Showing posts with label Character Parts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Character Parts. Show all posts

07 May 2018

The Dustiest Bookcase: A is for Adams


Short pieces on books I've always meant to review (but haven't).
They're in storage as we build our new home.
Patience, please.

S: Portrait of a Spy
Ian Adams
Toronto: Virgo, 1981
196 pages

I wrote a great deal about S: Portrait of a Spy in my first book Character Parts, which is pretty much the reason I haven't covered it here. An intriguing novel of political intrigue concerning a member of the RCMP who is suspected of being both a KGB and CIA mole, S generated headlines through my college years. Most came courtesy of Toronto Sun publisher Peter Worthington, who pushed the idea that Leslie James Bennett, former head to the RCMP's Russian Intelligence Service Desk, was the model for the title character. Worthington encouraged Bennett to sue, which is exactly what he did, going after Adams and original publisher Gage for $2.2 million.

S: Portrait of  Spy
Ian Adams
Toronto: Gage, 1979
In December 1980, Bennett agreed to a modest out-of-court settlement, barely enough to cover his legal fees, and made the mistake of insisting upon this notice, which appears in the Virgo edition:


"A curious resolution, as the disclaimer republished the alleged libel even as it discredited it," noted lawyer Douglas J. Johnson.

Agreed.

The Virgo edition also includes a good deal of information on Bennett, much of it gleaned through court testimony. Transcripts are provided.

Bennett described Adams' novel as "a typical KGB-type operation" and went so far as to claim that his life was under threat from an RCMP "death squad."

He died in Melbourne of kidney failure on 18 October 2003,  four days after the publication of Character Parts. I deny any responsibility.


Related post:

27 December 2016

The Ten Best Book Buys of a Very Bad Year



An annus horribulus, the death of David Bowie ten days in cast a pall that just wouldn't lift. These have been days of loss and unwelcome surprises, and November 8 killed all hopes for a better New Year.

The evening before the American election, the great Leonard Cohen died. I'd found his Flowers for Hitler a week earlier, squeezed between neglected books in a sidewalk dollar cart. Storm clouds were just about to burst. It's a first edition, but the condition is not the best; booksellers would describe it as a "reading copy." I'm all for reading copies. Books are meant to be read, as this one clearly has. My favourite purchase of 2016, this is how I choose to remember the year... rescuing a book from the rain.

This was the year my collection of Canadian literature took over the ninth of our nine bookcases.

You always knew there was more than one dusty bookcase, right?

Foreign authors have been relegated to the attic, though some sit in the basement of the St Marys Public Library awaiting the semi-annual Book Sale. Anyone looking for a century-old set of Conrad will find themselves in luck this spring.

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Yes, this proved a particularly good year for buying books, despite an increasingly tightening budget. Case in point: the first American edition of Hilda Wade: A Woman of Tenacity of Purpose pictured above. Typically priced comfortably in the three digits, I paid US$6.00 after winning it in an online auction. With ninety-eight illustrations by Gordon Browne, I don't exaggerate in describing it as one of the most beautiful in my collection.

What follows are the eight other favourite acquisitions. You'll note that some weren't book buys but gifts. Given my name, you'll understand that I'm drawn to alliteration.

Linnet: A Romance
Grant Allen
New York: New Amsterdam, 1900

"Allen's last substantial novel," writes biographer Peter Morton. I first learned of this work while researching my first book, Character Parts, and have been hoping to score a copy ever since. Another online auction victory, I won this first American edition for US$16.00.

Black Feather
Benge Atlee
New York: Scribners, 1939

Atlee served in the Royal Army Medical Corps during the Great War. In civilian life, he served as Chair of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at Dalhousie. His only novel, this was a gift from James Calhoun, my collaborator on the reissue of Peregrine Acland's All Else Is Folly.
Josie of Montreal
Florian Delorme
Montreal: Bodero, 1967

Despite the (implied) success of Aprés-Ski, I had no idea this fine example of "ADULT READING" existed until it was given me by author Fraser Sutherland.

Note: A volume in the Aphrodite Collection.





The Midnight Queen
Mrs May Agnes Fleming
New York: Hurst, [n.d.]

One of the three books I'm urging publishers consider returning to print, The Midnight Queen is the one of the most entertaining novels I've read since beginning this exploration. It's no small wonder that Mrs Fleming (1840-1880) was our first bestselling author. You can read my review here.
Edith Percival; Or, Her Heart or Her Hand?
May Agnes Fleming
New York: Street and Smith, [n.d.]

A later edition – perhaps the last – of Mrs Fleming's 1893 bestseller... But wait, didn't she die in 1880? Is it really hers?  This is one of five Street & Smith Flemings won for US$1.99 each on eBay. Mine were the only bids.

Legends of My People the Great Ojibway
Norval Morrisseau
Toronto: Ryerson, 1965

Bought for a dollar earlier this month at the Stratford Salvation Army Thrift Store. Signed by the artist.

A book I'll be handing down to my daughter.

Dust and Ashes
A.C. Stewart
n.p.: Published by the Author, 1910

A curious collection of verse. Regular readers will remember Stewart's "On the Drowning of a French-Canadian Laborer", which I shared this past Labour Day.

A gift from booksellers Vanessa Brown and Jason Dickson of Brown & Dickson in London, Ontario.

The Silver Poppy
Arthur Stringer
New York: Appleton, 1903

I thought I was pretty much done with collecting Stringer, but then spotted this first edition of his debut at London's Attic Books. Price: $10.

The scan doesn't do it justice.

Those poppies really shine.



Let us all work to make 2017 a better year.

I myself resolve to kick harder against the pricks.

Related posts:

04 October 2011

A Ninteenth-Century What's Bred in the Bone



What's Bred in the Bone
Grant Allen
London: Tit-Bits, 1891

Two Canadian writers, both with strong ties to Kingston, Grant Allen and Robertson Davies each wrote novels entitled What's Bred in the Bone. I remarked on this in Character Parts, but don't see that anyone else has thought it worth the ink. Not even Judith Skelton Grant's massive biography, the 787-page Robertson Davies: Man of Myth, mentions the curious connection.

Perhaps I make too much of this. Davies was attracted by the neglected past, and had an appreciation of the peculiar, but he never exactly dwelled on Allen in his own writing. In fact, the Kingstonian's name appears only once in Davies' published work. The mention – fleeting – is found in "Canadian Literature: 1964", an essay that was written when Fifth Business was no more than a gleam in author's eye: "...if a Canadian novel is not a novel written in Canada by a resident of the country, what is it? There were a few, like Sara Jeannette Duncan, who wrote of the land they knew, and achieved reputation; others, like Grant Allen and Gilbert Parker, were Canadians by birth but Englishmen by choice."

Allen's What's Bred in the Bone is very much an English novel. At its core are Cyril and Guy Waring, identical twins of uncertain parentage and independent, if modest means. Cyril, a landscape painter, is our hero; he shows his stuff very early in the novel by saving the life of beautiful Elma Clifford after a railway tunnel collapse. Guy, much the weaker figure, is under the influence of Montague Nevitt, a London bank clerk. Nevitt uses his position to bet on sure things in the stock market, pressuring his friend to likewise. When one investment goes sour, the clerk exercises a near hypnotic influence over Guy, getting him to commit forgery in "borrowing" £6000 from his brother's account.

How handsome Cyril came to have such a large sum, though believable, is very complicated. The same might be said for much of What's Bred in the Bone; hidden marriages, mistaken identities and multiple misunderstandings carry the plot. It says much about Allen's talent that no matter how tangled the web, the reader is never confused. This particular reader was caught up in it all, curious as to how everything would unfold, racing toward what was ultimately an overly melodramatic conclusion.

What's Bred in the Bone was written was an eye on a prize; that being £1000 offered by the English weekly Tit-Bits for the best serial story. If the magazine's hype is to be believed, the novel won out over 20,000 entries. However, the strive for the commercial was not nearly enough to hold Allen's quirkiness in check. No surprise here – we are, after all, considering the work of a man who would one day write a novel about an elderly civil servant who believes himself to be the archangel Michael. I focussed at first on the twin brothers; they were so much alike, had both experienced a toothache "in the self-same tooth on the self-same night" and each had dealt with the problem in the very same way. But Guy put an end to this early on: "There's nothing of the Corsican Brothers sort of hocus-pocus about us in any way. The whole thing is a simple caste of natural causation."

The freaky comes out of left field when prim, proper and virginal Elma retires to her bedroom after her escape from the tunnel. Her bosom heaves, her heart beats violently and she feels "a new sense aroused within her." She begins dancing wildly, rhythmically, and yet this release does not satisfy. "She hadn't everything she required for this solitary orgy", Grant tells us. "Her hands were empty. She must have something to fill them. Something alive, lithe, curling, sensuous... Cyril Waring! Cyril Waring! It was all Cyril Waring. And what on earth would Cyril Waring think of her?"

The cause of Elma's behaviour is not so obvious; the reader soon learns that a "Roumanian ancestress" has passed on an attraction to snakes, and Cyril has a pet snake, and... well, maybe it is obvious.

Trivia: In 1916, the novel was adapted for the silent screen as What's Bred in the Bone Comes Out in the Flesh.

More Trivia: What's Bred in the Bone was published in England, the United States and Denmark (Hvad i Kodet er baaret, 1893), but only once in Canada, when in 1911 Winnipeg publisher Heimskringlu issued Ættareinkennið, an Icelandic translation. A century later, it remains the only Canadian edition.

Object: An odd-looking, yet attractive hardcover, the slightly fragile first edition disappoints only in that it, like all subsequent editions, features no illustrations.

Access: Print-on-demand monstrosities all but overwhelm online listings. Seek and ye shall find a few copies of the first edition going for about $100. The Toronto Public Library and just four of our universities have copies – of any edition – in their collections. Three copies of Ættareinkennið, all offered by the same Winnipeg bookseller, are currently listed online at an even US$300 each. No Canadian libraries hold copies.

12 July 2010

Richlers in Gestation




A couple of cover mockups from my years as a book buyer, both uncovered last week while going trough old boxes. Keeping Track was the working title of Richler's 1990 collection of essays and reviews for Viking Canada. It was ultimately published with a much better title and cover as Broadsides. I don't believe Richler ever intended to put out anything called Selected Essays & Reports; if memory serves he was still hunting around for a title when Knopf Canada presented this cover. The collection was published in 1998 as Belling the Cat.


Note the barking Borzoi. A nice touch, I think.

Five years later, Knopf used the same photo of Richler, by Julian Edelsten, on the front and back covers of my own book, Character Parts.