Short pieces on books I've always meant to review (but haven't).
They're in storage as we build our new home.
Patience, please.
Deeper Into the Forest
Roy Daniells
Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1948
72 pages
72 pages
A thing of beauty, and so a joy forever, I bought my pristine copy of Deeper Into the Forest three years ago for fifteen dollars. That price – less than a can of President's Choice coffee – speaks ill of this country's recognition of its literature.
But who am I to judge? I still haven't read Daniells' collection.
Deeper Into the Forest holds the distinction of being the very first Indian File Book, a series that would include three Governor General's Award-winners: James Reaney's The Red Heart (1949), James Wreford Watson's Of Time and the Lover (1950), and P.K. Page's The Metal and the Flower (1956). The ninth and last last Indian File Book, John Glassco's The Deficit Made Flesh (1958), is the one I know the best. For a time, Leonard Cohen's The Spice Box of Earth was under consideration as the tenth title.
Indian File Books had uniform dust jackets; the series name had to do with the boards hidden underneath each. All nine were adaptations of designs by "West Coast and Plains Indians" by WASP Torontonian Paul Arthur.
Cultural appropriation, of course.
Did anyone notice?
Indian File Books had print runs of 400 copies.
The bulk of Glassco's were remaindered for 29¢.
Hardly anyone pays them notice now.
Indian File Books had uniform dust jackets; the series name had to do with the boards hidden underneath each. All nine were adaptations of designs by "West Coast and Plains Indians" by WASP Torontonian Paul Arthur.
 |
| Deeper Into the Forest Roy Daniells |
 |
| Of Time and the Lover James Wreford Watson |
 |
| The Deficit Made Flesh John Glassco |
Cultural appropriation, of course.
Did anyone notice?
Indian File Books had print runs of 400 copies.
The bulk of Glassco's were remaindered for 29¢.
Hardly anyone pays them notice now.
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