SOURCE: "Translator's Afterword," in The Penniless Redeemer, translated by Ray Ellenwood, Exile Editions, 1984, pp. 339-42.

In the following essay, Ellenwood discusses Ferron's mixture of the mundane and the fantastic in The Penniless Redeemer.

'In the beginning is Le Ciel de Québec, our great and only novel of initiation,' writes Philippe Haeck [in Voix & Images, Vol. VIII, No. 3 (1983)]. And he calls the book 'our Bible.' Why? Maybe because it is so inclusive, the most complete account of his uncertain country by a man who seems to know more about it than anyone. It functions almost as a Book of Numbers, but also as gossip, stories told over the kitchen table, carefully detailed little jokes about priests, politicians, public figures of all kinds. Myth has that side to it as well, telling who did what to whom, taking plenty of time to focus on homely details, even...