The Heart Accepts It All – John Glassco

The first day of National Poetry Month seems a good time to mention my forthcoming book The Heart Accepts It All: Selected Letters of John Glassco. I've never been much good when it comes to  salesmanship, so will leave the task to publisher Véhicule Press.

From their catalogue:

A brilliant and enigmatic literary figure.

Decades after his death, John Glassco (1909-1981) remains Canada’s most enigmatic literary figure. The Heart Accepts It All: Selected Letters of John Glassco draws back the curtain on this self-described ‘great practitioner of deceit.’ We see the delight he took in revealing his many literary hoaxes to friends, and the scorn he had for literary fashion. The letters reflect his convictions about literature, other writers and his own talent, while documenting struggles with publishers, pirates and censors. 

    Born into one of Montreal’s wealthiest families, Glassco turned his back on privilege for a life in letters. At age eighteen, having been published in Paris, his voice suddenly went silent. His unexpected return to the literary scene in 1957 coincided with the great flowering of Canadian literature. In the years that followed, he produced a unique body of work that encompasses poetry, memoir, translation, and several bestselling books of pornography. 

    Collected here are the few surviving letters from his youthful adventures in France and three previously unpublished poems. Amongst his correspondents were Maurice Girodias, F.R. Scott, A.J.M. Smith, Ralph Gustafson, Leon Edel and Margaret Atwood.

It's an honour to again find myself associated with this great talent.

Cross-posted at A Gentleman of Pleasure.

Canada's Most Popular Writers (25 Years Ago)?

Unearthed this past weekend, this little list from the May 1987 issue of Books in Canada. It is as described, a "studiously unscientific survey", consisting only of those readers who cared to respond and sacrifice what was then a 34¢ stamp. Still, I think it interesting enough to comment, thereby risking ridicule and ruffled feathers.

I'll begin by stating the obvious (to me at any rate): The number of respondents was likely quite small, as indicated by the number of ties. And yet I think that the top five authors is an accurate reflection of the time.

Here they are again with what would have been their most recent books:

1. Alice Munro – The Progress of Love (1986)
2. Margaret Atwood – The Handmaid's Tale (1985)
3. Timothy Findley – The Telling of Lies (1986)
4. Robertson Davies – What's Bred in the Bone (1985)
     Margaret Laurence – A Christmas Birthday Story (1982)

The unexpected comes with the five names that follow. The presence of Mavis Gallant, whom I maintain has never been accorded proper respect and recognition, is a pleasant surprise, while Janette Turner Hospital, Marian Engel and Audrey Thomas are... well, simply surprises. I don't mean to belittle, but I dare say that they wouldn't figure in a top ten "People's Choice" today.

But then, who would? Carol Shields, whose The Stone Diaries was six years in the future, seems a sure bet. Timothy Findley would be down, if not out. Richler would be up, bucking a trendy decent of the deceased. And here I return to the late Mrs Shields in stating boldly that she would have ranked higher in 2003, when she was still amongst us, than she does today.

How forgetful we are. All but two of the writers on the 1987 Books in Canada list were living. The exceptions, Margaret Laurence and Marian Engel, would have been safely described as "recently deceased".

No authors of another century feature on this "People Choice" – the first half of the twentieth century is unrecognized. Are we Canadians not unique? Imagine an English list without Shakespeare, Austen, the Brontës and Dickens; a French list lacking Balzac, Flaubert and de Maupassant; or an American top ten without Whitman, Fitzgerald and Hemingway.

The most important and sad observation one might make about the Books in Canada list is this: francophones do not figure. Gabrielle Roy, perhaps the best hope, is absent, as are Michel Tremblay, Anne Hébert and Antonine Maillet.

Hector de Saint-Denys Garneau?

Don't give him a second thought.

Books in Canada, vol. 16, no. 4 (May 1987)
RIP

The Mystery Writer Mystery Unravels

'Keeping an Eye Out for Pamela Fry' pays off:

A writer friend informs that Pamela Fry, author of Harsh Evidence and The Watching Cat, is the very same Pamela Fry who once worked as an editor at McClelland & Stewart. Though Miss Fry's years with the publisher were not many – 1965 to 1971 – she did work with several canonical favourites, including Sinclair Ross, Ernest Buckler and Farley Mowat. I imagine she'll be best remembered not for her mysteries, but as the editor of The Edible Woman, Margaret Atwood's debut novel. A high point to be sure.

The low? Look no further than Eric Koch's ill-fated satire The French Kiss (1969), which I mention here only because the book just might lay claim to the worst launch in Canadian publishing history. In Jack, McClelland biographer James King tells us that The French Kiss was on bookstore shelves when legal advice came down that members of Quebec's Johnson family might have been slandered in its pages:

The three thousand books were recalled, small slips pasted over the offending passages and the copies then returned to retailers. Jack only learned of the potentially disastrous situation at the book's launch at the home of the book's editor Pamela Fry. He called her aside, told her the book would have to be recalled and acted quickly and decisively to prevent a lawsuit.

According to King, Pamela Fry left M&S in for a position on a federal government task force. In his autobiography, Drawing on Type, designer Frank Newfeld places her c.1980 at the National Gallery of Canada. From there the trail grows cold.

Thanks go out to my "writer friend" and to fellow sleuth Richard Blanchard.

Related post: Keeping an Eye Out for Pamela Fry

Atwood et al. Shill for Apple

An advert published twenty-five years ago this month in Books in Canada finds McClelland and Stewart under the sway of the "computer evangelicals of Apple Canada Inc." I had no idea such people existed. Could it be that I was out when they came to call? My first computer, bought the following year, was a PC. I've since seen the light.

Not Really So Fantastique