“I think Étienne Brûlé was a bum”: The Deconstruction of National Myth in Jacques Poulin’s Volkswagen Blues

Border crossings play a significant role in North American road narratives as travellers cross from Canada to the United States to Mexico in search of adventure and meaning while also considering their identity in relation to their nation. Jacques Poulin’s 1984 novel, Volkswagen Blues , is a road narrative that examines the hybridity of identities, both personal and national. The protagonist, Jack Waterman, struggles with his identity as a writer, while his travelling companion, Pitsémine, seeks to reckon with her mixed Innu–settler heritage. The novel uses Jack and Pitsémine’s journey from Gaspé to San Francisco to unsettle myths of North American nation building. While the travellers cross the border into the United States, the direction of movement in Poulin’s novel does not necessarily render it less Canadian or Québécois but rather speaks to the permeability of the border in many North American road narratives and lends itself to a transnationalist reading of the novel.