Le Globe & Mail d'aujourd'hui nous apprend que la sortie du nouveau livre du chef du PLC, Michael Ignatieff, est maintenant prévue pour le 21 avril prochain.

Son titre? «True Patriot Love. Four Generations In Search Of Canada» (éditeur: Penguin Group).
Son contenu? M. Ignatieff y raconte l'histoire de quatre générations de sa très auguste famille, avec des aristocrates et diplomates russes du côté de son père et certains grands bourgeois et philosophes du côté de sa mère (dont le très respecté feu George Grant, auteur, à mon avis, d'un des meilleurs essais sur la politique canadienne, et devenu depuis un grand classique en science politique (Lament for a nation).
Son fil directeur: faire la démonstration de l'«engagement» de cette famille, et donc de Iggy lui-même, «envers l'idée du Canada et de son avenir».
La date de lancement tombe tout de même drôlement bien - le congrès du PLC devant avoir lieu du 30 avril au 2 mai...
Bref, on dirait bien que Michael Ignatieff, à l'instar de Barack Obama, a compris l'art prisé en marketing du storytelling ([Voir ma chronique du 27 août 2008: An American Story->14778]). Appliqué en politique, cet «art», ou plus précisément, cette technique, veut qu'un politicien raconte son histoire personnelle, familiale, intellectuelle, etc., laquelle histoire doit se fondre dans l'histoire du pays ou de la société qu'il ambitionne de diriger un jour. L'histoire d'Obama est ainsi devenue le reflet de celle des États-Unis (d'où sa formule reprise à satiété jusqu'à sa victoire finale («My story is an American story»).
L'outil privilégié du storytelling est habituellement la publication d'un ou de plusieurs ouvrages faisant le récit de cette histoire, laquelle peut être ensuite reprise par le politicien dans ses discours. Ce que faisait Obama.
Attendez-vous donc à ce que l'histoire de M. Ignatieff tienne du «My story is a Canadian story»... Le titre de son ouvrage est d'ailleurs fait sur mesure pour cela...
N.B.: l'idée du livre remonte à 2005, lors de son retour au Canada après un petit trente ans passés à l'étranger... Mais bien qu'Iggy était alors un professeur invité à l'Université de Toronto, on peut penser que son retour s'inscrivait peut-être, un peu ou pas mal, dans son ambition de faire de la politique active... Il aurait donc pu produire ce livre avant - disons pendant la course au leadership du PLC en 2006 -, mais n'aurait pas eu le temps de le faire.
Mais maintenant que sa première ambition est réalisée - devenir chef du PLC -, sa publication tiendra peut-être d'un meilleur timing encore, alors que si, en effet, le gouvernement Harper survit à son prochain budget, Iggy s'activerait à la vitesse grand V pour tenter de réaliser son ultime ambition, soit devenir premier ministre.
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Rush job for Ignatieff's new tome

JAMES ADAMS
From Wednesday's Globe and Mail
January 21, 2009
When Penguin Group (Canada) announced in the fall of 2005 that it had signed Michael Ignatieff to a book contract, the author had only recently returned to his home and native land, having spent almost 30 years away from Canada, first in England, then in the United States.
Since then, as we all have noticed, there have been a few changes in Ignatieff's life. A lot of changes, in fact. But through them all, he has kept at his book, shifting its focus and structure this way and that, finally starting to deliver his manuscript in "chunks" in August. The last chunk was sent to Penguin editorial director Diane Turbide on Jan. 5.
Now, the publisher is hurriedly readying the Liberal leader's words, all 224 typeset pages of them, for hardcover publication on April 21. That is a faster-than-usual turnaround for a much-anticipated book.
As a consequence, Turbide said, the publisher is having to put "extra care and extra people onto the copy editing and the proofreading." Fortunately, the substantive edit has been rather light, largely because "Michael's a beautiful writer ... a very concise writer" and "he matched every deadline we asked him to."
Of course, at 61, Ignatieff is hardly a novice to the vagaries of the writing game. The new book, called (at this stage at least) True Patriot Love: Four Generations in Search of Canada, is his 12th non-fiction title and a return of sorts to the familial turf he first explored in The Russian Album, winner of the 1987 Governor-General's Literary Award.
The genesis for True Patriot Love, in fact, comes from a cross-country driving trip Ignatieff and his wife, Zsuzsanna Zsohar, did in 2000, following the east-to-west route that the writer's great-grandfather (on his mother's side), George Monro Grant, took with Sir Sandford Fleming in 1872 to map what became the Canadian Pacific Railway. Besides a rumination on G.M. Grant, the book includes material on Grant's oldest son, William Lawson Grant (1872-1935), a principal of Canada's most famous private school, Upper Canada College, and on Ignatieff's uncle, George Parkin Grant (1918-1988), the distinguished philosopher and author of Lament for a Nation.
"Framing these chapters is Michael himself," Turbide explained, in which he talks about "why he's writing this book, as a sort of counterpart to The Russian Album, but also exploring the notion of a long-standing family engagement with the idea of Canada and its future."
Of course, when the book was announced, Ignatieff was a visiting professor at the University of Toronto, not the MP for Etobicoke-Lakeshore, nor a candidate for the leadership of the federal Liberals nor, as he is now, leader of the Official Opposition.
Admittedly, he was well-known, primarily as an often-controversial public intellectual - but for some Canadians, he was also a sort of carpetbagger, parachuting into Canada after a lengthy, self-imposed exile to entertain overweening political ambitions. For these sorts, True Patriot Love is likely to be received as an obvious attempt by Ignatieff to establish (and buttress) his Canadian bona fides now that he's operating at the highest levels of Canadian electoral politics.
Turbide said Penguin always intended to publish True Patriot Love as a spring title. But unquestionably, the events of the past few months and the events ahead - the resumption of the House of Commons, a possible federal election, the April 30-May 2 Liberal convention in Vancouver - mean "publicity becomes a trickier matter," she said. "We have to plan very carefully."
The hope, of course, is that True Patriot Love, carrying a suggested list price of $30, will rocket up the bestseller lists and earn many plaudits and awards. But it's going to have to do so without the backing of Canada's "natural ruling party."
"We can't use Liberal Party lists or any apparatus of the Liberal Party to promote the book," Turbide said. "They have been very clear about that."