Sunburst Phyllis Gotlieb New York: Fawcett, 1964 160 pages
Sorrel Park is no place to live, but this wasn't always so. A smallish city not far from Chicago, it was once a place of industry and well-paying jobs. During the "Open-The Door-In-Eighty-Four" policy, immigrants from Western Europe flooded in until it all went horribly wrong. First came the 1994 nuclear reactor explosion and resulting deaths. The federal government was quick to impose a press ban, the city was sealed off, martial law was imposed, the old coal plant was fired up, and the rest of the country continued on as before.
Shandy Johnson was born in Sorrel Park on June 3rd, 2011 to second generation Americans. Her father's family came from Denmark, changing their surname from Jensen along the way. Shandy's mother was named Mary O'Brian; as might be supposed, her family immigrated from Ireland. Until the explosion, Mary cleaned the offices at the nuclear facility, after which she was transferred to the coal plant. Shandy's father worked in both, even after being being struck on the back of the head with hot material. The wound would never close.
Shandy's birth, seventeen years after "the Blowup," came as a surprise. Her parents had assumed they'd been rendered sterile, but here they were in their forties with a baby girl. The joy they experienced as parents was short lived: "I was three and a half when they died, and since I can't remember much that happened before I was eighteen months old, that means I can't have really known them for more than two years..."
The novel begins on Shandy's thirteenth birthday. A strong-willed, savvy girl, she spends much of it evading capture. It didn't begin this way. Shandy had been celebrating the day with a vanilla cone and licorice stick when spotted. Shandy is a target because she is unusual. "I can't remember much that happened before I was eighteen months old," suggests something, don't you think?
New York: Berkley, 1983
Years earlier, not long after Shandy was born, dozens of Sorrel Park teens, offspring of the men and women exposed to radiation from the explosion, went on a violent rampage. It lasted no more than a few hours, but was devastating just the same. Much of the downtown lay in ruins, thanks entirely to newly awakened telepathic and telekinetic powers. It was only through dumb luck in the form of a freak accident that authorities were able to round them up. They've lived ever since in "the Dump," a prison compound equipped with a device that shields the outside world from their abilities. What sets young Shandy apart is that her mind cannot be read by those imprisoned in the Dump. She is a mutant amongst mutants, and thus of great interest to the government.
I've never been one for stories in which radiation exposure brings the superhuman – something to so with having seen film footage of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at an early age, I suspect. It's probably the reason why the Hulk, Spider-Man, and the Fantastic Four never really appealed.
The Hulk #1, May 1962
Yet Sunburst did appeal. It would be enough to say this all comes down to Shandy, but all the characters are brilliantly drawn. There's Jason Hemmer, who first spots the girl. He is the one mutant who cooperates with the authorities, and so is tasked with finding others. Colonel Prothelo was assigned to Sorrel Park in the aftermath of the Blowup. The son he fathered in Sorrel Park instigated that night of destruction. Cigar store owner Ma Slippec is a fleeting character, but just as fully formed. It was she who took in the orphaned Shandy, provided a modicum of stability, and introduced her to bootlegging in what is a dry city.
Of course, at the centre of it all is Shandy, a tall, awkward looking girl who is bothered by her flat chest. She longs for adolescence to really kick in, all the while worrying that she'll also develop abilities that will lead her to incarceration the Dump.
Sixty-two years ago, Fawcett positioned Sunburn as "A Science Fiction Classic of Tomorrow," and here we are in that past's tomorrow. While we don't have superhuman mutants, we do have government and corporate surveillance, suppression, manipulation and brutality. In this way, Sunburn is a classic of today.
About the author:
Phyllis Fay Gotlieb (née Bloom)
Phyllis Fay Gotlieb (née Bloom) was born in Toronto one hundred years ago today. She attended the University of Toronto (BA, 1948; MA, 1950) where, I'm guessing, she met her husband (see: Dedication).
As far as writing goes, she was known first a poet. In 1961, John Robert Colombo's Hawkshead Press published her a pamphlet of verse. Sunburst landed in 1964, the very same year as Within the Zodiac, her first book of poems.
Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1964
Phyllis Gotlieb is remembered more as a writer of science fiction than as a poet. Her bibliography features twelve books in the genre, including A Judgement of Dragons for which she received the inaugural Aurora Award.
New York: Berkley, 1980
Phyllis Gotlieb died in Toronto on 14 July 2009 at the age of eighty-three.
Dedication:
Kelly is the author's husband, Calvin Carl Gotlieb (27 March 1921 - 16 October 2016). Amongst his many accomplishments Upon his death,
Of Phyllis Gotlieb's twenty other books, the one I'm most interested in reading is Phyllis Loves Kelly, (Toronto: University of Toronto Libraries, 2014), a posthumous collection of poems written to her husband over the course of their sixty year marriage.
Object and Access: A typical Fawcett Gold Medal mass market paperback original in excellent condition, it showed no sign of having been read before I got to it. I took good care.
The novel first appeared, abridged, in Amazing Stories (March - May 1964).
Two years after the Fawcett, Coronet published the first British edition.
When cropped, the image looks like a 'sixties LP I'd buy in a second.
Other editions followed in Australia from Eclipse (1969) and the United States from Berkley (1978). In 2002, Insomniac Press published the only Canadian edition to date as part of its Bakka Books series.
The novel is currently available from Wildside Press of Cabin John, Maryland.
The six-decade-old Fawcett first edition is cheap in more than one way. Prices listed online range from US$6.00 to US$19.00. Condition is not a factor. At under twenty-one dollars, two signed copies of the Insomniac edition tempt, but the one you really want is a copy of the Fawcett the author inscribed to Miriam Waddington (and was subsequently owned by Maurice Forget, OC). It is being sold for $36.00 by a Gatineau bookseller.
Sunburst has been translated into French (Psycataclysme) and German (Die Geißel des Lichts).
Antoinette de Mirecourt or, Secret Marrying and Secret Sorrowing Rosanna Leprohon Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1973 200 pages
Antoinette De Mirecourt, or, Secret Marrying and Secret Sorrowing Rosanna Leprohon Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1989 334 pages
Six summers ago, I made slow progress through Armand Durand; ou, La promesse accomplie, the French translation of Rosanna Leprohon's 1868 novel Armand Durand; or, A Promise Fulfilled. It made some sense to take on the challenge. As I noted at the time, the author's novels had been far more popular in French than in the original English. Consider The Manor House of De Villerai, which first appeared in 1859 and 1860 issues of the Montreal Family Herald. Le manoir de Villerai, E.L. de Bellefeulle's translation, was published as a book in 1861, then enjoyed four more editions, the last being in 1925. It wasn't until 2014, a full 154 years after the end of its run in the Family Herald, that The Manor House of De Villerai finally appeared in book form. Credit goes to academic publisher Broadview Press.
In the late 'eighties I began collecting Centre for Editing Early Canadian Texts titles. Antionette De Mirecourt, sixth in the series, was purchased upon publication, taking advantage of the ten percent discount offered by my employer, a library wholesaler. I preferred the bland, jacketless hardcover editions because they seemed more substantial. Must add that the paperback editions, released simultaneously, weren't particularly attractive.
This year being one dedicated to women writers (see my New Year's resolution), I decided, at long last, to read what had been Rosanna Leprohon's most popular novel amongst anglophone readers.
But which copy?
I've owned the first New Canadian Library edition for some time. Where did I buy it? When did I buy it? Somehow, its purchase is nowhere near as memorable as the CEECT edition. Might this have something to do with the ten percent discount?
The decision was easy. Madame Leprohon's title is Antoinette De Mirecourt, not Antoinette de Mirecorte, as the NCL edition would have you believe. What's more, the heroine's name is misspelled throughout the text. I would later discover that a significant spoiler appears on the front cover.
I still don't know what to make of the author portrait on the back cover.
The novel begins in November 1763, nine months after the Treaty of Paris, with Antoinette De Mirecourt's arrival in Montreal from her widowed father's Valmont seigneury. On the edge of seventeen, she has been invited by her cousin Lucille D'Aulnay to pass the winter at her elegant rue Nôtre-Dame home. Cousine Lucille is older and her husband older still, though by how much is left up to the reader's imagination. A contemplative man, Monsieur D'Aulnay devotes his days to philosophical works. Lucille's tastes run more toward romantic novels and sentimental verse.
Theirs was an arranged marriage.
Young Antoinette has always been intrigued by the structure of the union, so "with her childish inexperience, rich, poetic imagination, and warm, impulsive heart," wastes no time in asking Lucille whether she was in love with her husband when they wed:
"Oh dear, no! My parents, though kind and indulgent in other respects, showed me no consideration
in this. They simply told me Mr. D'Aulnay was the
husband they had chosen for me, and that I was to be
married to him in five weeks. I cried for the first
week almost without intermission. Then, mamma
having promised me I should select my own trousseau
and that it should be as rich and costly as I could
desire, a different turn was given to my feelings, and
I became so very busy with milliners and shopping,
that I had not time for another thought of regret, till
my wedding day arrived. Well, I was happy in my lot, for Mr. D'Aulnay has ever been both indulgent
and generous; but, my darling child, the experiment
was fearfully hazardous, – one which might have resulted in life-long misery to both parties."
"Remember Antoinette," concludes Lucille, "that the only sure basis for a
happy marriage, is mutual love, and community of
soul and feeling."
Is the D'Aulnay marriage happy? Not that this reader could see, though it is comfortable. Monsieur D'Aulnay is content to spend his days and nights surrounded by books, while his wife delights in being surrounded by men in uniform. The departures of the gentry to la vielle France and the retreat of the seigneurs to their seigneuries has left a social void that Lucille happily fills with English officers. Chief amongst these is Major Aubrey Sternfield. Monsieur D'Aulnay thinks of him as a "long-legged flamingo," but Lucille and sees an altogether different man:
A
tall and splendidly-proportioned: figure – eyes, hair
and features of faultless beauty, joined to rare powers
of conversation, and a voice whose tones he could
modulate to the richest music, were rare gifts to be all united in one happy mortal.
So say all the ladies.
Though Antoinette had been raised on a seigneury, she is all but overcome by the decor, perfume, gauzy dresses, and music of the contra dance of a Montreal soirée. I get it. This was Montreal when I was her age:
Major Sternfield, "handsome as an Apollo," pursues Antoinette. His success is such that the capture of her heart precedes the first letters Antoniette receives from Valmont. One contains a mild bloomer:
The first,
which was from her father, was kind and affectionate;
spoke of the void her absence made in the household; told her to enjoy herself to her heart's utmost
desire; and ended by warning her to watch well over
her affections, and bestow them on none of the gay
strangers who might visit at her cousin's house, for
assuredly he would never under any circumstances
countenance any of them as her suitors.
A third letter arrives shortly thereafter. Composed by Monsieur De Mirecourt, it serves to inform Antoinette that she will be marrying Louis Beauchesne, her childhood playmate. What follows is uncomfortable. Louis himself has delivered the letter. While Antoinette, an only child, has great affection, it is as a brother. Louis, who has siblings, knows that his love for her is very different than the one he feels for his sisters. What remains hidden in their encounter is this: Antoinette accepted Sternfield's ring.
Lucille has been living vicariously through her cousin. Whether under the influence of romantic prose and poetry or the regrets of her own arranged marriage, she has pushed Antoinette into the major's embrace. This secret engagement is known only to the betrothed, and of course Lucille D'Aulney.
Antoinette De Mirecourt and Aubrey Sternfield are married at the D'Aulay residence during a particularly stormy winter evening. The master is in his library, entirely oblivious to anything happening elsewhere in this house. Regimental chaplain Doctor Ormsby is the officiant. Lucille is troubled by his appearance and manner. All is so different from her Catholic faith, but she's keen on seeing it through.
After the ceremony, Antoinette makes an uncharacteristic stand insisting that her new husband that will keep their union secret until it is blessed by her own church. Sternfield readily agrees. As we shall see, the major has his reasons. The evening becomes even more dramatic with the unexpected arrival of Antoinette's father. He is, of course, ignorant as to what has transpired, and so is too late in laying down the law, employing another mild bloomer:
"I forbid you child, to, have any intercourse, beyond
that of distant courtesy, with the men I have mentioned; and if you have entangled yourself in any
disgraceful flirtation or attachment, break it off at
once, under penalty of being disowned and disinherited."
What's unstated is that the "gay strangers" with whom Antoinette is not to partake in "intercourse" are the English. This is perfectly understandable. The Battle of the Plains of Abraham had taken place just four years earlier. The capitulation of Montreal was a year after that.
A View of Montreal in Canada, Taken from Isle St. Helena in 1762 Thomas Davies, 1762
I'll say no more for wont of spoiling, except to recommend Antoinette De Mirecourt to lovers of nineteenth-century romance, lovers of gothic romance, and to any Montrealer who share a love of reading. I was born in Montreal two hundred years after the novel is set and one hundred years after it was written, yet its past was not a foreign country. Descriptions of the island, the weather, and the climate are recognizable. This passage raised a smile:
It was the first really good sleighing of the season,
for the few slight falls of snow that had hitherto heralded winter’s approach, descending on the muddy
roads and sidewalks, had lost at once their whiteness
and purity, and becoming incorporated with the liquid
mud, formed that detestable, combination with which
we Canadians are so familiar in the spring and fall,
and which we recognize by the name of “slush.”
And here I'd assumed that "slush," like "smog," was a twentieth-century term.
Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon (née Mullins) 12 January 1829, Montreal, Lower Canada 20 September 1879, Montreal, Quebec
Rosanna Leprohon has much in common with her darker, even more successful New Brunswick contemporary May Agnes Fleming, whose Wedded for a Week; or, The Unseen Bridegroom I read earlier this spring. They may not have been sisters under the skin exactly, but they were cousins. Both were adept at writing complex plots involving romance, marriage, duplicity, nefariousness, and death. If you've enjoyed the company of one you'll like spending time with the other. And so, I've ordered a copy of The Manor House of De Villerai.
God bless our academic publishers.
Bloomer (not mild):
"God bless my soul. Miss De Mirecourt!" he
ejaculated, involuntarily starting back.
Trivia (not really): The first sentence has it that the novel takes place "in year 176–, some short time after the royal standard of England had replaced the fleur-de-lys of France." As editor John C. Stockdale notes in the CEECT edition, this can only be 1763: "The year is confirmed by the fact that Madame D'Aulnay's St. Catherine's Eve party was held on a "Thursday" night; in 1763 St. Catherine's Day was Friday, 25 November.
Fun fact: Janet Friskney's New Canadian Library: The Ross-McClelland Years, 1952-1978 (Toronto: University of Toronto, 2007) tells us that The Manor House of De Villerai was once considered for inclusion in the New Canadian Library.
Object and Access:Antionette De Mirecourt was first published in 1864 by John Lovell & Sons. A second printing followed the very same year. Such is the sorry state of Canadian literature that a first edition can be purchased online for a mere $255.
Interestingly, the Lovell edition was the last until 1973 when both McCelland & Stewart's New Canadian Library and the University of Toronto Press's Reprint Library of Canadian Prose and Poetry returned the novel to print.
As a Watered Garden Marian Keith [Mary Esther Miller MacGregor] Toronto; McClelland & Stewart, 1946 297 pages
My Marian Keith collection began with The Bells of St Stephens, purchased seventeen years ago in London, Ontario, not long after our move to nearby St Marys. I ask you, what self-respecting bibliophile could pass up a jacket like this?
I'd barely heard of Marian Keith and had no idea how popular she'd once been in that area of the country. Eight more Marian Keith titles were added during our decade in St Marys. They were thick on the ground. The Bells of St Stephen's set me back four dollars, twice as much as any other. A few were rescued after having failed to sell at library book sales. Before last week, I'd never read one.
I've now read one.
Academics position Duncan Polite as Keith at her best, but as I'd never come across a copy my foray into the author's work ended up being the late career As a Watered Garden. Why this novel? Well, I'd read that the plot involved a great mystery.
The first chapter is the best. Thirty-five-year-old Islay Drummond is taking stock of the large family farmhouse off Georgian Bay, recently inherited from Great-Aunt Christena. No one knows just what to make of the bequeathal, least of all sisters Kate and Jeanette:
"More sensible if she left it to me." Jeannette had been wanting to see this since the will was read. "What a wonderful place to leave the children summers!"
Kate replies:
"Wonder she didn't saddle us with it, she knew how I hated the old farm. She was quite capable of it!"
The answer seems to be that Islay happened by not long before the old woman died. It was the first visit in a very long time. Islay had meant to drop by again, but you know how busy things can get.
Islay plans on spending the summer at the old farmhouse, having been granted a four month leave from her employer, "the irritable and exacting Mr. Francis," but neither sister believes she'll last. Both point to the mod cons of Islay's life in the city. "She has an electric range in her apartment!" Kate exclaims. "And frigidaire," adds Jeanette.
These exchanges take place shortly before Kate and Jeanette gather their respective broods and drive away. Stoic elder brother Robert follows. He'd arrived without wife Mary and their children. Pete, who is closest to Islay in both age and affection, is the baby of the family. He lives the life playboy and so speeds off in a small little coupe, honking all the way.
If, like me, you enjoy novels dealing with family dynamics, As a Watered Garden may not be for you. Islay's siblings never return. That said, distant relatives abound. The closest is cousin Steve Laird whose farm borders hers. He's planted a vegetable garden for Islay, but doesn't appear to be interested in doing much more.
This poses a bit of a problem as Islay is intent on dedicating her four months away from Mr Francis to writing a novel:
It was her secret. Even Pete didn't know it. That winter when she broke her ankle... she'd been laid up for weeks. And somehow she'd started scribbling – little sketches of the office staff – 'profiles' the editor called them, whisking through them competently. Ought to be a story, must have a plot. Make a real yarn of it. That's what people asked for... Well, this summer she was going to see what she could do.
What Islay wants more than anything is silence and solitude.
She won't get it.
We know from the first that there is an ex-fiancé around and about – he threw her over years ago for a New York City party girl – but the first intrusion comes in the form of anemic waif Artie.
How could Islay turn the boy away? Artie's memories are dominated by a draught that caused the loss of his family's farm and contributed to the deaths of his two siblings. The surviving family is newly arrived in the area, having driven over three thousand kilometers from dusty Saskatchewan.
Young Artie first appears during a downpour. As a Watered Garden being the title, I'm certain this is intentional. Later on, the house in which the boy and his parents live will be flooded during a summer storm.
There's irony for you.
Things happen, not nearly so dire, and are interesting if inconsequential. Other characters intrude on Islay's solitude and her literary effort stalls. The mystery, such as it is, concerns Great-Uncle Peter's daughter Bessie:
Great-Aunt Christena had burned Bessie’s picture up. You never talked about Bessie. Never even said her name. Even when you were very small you knew not to do that.
But why?
The answer has nothing to do with murder, adultery or anything even remotely unpleasant. Quite the opposite. It's really of a type that is common in family histories; Bessie married a man Christena disapproved of.
The Windsor Star, 30 November 1946
Though published post-war, As a Watered Garden is set in the final summer before the conflict. I was struck that the Drummond siblings are entirely untouched the Great Depression. Every one of them is thriving. The automobiles used in their departure are spiffy. Though Islay is a secretary, hers is every bit as new and stylish. Even amongst the well-to-do, she really cuts a figure with her stylish outfits. Artie's family aside, not one character struggles with economic circumstance.
As a Watered Garden has been described as the first book in Keith's Georgian Bay Trilogy. Yonder Shining Light and Lilacs in the Dooryard followed, which take the reader through the Second World War into the post-war, though I don't expect I'll be bothering with either.
As a Watered Garden was a perfectly pleasant read, if you like that sort of thing.
The critics rave:
The men and women with whom she peoples her books are sympathetically real and easily recognizable as those one meets in everyday life. And she herself obviously believes that everything always comes out right in the end. While her books may never make any shattering imprint upon the larger stream of literature they leave a very peasant ripple in our Canadian brook.
– Eileen Kerr, The Gazette, 7 December 1946
Object and Access: Lacking the dust jacket, bound in blue boards, my copy once belonged to E.L. MacDougall of 189 Blythwood Road, Toronto.
As I write, two copies are listed for sale online, both offered by London, Ontario booksellers. At US$20.00, the cheaper of the two has retained its dust jacket.
Robert Switzer's I Was Going Anyway as published as a Cock Robin Mystery, a series Macmillan published from 1955 to 1970. Poul Anderson, Lawrence Block, John Creasey, Michael Moorcock, Josephine Tey, and Donald Westlake were amongst the other Cock Robin authors.
But I Was Going Anyway is not a mystery, something remarked upon in contemporary reviews.The only real mystery is Robert Switzer. Not since ne'er do well novelist Kenneth Orvis have I encountered so elusive and intriguing a figure.
There are contradictions, beginning with the 1931 Canadian census. Robert Switzer appears on line number 15 of page number 14 in sub-district number 43 of sub-district Saskatoon (City) in district number 205 of district Saskatoon. That's a lot to take in, so I'm providing this link. If you prefer, this screenshot captures the most pertinent information (click to enlarge):
The 1931 census would have been the first since his birth. But when was that birth? The census taker records Robert's age as eight, but his year of birth as 1925.
Elsewhere on the same page, Robert and older siblings Helen and Franklin are recorded as students. The family owned a radio and lived in a rented stucco house that still stands at 1026 Aird Street, Saskatoon.
Robert Switzer's first known published short story, 'No End to Anything,' appeared in the July 1946 issue of Esquire. You'll find his name on the cover under the FICTION heading.
The same issue provides a brief contributor profile of the author:
'No End to Anything' was the first of nineteen Robert Switzer stories published by Esquire between July 1946 and April 1957. During that span, the magazine published two further profiles, the one from the August 1947 issue being my favourite:
'The Big Bout' was the first of two Switzer boxing stories published in Esquire. The second, 'Death of a Prize Fighter' is the one to read. The June 1949 issue in which it appears also features Switzer's third and final contributor profile:
Though Switzer continued to publish in Esquire – eleven stories in the eight years that followed – there were no further profiles. That said, we do have a brief biography published on the back cover of The Tent of the Wicked (New York: Signet, 1956), the author's first novel:
All this leads back to the dust jacket for his last known work, the novel I Was Going Anyway (New York: Macmillan, 1961), which is where my hunt for biographical information began:
It is also where it ends.
Before I close the file – for now, at least – a couple of conclusions and an observation:
Given that Switzer is described as being eight in in 1931, twenty-three in 1946, and twenty-six in 1949, I think it safe to say that the 1931 census taker was incorrect in recording Switzer's year of birth as 1925. As if further evidence was required, we have this from "A Check-list of Contributions of Literary Import to Esquire 1933- 1958" included in The Armchair Esquire (New York: Putnam, 1958):
The matter of Switzer's place of birth is less clear, but my money is on Portland, Oregon, if only because the 1931 Canadian census records an American birth and Esquire reports the same. How explain "born in Canada" and "Canadian-born"? My guess is that those who worked with the author knew him to be Canadian and so made an assumption. If alive today, he would be in his eleventh decade.
Robert Switzer's career as a writer was both short and productive; nineteen Esquire short stories and three novels in fifteen years. Its abrupt end at age thirty-eight leads one to suspect the worst, but I like to think he gave into wanderlust and lived to a grand old age touring Latin America.
Really, I like to think he's traveling still.
Trivia: The Cock Robin name will be familiar to Ian Fleming collectors. The first American edition of Live and Let Die (New York: Macmillan, 1955) was published as a "Cock Robin Thriller." As far as I know, it is the only book that bears this device.
My thanks to Phil Stephensen-Payne, editor of the The FictionMags Index, who joined me in the hunt for Robert Switzer. I've long relied on the Index for information and recommend it highly.
A writer, ghostwriter, écrivain public, literary historian and bibliophile, I'm the author of Character Parts: Who's Really Who in CanLit (Knopf, 2003), and A Gentleman of Pleasure: One Life of John Glassco, Poet, Translator, Memoirist and Pornographer (McGill-Queen's UP, 2011; shortlisted for the Gabrielle Roy Prize). I've edited over a dozen books, including The Heart Accepts It All: Selected Letters of John Glassco (Véhicule, 2013) and George Fetherling's The Writing Life: Journals 1975-2005 (McGill-Queen's UP, 2013). I currently serve as series editor for Ricochet Books and am a contributing editor for Canadian Notes & Queries. My most recent book is The Dusty Bookcase (Biblioasis, 2017), a collection of revised and expanded reviews first published here and elsewhere.
