“Basically, the issue, in my opinion, has always been the same. It was about going to the end, to the end of everything, all the time. Sometimes this process took on the face of madness, of intransigence, but sometimes also that of commitment,” writes Raph, narrator of Fretless.

Abundant, maximalist, verbose; the first novel by poet and publisher Stéphane Despatie is driven by similar die-hard ambitions, those of bringing together under the same cover all the musical, literary and philosophical works dear to the writer and fervent music lover.

But, as Stéphane Despatie rightly writes, “accepting our contradictions and experimenting with them was more interesting and constructive than a stupid intellectual posture prohibiting us from crossing certain limits, only there to reinforce a lack of confidence.”

Cut in furiously digressive prose, which recreates the flow of thoughts of its main character, this rock adventure novel, which we guess is partly autobiographical, tells the story of the bassist of the fictional group Rouge Malsain. The latter tries to age without betraying himself and to remain punk, without becoming the service punk of the cultural institutions with which he interacts.

Between a filthy bar on rue Saint-Hubert and the Tuileries gardens in Paris, and between two babysitting sessions with a crooked guitarist friend nicknamed Ross the Gloss, the troubles he gets into will become so many pretexts to rehash the emotions inspired in him by a singer dressed in a romper or the epiphany experienced thanks to a painting by Jean McEwen.

Praise of the dazzling beauties of chance and the right song played at the right time, reflection on the sacrifices to accept on the altar of success, compendium of furiously eclectic references, Fretless is a novel more prog than punk, whose excess draws as much the strengths and limitations.

“And there’s nothing more like a Fender than another Fender,” his narrator explains after stealing a cream-lacquered Fender Precision bass from a smashed store window, when he wanted to put the grappling hook on a Fender Stratocaster ash guitar. There is nothing, on the other hand, in current Quebec literature that really resembles this story of the singular life of an unusual bass player.