Between Exhaustion and Expression

Shackles
Madge Macbeth
New York: Waterson, 1927
282 pages

The first three pages of Shackles take the form of a letter written by the author to her friend Aimée. Do not read it before the novel itself! It contains a doozy of a spoiler.

Shackles is the sixth of Madge Macbeth's thirteen novels and has a novelist as its main character. This was almost enough for me to set it aside.

Are novelists really so common?

The novelist at the centre of Shackles is Naomi Lennox. She lives in a fairly comfortable house with barrister husband Arthur and semi-invalid relation Uncle Toby. There are no children, which given Arthur's nocturnal expectations is something of a miracle. 

Uncle Toby has recently returned from a trip south where he was surprised and extremely pleased to encounter people who new his niece's writing. He was even asked for an interview with one of the local papers! Arthur is not so impressed – in fact, is not impressed at all. A selfish, petulant, and stubborn man, Arthur resents the fleeting minutes his wife finds to steal away to her desk and is dismissive of the results.  

Shireen Dey is Naomi's closest friend. She too is a novelist – a very successful one. Her home life is quite different. Husband David, who she calls "Doolydear," not only takes care of the house but manages her career. He has recently sold the rights of one of her novels to the motion picture people. Lively, full of life, and aware of her limitations as a writer, I quite liked Shireen until she exposed herself as a racist. This occurs in an exchange which pretty much encapsulates Arnold's views of his wife's writing. Arnold speaks first:

"Man’s sphere throughout the ages seems to me to have been one of protection, provision. My simple philosophy is expressed in the idea of service. So far as I can see it, men have served their women faithfully – even to paying the supreme sacrifice in times of war. Is it too much to expect – say fifty per cent service in return?”

   “I admit,” Shireen answered, “that there are too many women in whom the commutual sense, the reciprocal sense, is lacking. They want to eat their cake and have it, too. Like the slaves in the South, they achieved freedom too suddenly. They don’t know how to use it. Mentally, physically, economically, they are parasites. They will not last. Think of the others, however; of the women whose mental development and chosen sphere of endeavour – whose creative ability – justifies them in demanding the identical type of freedom that is accorded men. What of the woman artist, musician, decorator, physician, lawyer? Suppose, to drive home my argument more clearly, you were a novelist, would you not claim the independence necessary to pursue your vocation?”

   Arnold observed that unless he were one of the great masters of literature, he could not imagine himself engrossed with the business of writing, at all. Comparatively few men, he ventured, devoted themselves exclusively to literature of that sort.

   “In other words,” Shireen cut in, “you mean to imply that they do something useful as a regular profession and scribble as a hobby or a pastime?”

   “That expresses pretty closely what I mean."

Would it surprise you to learn that Naomi has a lover? She's been seeing Hugo Main. A man of strong opinions on all sorts of things, he's really quite a bore. The best that can be said of Hugo is that he admires Naomi's intellect. Whether there is more to the attraction is uncertain; the two never share anything more than a kiss and an embrace. Hugo pressures Naomi to run away with him to New York, promising to be her own Doolydear.

Can she do it? Will she do it? What Naomi wants most is the freedom to work on The Book of the Hour, her second novel. She takes a bold first step one night remaining at her desk when Arnold expects her in bed. The second step comes in engaging a maid. What with the money brought in through her writing they can afford it. Besides, her hire, Jennie McQuaig, will free up time to be more productive and bring in more money.

It is impossible to read Shackles today without thinking of A Room of One's Own (1929). Is it not remarkable that the novel was published three years earlier? How has it escaped Virago's notice?

Macbeth writes in the book's opening letter:

Woman is passing through a cultural transition. Instinctively, she is bound to the old order of things; intellectually, she clamours for the new. And vacillating, she stands between them.

That doozy of a spoiler concerns the ending. Were it not for the letter I wouldn't have seen it coming. 

See if you don't agree.

Trivia: In the January of last year, I put together a list of the very best Canadian novels of the 1920s. I held it to nine because I'd yet to read Douglas Durkin's The Magpie (1923) and Barney Allen's They Have Bodies (1929); one of the two was sure to make the cut. I've since read The Magpie. Sure enough it made the list, rounding out the top ten. Shackles too deserves a spot. In adding it, I'm bumping Madge Macbeth's pseudonymous roman à clef The Land of Afternoon (1924).

The list as it now stands (in chronological order):

The Thread of Flame - Basil King

The Empty Sack - Basil King

The Wine of Life - Arthur Stringer

The Hidden Places - Bertrand W. Sinclair

Pagan Love - John Murray Gibbon

The Magpie - Douglas Durkin

"Cattle" - Edith Eaton

Shackes - Madge Macbeth

Blencarrow - Isabel Mackay

All Else is Folly - Peregrine Acland

I'm certain there'll be more changes. Despite my decades-old interest in Allen – see my reviews of The Toronto Doctor (1949) and The Gynocologist (1969) – I still haven't read They Have Bodies.

Object and Access: Yellowing pages bound in tan cloth, I purchased my copy in 2019 as part of a lot. It once belonged to Emma Bailey, but which Emma Bailey? The 1921 Canadian census records thirty Emma Baileys living in Canada. The 1931 census features twenty-seven, which narrows the field very slightly. 

As my copy is the first American edition, there is a possibility that Emma Bailey may not have been living in Canada. The true first edition was published in Ottawa in 1926 by Graphic. A Toronto bookseller has two copies for sale online, both with dust jackets, both at $250. So as to encourage a sale, I'm sharing an image of the one I'd choose.

My birthday is in twenty-four days.

The least expensive jacketless copy is listed at US$41.50. As I write, just one Waterson copy is listed for sale online. At US$72, it too lacks a dust jacket. 

Shackles returned to print in 2005 as part of the Tecumseh Press Early Canadian Women Writers Series. Twelve years later, Invisible Publishing followed with its own edition. Both are still available, meaning that after many decades out of print today's reader has two editions from which to choose.

Shackles can be read online here thanks to the good folks at the faded page.

Related posts:

The Nine Best Canadian Novels of the 1920s
The Great War and Its Discontents

Our Strangest Novel?
Still Strange (if a little less so)

Silly Idol

The Living Idol
Robert Switzer
New York: Signet, 1957
128 pages

Robert Switzer's second book, The Living Idol is a novelization of a Hollywood film. I read a lot of these in my youth; Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971), Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972), Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973), Earthquake (1974), The Omen (1976), It's Alive (1977), Star Wars (1977), and Damien: Omen II (1978) come to mind, but the one I hold most dear is an adaptation of the 1978 Goldie Hawn/Chevy Chase romcom adventure Foul Play. This is because I gave a copy to an older crush on the occasion of her sixteenth birthday.

Before you judge, my next crush received David Bowie's Stage for her sixteenth (and it was a double album).

I didn't realize then that novelizations where very much part of the hype. James Cass Rogers' Foul Play would've hit grocery store checkouts weeks before the film's release. The timing meant that it couldn't be based on the movie itself, rather the Colin Higgins screenplay. It's possible that Rogers included scenes that never made it to the screen, which might make it an interesting read.

The Living Idol was written by Albert Lewin, best known for The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945). If you count Madame Currie (1943), from which he was fired, it was his seventh and last film as a director.

The plot is quite simple:

American journalist Terry Matthews is visiting an archaeological dig led by Doctor Alfred Stoner, PhD and Manuel (no title, no surname, no degree) at the site of a Mayan pyramid. The professor leads Terry and Juanita, Manuel's pretty teenage daughter, into a newly discovered chamber housing an ancient jaguar idol. Juanita is so disturbed by the sight that she flees. Two days later, her father is killed while attempting  to raise an ancient monolith. Juanita suffers a collapse. Stoner is certain that the girl's distress has nothing to do with having witnessed her father being crushed to death, rather that she is spiritually linked to an Mayan princess once sacrificed to the Jaguar God. Believing he can save Juanita, Stone frees a jaguar from the local zoo and is mortally wounded in the process. The cat makes its way to the professor's home where it is killed by the journalist, thus releasing Juanita from her torment. 

Not much of a story, is it.

James Robertson Justice as the professor – I remember him as Lord Scrumptious in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang – is the most energetic of a lackadaisical lot. Handsome Texan Steve Forrest, who plays Terry Matthews, is wooden, but nowhere near so much as Eduardo Noriega (Manuel) whose performance is so dry as to be akin to kindling. Parisian Liliane Montevecchi (Juantita), shown here with Sara García (Elana, Stone's wife), has three facial expressions. 

The true star of the film is cinematographer Jack Hildyard, who went on earn an Academy Award for his very next film, The Bridge on the River Kwai.

Switzer's novel follows the plot very closely and uses much of the same dialogue. Where it departs is in description. In an early scene, Manuel encourages Terry to accompany his daughter to a fiesta in the nearby village. Juanita dresses for the occasion:

She was wearing a yellow peasant blouse. The blouse hung from the very tips of her shoulders and it dipped maybe a little unnecessarily low in front. But that would depend on how you look at things, and Terry looked at her and smiled, thinking. She is wearing what they call a full skirt and her blouse is full, too – full of Juanita.

In the film, she wears a modest pale pink dress that leaves pretty much everything to the imagination.

Later that same night, Juanita wakes Terry, sneaking into his room and declaring her love. Switzer describes the nightgown she wears as revealing. This is the nightgown depicted in the film:

You can see The Living Idol in its entirety here as a muddy print in glorious CinemaScope at the Internet Archive. I encourage cinephiles to skip to 49:48 for one of the most awkward dance sequences in motion picture history. Kudos to whoever put together this trailer, which reimagines the movie as a sexy Yma Sumac album brought to life:

As I say, the book is quite faithful to the film. The greatest departure comes in the final scene. Here Elena cradles the body of her dead husband. The last paragraph reads:

Terry and Juanita went out into the garden. The sun was not up but there was light in the sky now and they could see the mountains that ring Mexico City  outlining very faintly against the gathering light.

The film depicts the professor's final minutes, then cuts abruptly to a very different final scene: Terry and Juanita's wedding. The groom provides a voiceover:

"Juanita was so happy, so wonderfully happy. I'd never seen anything so happy as Juanita's face. I made a mighty oath to keep it that way."

Ah, yes, there's the happy couple.

Mercifully, none of this appears in the book. Was it not in the draft he was handed or is it that Switzer chose to ignore it?

If the latter, he's an even better writer than I'd previously thought. 

Trivia I: I've described Juanita as a teenager. Her age is not mentioned in the film, but she's a seventeen-year-old in the novelization. Terry is thirty. She has known him since the age of seven.

Let's pretend that Juanita turns eighteen before they marry. 

Trivia II: I've come across several ads for the film in which the book is described as the source. 

The Sarasota Herald-Tribune, 3 January 1958

It is not.

Kingswood Times-News, 12 January 1957

Object and Access: A slim mass market paperback, The Living Idol appears to have enjoyed no more than one printing. As I write only two copies are listed for sale online, both at US$15.50. Mine was purchased early this year for US$15.00.

Signet hired the very best illustrators back then. This time credit goes to American artist Robert Macguire, who clearly based his cover painting on this production still.

Macguire is the same man who proved the cover of Mark It for Murder by that old Dusty Bookcase favourite Douglas Sanderson.

Related posts:

Bringing It All Back Home
Robert Switzer, Esquire
Living Through Another Cuba

Margaret Laurence: 100 Years

Margaret Laurence was born one hundred years ago today. Is recognition appropriate in a blog devoted to Canada's forgotten, neglected, and suppressed writing? I'd say so. Laurence was popular and celebrated in her day and remains so today, yet she was also a lightning rod for censors.

Leading the charge was Reverend Sam Buick of Peterborough's Dublin Street Pentecostal Church, who considered The Diviners blasphemous, adulterous, and profane. Did the preacher's ire have something to do with his similarity to the novel's Reverend Jake Flood? He never addressed the issue.

My first Margaret Laurence book, A Jest of God, was a gift from my uncle, David Busby, a canon in the Anglican Church. It was also my first signed book. Published in 1978, it's part of a series of Seal reissues which I would argue are the most attractive mass market paperbacks ever published in this country. 

Missing is The Stone Angel, her masterpiece, but that's only because I couldn't find a decent image online.

Ah, what the hell. Here's a copy being offered on Ebay.

Starting out in the book trade, I was surprised to find that Laurence, whose novels were so ubiquitous as to be found in drug stores, were out of print in the United States. When they did return, it was with an academic press. My English cousins had easier access through Virago.

American and British reissues of A Jest of God:
University of Chicago Press (1993) and Virago (1987)

For years I worried that Margaret Laurence would fade from Canadian consciousness, but her name is still strong. True, we don't see her  books sold in drug stores, but then books are no longer sold in drug stores. I see Laurence lauded by English bloggers, most notably Simon at (Stuck in a Book) and Ali (Heavenali), and sense that her profile has actually risen in UK. 

Wishful thinking, perhaps, but it warms the heart of this stranger.

Jean Margaret Laurence (née Wemysse)
18 July 1926, Neepawa, Manitoba -
5 January 1987, Lakeside, Ontario

RIP

Related post:

Margaret Laurences's Cauliflower Soup

Living Through Another Cuba

The Tent of the Wicked
Robert Switzer
New York: Signet, 1956
128 pages

We begin in a despot's bedroom. Six soldiers enter, one throws the light switch, and the country's president is ordered out of bed. His mistress is a sound sleeper.

This is the end of the Small Man's rule. He'd been expecting it. 

Where readers expecting it?

In June 1949, on the occasion of the author's eighth short story for Esquire, the magazine reported that publishers had been urging Robert Switzer to write a novel. Did The Tent of the Wicked meet their expectations? Was it shopped around? Whatever happened, it didn't arrive for another seven years – and then only as a mass market paperback. 

That opening scene is also the first in his story 'The Small Man,' which had appeared in Esquire's March 1955 issue. Not identical, but pretty damn close, it runs from the beginning to the first line break: 

cliquez pour agrandir

'The Small Man' is not a long story. This is the rest:

The violent final scene is much the same as another in the novel. Though the paragraphs between don't feature in any way, they do follow the Small Man's changing fortunes.

The publisher's pitch has it that The Tent of the Wicked takes place in "a Latin American country." I can do one better in identifying that country as Cuba. Its hero is Paul Rezzado, a young man who works for a travel agency in "the Capital." Much like Jonathan Richman, he falls in love with a bank teller. Her name is Angela. Their relationship is so passionate, so intense, so maddeningly enduring that Paul feels in need of a break. After pushing his employer for a temporary transfer, he leaves for two months' work in San José and doesn't return for a full three years. When he does, Paul finds Angela married to a plump businessman who is also father to her unborn child. She'd given up waiting sometime around the thirtieth month.

Just as well, really. Angela had been faithful, but not Paul. Besides, there was that old promise he'd made to return in sixty days, not eleven hundred.

Paul goes back to San José, where he befriends a married teenaged prostitute. He calls her "Doll-face," a nickname neither she nor anyone else understands. She vanishes, then reappears with a face that looks nothing like a doll's. The new police official in town had abducted her, raped her, tortured her, and disfigured her before dumping her back onto the street. Paul kills the man taking care that no one knows...  but word gets around. San José sees him as a hero and his fame begins to spread. Other men begin following his example, taking on the authorities like their hero Rezzado. Paul wants none of this, but more men join in and the government feels threatened. He becomes a hunted man until the military surrenders to public will and joins his side.

The novel's second scene takes place in the Presidential Palace where Paul, Provisionary President of the Republic, meets with General Avilia and captains of industry identified only as "the oilman," "the cattleman," "the communications man," and "the banker.":

These men could be designated by their specialities, their near-monopolies, but actually they were inter-involved, the banker owning parts of oil well and the cattleman sharing in silver mines. They did not own everything in the country but, between them, they owned a part of everything and repesented those who owned the rest.

What good can come from a meeting such as that?

The novel's climax owes nearly everything to Switzer's October 1955 Esquire story 'The Death Bringers.'

As the title suggests, there is no happy ending.

Robert Switzer's last known work is the 1961 novel I Was Going Anyway. It's the best Canadian noir novel I've read this year, if not entirely original. Switzer mined three of his old Esquire stories, the earliest being 'Death of a Prize Fighter,' which appeared all the way back in the June 1949 issue. 

'The Small Man' and 'The Death Bringers' were both published in the fifteen months leading to The Tents of the Wicked. Were they segments of a work in progress or simply reused for his debut novel?

I don't expect we'll ever know nor does it matter. The Tents of the Wicked is one hell of a book.

Trivia: In 'The Small Man' the Paul Rezzado character is named Jesus Rezzado. This Anglican caught several echoes of the New Testament in the novel itself.

The Rezzado character in 'The Death Bringers' is named Perez, which is the surname of the man Angela marries in The Tent of the Wicked. 

Object and Access: A paperback original, there have been no subsequent printings or editions. The cover illustration does not reflect a scene in the novel.

As I write eight copies are listed for sale online, ranging in price from US$4.00 to US$33.00. All booksellers are in the United States. A word of caution, the bookseller asking US$33.00, the most dear by far, charges a further US$99.50 to ship what is a slim mass market paperback that weighs less than a sparrow. 

Related posts:

Bringing It All Back Home
Robert Switzer, Esquire