The Revolution Script

The Revolution Script is a fictionalised account by Northern Irish-Canadian novelist Brian Moore of key events in Quebec's October Crisis – the kidnapping by the Quebec Liberation Front of James Cross,[1] the Senior British Trade Commissioner in Montreal, on October 5, 1970[2] and the murder, a few days later, of Pierre Laporte, Minister of Labour in the Quebec provincial government. It was published in Canada and the United States at the end of 1971. The British newspaper The Sunday Times reproduced excerpts from the book[3] and it was published in the United Kingdom in January 1972.

First edition
AuthorBrian Moore
CountryCanada
LanguageEnglish
SubjectQuebec's October Crisis in 1970
GenreDocumentary novel
PublisherNew York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston; Toronto: McClelland and Stewart; London: Jonathan Cape
Publication date
1971 (Canada and USA); 1972 (UK)
Pages261
ISBN0030867436
Preceded byFergus (1970) 
Followed byCatholics (1972) 

Reception and criticism

According to Sandra Martin of Toronto's The Globe and Mail, The Revolution Script can be seen as a "Truman Capote-style novel".[4] Ian McGillis, for the Montreal Gazette, described it as "a kind of docu-novel that places the reader in the middle of the October Crisis with an immediacy that makes it feel like this morning’s news".[5]

Kirkus Reviews felt that Moore's attempt to "make the characters less than 'faceless'" fell short but praised his portrayal of the "foolhardy, insurgent enterprise"'s "catalytic tension and instantaneity".[6]

George Woodcock said: "When he is describing settings... he writes vividly and evocatively. When he reconstructs action, he is almost invariably convincing. The coating of verisimilitude, however, begins to wear thin when he tries to create dialogue between the terrorists. The Revolution Script reads then as if it were written, not by Brian Moore the novelist, but by some rather clumsy imitator of Roch Carrier, and the terrorists shape themselves in our minds as incredibly ignorant, naïf and pathetic, which I am sure is not Moore's intention".[7]

Jeanne Flood said that it was "the most flawed and disturbing of all Moore's books" and described its "explicit concern with media" as "nothing less than obsessive". She criticised as "unethical" Moore's "projection of the deeply personal onto public events involving real persons" and argued that the subject matter of the book "demands the scrupulous impersonality of the journalist, not the private emotional energies of the novelist".[8]

However, Moore's biographer, Patricia Craig, described it as "a compact thriller, a perfectly creditable and engrossing reconstruction of a striking sequence of events".[9]

Donald Cameron, reviewing the book in Canadian news magazine Maclean's, said that Brian Moore makes us relive the details of the October crisis "[i]n what must surely be the most brilliant reportage Canada has ever seen... Sometimes the quasi-novel form restricts Moore’s ability to discuss the wider implications of the kidnappings. Yet The Revolution Script is a tour de force, a translation of cops-and-robbers headlines into the political interplay of believable people."[10]

Writing in The Globe and Mail in 2005, more than thirty years after The Revolution Script's publication, Canadian writer Michel Basilières, best known for his 2003 debut novel Black Bird, said: "No book presents the kidnappers, their thoughts and feelings, the milieu, the background, as well as Brian Moore's The Revolution Script (McClelland & Stewart, 1971). This meticulously researched non-fiction novel is the best book ever written in English about October, 1970. Everything is here: the players, the issues, the time and place, the tension endured by an entire city. Moore used his novelist's gifts and his keen eye for tragedy to make sense of something that seemed, to everyone who lived through it, an impossible nightmare."[11]

Legacy

An untitled film script, based on his novel and dated July 1972, is held in Moore's archives at The Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, at the University of Texas at Austin.[12]

See also

References
  1. Lynch, Gerald (16 December 2013). "Moore, Brian". The Canadian Encyclopaedia. Retrieved 17 May 2021.
  2. "The October Crisis". HISTOR!CA. Historica Foundation of Canada. Retrieved 30 June 2015.
  3. Craig, Patricia (2002). Brian Moore: A Biography. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. pp. 209, 288. ISBN 0747 56004 8.
  4. Martin, Sandra (20 March 2009). "Separatist sagas". The Globe and Mail. Toronto. Retrieved 19 April 2015.
  5. McGillis, Ian (23 March 2012). "CBC Radio One's Ten Essential Books: where Lucy Maud Montgomery meets the Rhinoceros Party". Montreal Gazette. Retrieved 28 August 2012.
  6. "The Revolution Script by Brian Moore". Kirkus Reviews. 15 November 1971. Retrieved 22 February 2015.
  7. Woodcock, George (Winter 1972). "Canada's October Days". Canadian Literature: 74.
  8. Flood, Jeanne (1974). Brian Moore. Lewisburg, Pennsylvania: Bucknell University Press. pp. 89–92. ISBN 978-0-8387-7972-9.
  9. Craig, Patricia (2002). Brian Moore: A Biography. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. pp. 213. ISBN 0747 56004 8.
  10. Cameron, Donald (1 October 1971). "Last year in the Peaceable Kingdsom". Maclean's. Retrieved 27 November 2020.
  11. Basilières, Michel (15 October 2005). "At war with ourselves". Globe and Mail. Toronto. Retrieved 27 November 2020.
  12. "Box 20". Brian Moore: A Preliminary Inventory of His Papers. Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin. Retrieved 22 February 2015.
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