The Dusty Bookcase: The Incomplete Repent at Leisure

07 February 2022

The Incomplete Repent at Leisure

A follow-up to last month's post on Joan Walker's Repent at Leisure.

Repent at Leisure
Joan Walker
The Star Weekly, 5 October 1957

The Star Weekly would like the reader to know that Joan Walker's Repent at Leisure is an award-winning novel.

Do not be impressed by this. In its day, the Ryerson Fiction Award was second only to the Governor General's Award, but it had little impact, nor did it receive much notice. Unlike most literary prizes, it was presented before publication, as detailed here in this old Winnipeg Tribune piece (which I expect is a rewritten press release):

27 June 1944

"Spy, detection and crime stories are ineligible," yet other genres were just fine? Seems unfair, especially when one considers that a good number of its fourteen winners – Here Stays Good Yorkshire (1945) by Will R. Bird, Desired Heaven (1953) by Evelyn Richardson, Pine Roots (1956) and The King Tree (1958) by Gladys Taylor, and Short of the Glory (1960) by E.M. Granger Bennett – fall neatly into the historical fiction category.

I can't quite wrap my head around Ryerson's publishing strategy. Why hand off the novel's debut to the Star Weekly?

Even more curious, Repent at Leisure wouldn't arrive in bookstores until the second half of December. Was the idea to take advantage of last minute Christmas shoppers?

Star Weekly readers who loved Repent at Leisure and longed for more of Veronica and Louis's troubled romance were in for a treat because the "STAR WEEKLY COMPLETE NOVEL" wasn't the complete novel. In fact, the Star Weekly Repent at Leisure isn't half as long as the Ryerson Fiction Award winner.

While I'm sure it's possible to publish a 94,000-word novel in fourteen tabloid-sized pages, I very much doubt it could be read with the naked eye.

How was it done? Cut the first two chapters to start.

This Repent at Leisure begins shortly after Veronica's arrival in Canada. There's nothing of her relationship with her parents, their concerns over her hasty marriage, or the descriptions of post-war air travel that this reader found so interesting. It opens instead with our heroine sitting, waiting her turn to meet with a customs officer.

Other cuts aren't as glaring, but they are obvious. I had some fun in comparing the two versions. This is the Ryerson version with the words cut in the Star Weekly struck out:

I like this scene because the Westmount Nash family come off as snobs of the highest order, which I'm certain wasn't the author's intent. They also seem so very English -– more so than the immigrant who has just arrived from London. Gone is the awkward and unnatural dialogue about the "Indian village Cartier found in fifteen-something on his first trip up the St. Lawrence;" which shouldn't have made it past Ryeson's editor.

The most interesting thing in comparing the two came in the discovery of additions made to the condensed version. Alan smokes whilst poring over the map in the Star Weekly edition. Margaret suggests that he's found only one Giroux Street because his map isn't up-to-date. Jane hands Veronica a cup of tea and a pink linen napkin.

All minor changes, but mysterious given that the task at hand. And who did that task? Was it the author herself? The copyright notice suggests as much.