Bringing It All Back Home

 

I Was Going Anyway
Robert Switzer
New York: Macmillan, 1961
121 pages

Robert Switzer flew under my radar for decades, it was only last month that I first read his name. I shelled out a bit extra for a copy of I Was Going Anyway with a dust jacket and am glad I did. The rear flap features some very interesting information about the man:

I expect there is some exaggeration in the description of the author's vagabond upbringing. The 1931 Canadian census finds Robert, age eight, living in Saskatoon with his two older siblings and their parents Franklin K. Switzer ("Dentist") and Edna Irene Switzer ("Home Maker"). While it is true that his 1949 Esquire story 'Death of a Prize Fighter' had been widely anthologized, most notably in Prize Stories of 1950: The O. Henry Awards (New York: Doubleday, 1950), it was not his Esquire debut. 

 The first appeared in the magazine three years earlier when Switzer was twenty-three:

'No End to Anything' was followed by eighteen more stories, 'Death of a Prize Fighter' included, all published in Esquire. I've yet to find a single Robert Switzer story to appear in another magazine. The run ends in April 1957 with 'A Terrible Tomorrow,' a story about the desperate search for a young missing girl and the unstable teenager accused with her abduction.

I mention these things of a reason. 

I Was Going Anyway centres on Will, a syndicated sports columnist based in Toronto, and his relationship with a woman named Dorothy, the daughter of a celebrated surgeon, They meet at a party in early winter, enjoy a bit of light flirtation, and then part. Nothing more to see here until Will sends her a Christmas gift. Dorothy responds. Next thing you know, the two have a date for New Year's Eve. When the clock strikes twelve, they have their first kiss.

Will and Dorothy take things slow at the beginning, then speed up the pace considerably, consummating their relationship during a ski weekend in the Laurentians. They return to Toronto engaged. Dorothy's widower father disapproves, but says nothing. And so, arrangements for the happy day commence. Dorothy flies off to Ottawa to consult a college girlfriend, leaving Will behind. What the bride-to-be doesn't know is that there is a woman staying in her fiancé's house.

Erie Clark had arrived a day earlier. It sort of makes sense that Will said nothing about her to Dorothy. Erie and he had never been girlfriend and boyfriend, but they used to sleep with each other. This was fifteen years ago in Montreal, when both were in their late teens. Will was struggling to find his footing in one of the dailies and Erie performed onstage at one of the city's legendary burlesque clubs. They had aspirations, but only Will's was realized. Erie, who'd planned on becoming a Hollywood star married to a wealthy man, instead ended up homeless on Will's doorstep.

He let her in.

What exactly does Erie want from Will? I don't think she herself knows. If pressed, I'd say the answer is shelter from the storm. A second guess, related to the first, would be that she just wanted the company of someone whom she'd known to be kind. Those fifteen years had been rough. Like me, critic Ron Gobin was struck by this passage, quoting it in his review for the Honolulu Star-Bulletin (23 April 1961):

This is how Erie is introduced:

These passages are gems. To my knowledge, I Was Going Anyway is the first and only time they ever appeared in print. The same can be said for most every other – but not every other. I Was Going Anyway includes dozens of sentences lifted from the author's Esquire stories. It also includes the better part of 'Death of a Prize Fighter,' reworked to include sportswriter Will as witness.

I had no reason to suspect this when reading the novel. I Was Going Anyway is seamless, so smooth, so polished that it reads as if it was written in one feverish go, beginning with the first word and ending with the last. I didn't catch on until I began reading Switzer's short stories.

A case self-plagiarism? I suppose, but I'll give him a pass. 

The June 1949 edition of Esquire reports that the short story writer had turned down repeated offers from publishers wanting a novel. Switzer would eventually write two for Signet before I Was Going Anyway. The first, The Tent of the Wicked (1956), was a paperback original. The following year he was hired to provide a novelization of Albert Lewin's screenplay for The Living Idol. 

I wonder whether any publisher approached Switzer about a short story collection? I'm guessing not. I'm also guessing that he saw I Was Going Anyway as an opportunity to rescue the best bits of his Esquire stories from the landfill.

This is pure speculation on my part, of course.

With few exceptions, reviews of I Was Going Anyway were very positive – "dulled by lapses into offensive language," sniffed the Buffalo Courier Express (30 April 1961) – but there was no second printing. There has never been a paperback edition. The worst part of Robert Switzer's story as a writer is that it ends here, a mere fifteen years after 'No End to Everything.' With its publication, perhaps before, he went silent and vanished.

I Was Going Anyway is both his last book and his best work. It stands with The Long November, Hot Freeze, The Crime on Cote des Neiges, and The Damned and Destroyed as the very best of post-war Canadian noir.

Trivia: The Buffalo Courier Express is extremely sensitive regarding language. Granted, I was born after I Was Going Anyway was published, but my twentieth-century eyes see only one word that might offend. In a late chapter, a Montreal Morality Squad cop named Maisonneuve fills a Toronto police detective in on the burlesque club run by Erie's old boss Piggy Latourelle:

This is the earliest use of the word I've encountered in a Canadian novel.

About the author: I've uncovered more about Robert Switzer, but this is already running long. I'll post more next Monday. Stay tuned, the jacket's author bio contains one whopping error of fact!

Object and Access: Such an odd-looking book. I bought it not knowing the page count, so was surprised when it arrived. I Was Going Anyway is a very slim hardcover, slimmer than many mass market paperbacks I have from the time, despite it's olive green boards. What's more, the yellowing pages aren't much better than newsprint.

As I write, four copies are listed for sale online, all from American booksellers. The cheapest is a library discard with "musty odor Due [sic] to age and/or environmental conditions, the pages of this book have darkened." Best to take a pass.

After that we have four copies. At US$3.99, the least expensive lacks a dust jacket. And don't you want that jacket? After that we have three, and only three, that do have the dust jacket, ranging in price from US$20.00 to US$34.00. As might be expected, the most dear is in the best condition.

Do not expect to find I Was Going Anyway in your local library. A WorldCat search suggests that the only copies held by Canadian libraries are found at Queen's University, Library and Archives Canada, and the University of Toronto's Thomas Fischer Rare Book Library.

Saskatoon Public Library take note.  

I Was Going Anyway was read for the 1961 Club hosted by Simon and  Karen. In doing so, I broke my New Year's resolution to read and review only women authors in 2026. Before you shame, it was also read for work. It was just too good not to share.

Other 1961 books I've reviewed over the years:

Bottoms Up - Jock Carroll

A Dum-Dum for the President - Martin Brett [Douglas Sanderson]

Return to Today - Margerie Scott

And for fun, here's one from 1861:

Edith Percival - May Agnes Fleming