Salut Galarneau!

Salut Galarneau!

Salut Galarneau! (1967), by Jacques GODBOUT, is cast in the first person as the diary of François Galarneau, a working-class rebel who owns and operates a hot-dog stand in the Montréal suburb of Île-Perrot. Interweaving the story of his "failed" personal life, narrated piecemeal and randomly, and his "naïve" observations about his society, conveyed by the author with satiric insight and poetic power, Galarneau's diary is begun as a pastime suggested by his mistress but soon acquires the resilient humour of an existential act.

Jilted and feeling increasingly alienated from his surroundings, the hot-dog king conceals himself behind a brick wall of his own fabrication, but finally cannot resist keeping a ladder, if only to renew his supply of notebooks. A warm and witty allegory of Québec and of the artist's role in Québec society, Salut Galarneau! won the Governor General's Award and was translated by Alan Brown as Hail Galarneau! (1970).