The Dusty Bookcase:A Journey Through Canada'sForgotten, Neglected, and Suppressed Writing
The Dusty Bookcase:A Journey Through Canada'sForgotten, Neglected, and Suppressed Writing
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| Blondes Don't Cry Merlda Mace 1949 |
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| The Pale Blonde of Sands Street William Chapman White 1950 |
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| Come Blonde, Came Murder Peter George 1953 |
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| A Body for a Blonde Ken McLeod 1954 |
Strangers in the street demand her autograph. Photographers hound her in clubs and restaurants. Stewardesses stare at her on flights.
And occasionally, some particularly aggressive fan refuses to believe her assertion that she is not Margaret Trudeau.
She's not.
Virginia Podessar [sic], a Toronto model, just looks remarkably like her.
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| The Regina Leader-Post, 15 September 1979 |
Charles Templeton [...] will probably have some idea by mid-November whether he is launched on yet another successful career, this time as a novelist. His meticulously researched first novel, The Kidnapping of the President (McClelland and Stewart), comes out in October; within, say, 90 days from now he'll know whether he's another Arthur Hailey or just a guy who once wrote a novel.
It took at lot less than ninety days.— Robert Fulford, The Windsor Star, 6 September 1974
Such a sad state of affairs. The blind led the blind... and yet things did improve. In 1962, Hugh MacLennan wrote Ross that the NCL was on its way to becoming "one of the most important things in Canadian publishing." He went on to praise the series for making available the previously unavailable and scarce, adding: "These, with the introductions, are building a true body of relationship between critic and author and the public."
(MacLennan's Barometer Rising had already found a place in the series, and would soon be joined by Each Man's Son.)
Callaghan was on the Left Bank in Paris among the American expatriates, trying his hand at stories for the little magazines of experimental writing...No, Morley Callaghan was then studying law at the University of Toronto. It was in 1929 that Callaghan first visited the Left Bank, by which time he was a published author comfortably installed within Charles Scribner's stable.
...Grove, who had written for twenty years in the intervals of an itinerant farm-hand's existence, did not get a first novel into print until 1925.It was in 1905 that Frederick Philip Grove – or, as King seems to prefer, "Philip Grove" – published his first novel. The "itinerant farm hand's existence" included a stretch in Austrian prison, bohemian living in Berlin and Paris, drinks with Andre Gide and H.G. Wells... and I won't go into his crossdressing wife with the birdcage bustle.
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| A Canadian Twilight and Other Poems of War and Peace Bernard Freeman Trotter Toronto: McClelland, Goodchild & Stewart, 1917 |
The Dusty Bookcase:A Journey Through Canada'sForgotten, Neglected, and Suppressed Writing
There was that one matter – that one important matter I have hitherto omitted – the wondrous flash and glitter that sparked the sky, and which we had plainly seen the previous evening – a glorious glitter of indescribable beauty, rising to the heavens and awe-inspiring – like the scintillating wonders of a thousand sunsets!
"Captain Farley!" I ejaculated. "He's – he's gone!"Convinced that the captain has been abducted by someone or something from the valley, the remaining members of the team race onward to find Farley dead. The archeologist is next to disappear, but he's soon discovered alive in an ancient temple:
In the centre of that mighty hall was a raised, altar-like dais of stone, across which lay the bound body of young Reid. And standing over him, a wild joy of triumph lighting her features, was a naked, yellow-skinned woman, of such a weird, indescribable, barbaric beauty, as to be almost terrifying!Next thing you know, Su-Ella is hovering over the young man in bondage and, "her nude breasts rising and falling, her shapely body quivering with desire," sucks his soul from his mouth. Professor and pugilist both take flight. Of the two, Ace proves the faster runner – perhaps because Carruthers can't help but be distracted by Su-Ella's hot bod – and yet it's Ace who gets it: "With arms whipped tightly around him her naked body crushing his". Still running, Carruthers hears "a gurgling, moist and bubbling sound" and turns to see the former boxer "limp in her arms". Just when it looks like Carruthers himself will go flaccid, dawn breaks, the evening is over, and Su-Ella flies away.
A tall, nude yellow-skinned woman whose glorious body, in the glow of two nearby torches, seemed as living gold, that flowed and rippled in symmetrical motion with her every movement. A tumbling mass of wavy, jet black hair, fell almost to her ankles. Her shapely breasts, large and firm, seemed as living, yellow globes, and were adorned only with the two huge diamonds clasped to their high tips. And even as we made our silent entrance, she threw back her head in a wild, barbaric laugh, that revealed her white teeth; to gloat over the helpless man before her, then speak in the tongue of ancient China – a language I understood.
"And so, now you know, rash intruder. Yes, I am Su-Ella, Queen of The Black Star, who comes from that distant world at irregular periods to seek my victims here, and fears only the sunlight. How I am able to pass through the dark, cold wastes of space is a secret known to me alone!"
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| Sue Ellen |
I must write faster – faster! The hands on the nearby clock are both well on to four o'clock in the morning, and I must finish my story. Already the first streaks of gray are beginning to creep up in the eastern sky. But that same gray not only heralds the approaching dawn – it – it heralds my death! It heralds my ending in a manner so utterly and unthinkably horrible as to be brain-reeling!Students who have pulled all-nighters will recognize this panic.
And as I write I wonder. Could it be that she can find me, even in this distant land? It is possible that even at this late hour her hellish power could bring her to me, or me to her? I wonder if – if –
What – what's that I hear? It sounds like the flapping of wings! It – it is wings! Yes it is – and they are coming closer – closer to the open window. In the name of sanity – oh! oh, my God – what's coming through the wind—
FIN
