“The mass of filth has this in its favor, that it is not a liar,” wrote Victor Hugo in Les Misérables. A garbageman, then, lives closest to truth. Simon Paré-Poupart digs deep into the stinking, honest pile of his day-to-day work as a garbageman in Quebec, drawing on Hugo and Descartes and Georges Bataille to illuminate the outlaw character and righteous cultural criticism of a job he clearly relishes. By the way, if your garbageman dents your trash can and throws it haphazardly into your yard, he is trying to tell you something.
This is a bit of a phenomenon: when kids see a garbageman, they fall in love. He’s their idol. They’re so impressed by the truck that they worship the man who seems to have tamed it, unafraid of its growling engine and its iron maw. Children are entranced by garbagemen in the same way they have always admired legendary lumberjacks like Paul Bunyan, strongmen like Hercules and Louis Cyr, and the fearless log drivers who once plied the rivers of Quebec. Kids can’t get enough of us. They’re the only ones who can see beyond the dirt and the smell. But when this little boy grows up, he’ll cease to dream of garbagemen. He’ll understand that we belong to the realm of filth, a place better left unexplored.
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