[Parlez-vous français, seulement? C'est possible de lire beaucoup de ce livre et de comprendre plus que les anglophones qui ne parlent pas français...]
Mario is a lifelong New Yorker who begins spending more time at his second home in Stafford Quebec, where unusual synchronistic experiences soon alter his consciousness and his life. He learns about the Abenaki legends surrounding Mont Stafford. He comes to understand why a huge chunk of quartz is displayed in front of the town hall in Stafford, and the real reason why Staffordians drink the water that flows 24 hours a day from the open faucet behind the super market. And Mario, the American from New York, soon becomes Mario-Jacques, an Amériquébécois Staffordian.
Synchronicity Bleue presents excerpts from the diary of Mario-Jacques, which reveals how a series of meaningful coincidences lead Mario-Jacques to discover that what is happening in Stafford, a small town hidden in the Eastern Townships of Quebec, will determine the fate of humanity.
This is a novel that might have been written by a son of Jack Kerouac, if Jack Kerouac had a son who was born in Brooklyn, raised on Long Island, and then went on the road to Quebec. In this odyssey there is much dharma bum spirituality and quiet revolutionary politics that are explored - mainly in la belle province of Quebec, but also in the streets of New York City and suburban Long Island.
Mario-Jacques meditates and takes zen walks on Mount Stafford. He marches with le Carré Rouge in Montreal and he occupies Wall Street and Times Square. He eats breakfast pizza in Vermont and drinks café au lait at Starbucks on Long Island. But it's all not so much about the adventures and everyday life of Mario-Jacques, it's about the coming age.
Like Quebec, where English-speaking people and French-speaking people live together in a virtual nation within a nation, this is a book where two languages, English and French, live together within the story. Read this book and find out what it's like in the Eastern Townships of Quebec, where people mix their usage of English and French as carefully and as unconsciously as they mix their café et crème. Read this book and find out what it's like where homo sapiens are evolving into a new breed.
[Encore, il convient de souligner C'est possible de lire beaucoup de ce livre et de comprendre plus que les anglophones qui ne parlent pas français.]
About the Author: John-Jean (a.k.a John-Jean Ofrias, or John Ofrias, or Jean Ofrias) writes in English and French, on both sides of the Canadian/American border. He is a unique writer, as his work has appeared in Newsday, the Montreal Gazette, Reason, Le Vigil and Indépendantes.quebec. In Quebec, militants know: John-Jean est un membre actif du mouvement de l'indépendance du Québec.
He is also an Adjunct Professor of Social Science for the State Univerisity of New York at Suffolk County Community College. He has taught ground breaking courses in international studies, with students from the U.S.A in Quebec. John-Jean is probably most well-known (at least in certain parts of Quebec) for coining the phrase, Parlez Bleu, (in praise of Quebec and the French language) and for writing the highly-controversial article published June 22, 2014 in the Montreal Gazette titled: Speak French, or resign to becoming American.
John-Jean does public speaking concerning his writings and social and political issues, in the United States and Canada. A collection of articles written by John-Jean in English and French (with translations from one language to the other) is expected to be published early in 2016.
