeches to crowds of white folks who wanted to hear all about his adventures fighting out west. I never been one for speeching and carrying on, unless course there's joy juice or paying money involved, but I must say that while the Old Man was hated out on the plains, he was a star back east. They couldn't get enough of his stories about the rebels. You would'a thunk that every Pro Slaver, including Dutch, Miss Abby, Chase, and all them other low drummers, scammers, four-flushers, and pickpockets, who mostly lived off pennies and generally didn't treat the Negro any worse than they treated each other, was a bunch of cranks, heathens, and drunks who runned around murdering one another while the Free Staters spent all day setting in church at choir practice and making paper cutout dolls on Wednesday nights. Three minutes into his talk, the Old Man had them high-siddity white folks hollering bloody murder against the rebels, nigh shouting against slavery. He weren't much of a speaker, to be honest, but for once he got the wind in his sails about our Dear Maker Who Restoreth Our Fortunes, he got 'em going, and the word spread fast, so by the time we hit the next church, all he had to say was, "I'm John Brown from Kansas, and I's fighting slavery," and they roared. They called for them rebels' heads, announced they'd trounce 'em, bounce 'em, kill 'em, deaden 'em where they stood. Some of the women broke into tears once the Old Man spoke. It made me a bit sad, truth be to tell it, to watch them hundreds of white folks crying for the Negro, for there weren't hardly ever any Negroes present at most of them gatherings, and them that was there was doodied up and quiet as a mouse. It seemed to me the whole business of the Negro's life out there weren't no different than it was out west, to my mind. It was like a big, long lynching. Everybody got to make a speech about the Negro but the Negro.

 

He knowed what he wanted to do. But as to the exactness of it-and I knowed many has studied it and declared this and that and the other on the subject-Old John Brown didn't know exactly what he was gonna do from sunup to sundown on the slavery question. He knowed what heweren't gonna do. He weren't going to go down quiet. He weren't going to have a sit-down committee meeting with the Pro Slavers and nag and commingle and jingle with 'em over punch and lemonade and go bobbing for apples with 'em. He was going down raising hell. But what kind of hell, he was waiting on the Lord to tell him what that is, is my reckonings, and the Lord weren't tellin', at least that first part of the year in Tabor. So we set 'bout Tabor in a rented cabin, the men training with swords and fussin' over spiritual matters and fetching his mail and grousing amongst themselves, waiting for him to bark out what was next. 

 

http://www.us.penguingroup.com/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9781594632785,00.html?The_Good_Lord_Bird_James_McBride

Henry Shackleford is a young slave living in the Kansas Territory in 1857, when the region is a battleground between anti- and pro-slavery forces. When John Brown, the legendary abolitionist, arrives in the area, an argument between Brown and Henry’s master quickly turns violent. Henry is forced to leave town—with Brown, who believes he’s a girl.

Over the ensuing months, Henry—whom Brown nicknames Little Onion—conceals his true identity as he struggles to stay alive. Eventually Little Onion finds himself with Brown at the historic raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859—one of the great catalysts for the Civil War.

An absorbing mixture of history and imagination, and told with McBride’s meticulous eye for detail and character, The Good Lord Bird is both a rousing adventure and a moving exploration of identity and survival.

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S
je n'ai pas le choix, je dois attendre la traduction française....mais souvent mes amies prof d'anglais en France sont extrêmement critiques sur ces traductions, je ne sais donc pas si on peut aimer autant qu'en VO. Rien que le titre de celui-là risquerait de perdre en contenu si on le traduisait non ?
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I
En dépit des écueils de vocabulaire (et donc de compréhension) qui ne manqueront pas de m'attendre, je note ces références très précieusement. A moins que je patiente un chouia la traduction française (qui risque fort de se faire attendre). Ce roman ne peut que m'emballer...
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