HA!

A Self-Murder Mystery

Gordon Sheppard

• Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
• Year: 2003
• ISBN:
  9780773577664
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Biographies
• Index: Literature

On 15 March 1977, with his wife's consent, celebrated writer and former terrorist Hubert Aquin blew his brains out on the grounds of a Montreal convent school. Shocked by this self-murder, a filmmaker friend feels compelled to understand why Aquin killed himself - and discovers, at the heart of the tragedy, an unforgettable love story. A "documentary fiction" - a category which includes In Cold Blood and The Executioner's Song - HA! is a seminal work that reinvents the audio-visual revolution of the last century. Interweaving photographs, documents, and images with testimony from Aquin's friends and contemporaries, Aquin himself, and the writers and artists who influenced him, this intriguing novel takes the reader on a Joycean tour of a metropolis in the midst of political and cultural turmoil.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Definitions
• Dedication
• The Setting
• Map of South-Western Québec (insets: Canada and Island of Montréal)
• 0
• I
• II
• III
• IV
• Pause/Break #1
• V
• VI
• VII.i
• VII.ii
• VII.iii
• Pause/Break #2
• VIII.x
• IX.i, ii, iii, iv
• Home
• Coda/Wrap Up
• Cast
• Authorized Comments
• Credits