Volkswagen Blues

Jacques Poulin’s Volkswagen Blues is a road-trip novel in the tradition of Jack Kerouac’s masterpiece, On the Road. Originally published in French in 1984, it chronicles the North American journey of Jack Waterman, a francophone writer from Quebec City, and a young woman of French and Indigenous American ancestry named La Grande Sauterelle. They are both on a quest of self-discovery, but their expedition from Quebec to San Francisco is also an allegory for Quebec’s struggles to define itself culturally and politically. Volkswagen Blues was nominated for the Governor General’s Award for French-language fiction in 1984. Its English-language version, translated by Sheila Fischman, first appeared in 1988.

Plot Summary

At age 40, a French Canadian writer who uses the pen name Jack Waterman has published five novels, but none of them satisfy him. Lacking inspiration to write another book, he sets out from Quebec City in his Volkswagen to find his brother, Théo, whom he hasn’t seen in 15 years. In Gaspé, the northern Quebec town from which Théo sent Jack his last postcard years ago, Jack meets La Grande Sauterelle, a 21-year-old “Métis” (part white and part Indigenous). The girl, along with her black kitten, joins Jack in his search for Théo.

The girl is clear-sighted and self-confident and helps Jack discover that the enigmatic words on Théo’s postcard are those of Jacques Cartier, the 16th-century French explorer of North America. Jack says that, as children, he and Théo worshipped the explorers Cartier and Étienne Brûlé along with other heroes of French-Canadian history. He has always regarded his strong, daring brother with the same reverence as the French explorers.

Jack and the girl head to St. Louis, the city Théo wrote beside his name in the visitor log at the Gaspé museum. During their stop-over in Toronto, La Grande Sauterelle “borrows” a book from the library about Étienne Brûlé, which reveals details about his life that shock and disappoint Jack. In another blow to Jack’s pantheon of heroes, Toronto police records show that Théo was arrested there for possession of an unlicensed firearm.

At La Grande Sauterelle’s request, they stop for the night near the site of Chief Thayendanegea’s grave. She feels torn between her Indigenous and white identities and hopes sleeping beside the famous chief’s grave might help her reconcile these identities. However, doubts about the chief’s character sabotage the girl’s vigil beside the grave. When morning comes, she is still “unreconciled.”

Having crossed into the United States and still on Théo’s trail, Jack and the girl visit art museums in Detroit and Chicago and then go to Starved Rock, where the girl tells Jack the legend of the Indigenous people of Illinois. They reach St. Louis and, from an old newspaper article, learn that Théo was accused of attempting to steal an old map from a nearby museum. This news shatters Jack. La Grande Sauterelle acquires The Oregon Trail Revisited, a book Théo’s police record listed as among his possessions.

Jack, the girl, and the cat—now named Chop Suey—begin their journey along the Oregon Trail, presuming it will lead them to Théo. With the information they read in The Oregon Trail Revisited, Jack and the girl imagine the experiences of the emigrants who, in the 1840s, traveled the trail in wagon trains. Arriving in territories that were once home to the Indigenous peoples of the Great Plains, La Grade Sauterelle denounces the deeds of the 19th-century historical figure Buffalo Bill. At Fort Laramie, she tells Jack about the massacre of Indigenous people at Sand Creek and grimly recounts several others. Sadness overtakes La Grande Sauterelle after they cross the Continental Divide. She explains that because she is neither Indigenous nor white, she feels like nothing. Jack disagrees, saying she is “something new.”

Heeding the advice of an old vagabond, Jack and the girl go to San Francisco. Bookstore owner Lawrence Ferlinghetti helps them find Théo, but Théo does not recognize Jack, as he has “creeping paralysis.” Théo’s doctor advises Jack against seeing his brother again.

Jack flies back to Quebec, where he hopes to write a novel about “human relations.” He leaves the Volkswagen with the girl. She plans to stay in San Francisco a while, seeing in the city’s racial harmony a possibility for becoming reconciled with herself.