Not to Be Confused with Jesus of Montreal

Josie of Montreal
Florian Delorme
Montreal: Bodero Editions, [1969?]
126 pages

Porn seemed to be everywhere when I was a child. It was sold at the bookstore in the Beaconsfield Shopping Centre and at Gerard's, the local bakery at which my mother bought our pumpernickel. The United Cigar Store in the Fairview Mall displayed Beeline paperbacks right next to the latest issues of MAD, Cracked, and Crazy. As a nine-year-old, I couldn't help but notice.

Published by Beeline in 1972, Back-Door Swappers had appeared previously under the title Once Upon an Orgy. It would later be repackaged as Best Laid Friends and Thrills with Lil. The history of Josie of Montreal isn't nearly so well documented. I'm afraid I won't be able to add much, though I can ward off a misconception that might arise from its cover.

Florian Delorme had nothing to do with Après-ski, which was published in 1966 by Montreal's Éditions du Belier and was written by Philippe Blanchont. It's back cover provides this bold description:

Un roman basé sur les faits authentiques de la liberté sexuelle qui se déroufe sous prétexte dans nos centres de villéglalure canadiens. Pour la prémiere fois un écrivain à la courage de donner a la littérature canadienne française un exposé, qui, sans doute, consternera les derniers vestiges de notre société purîtane.

Because I haven't read Après-ski, I can't speak to the veracity of the publisher's claims. And yet even before reading Josie of Montreal, I knew its cover copy to be a lie:

Josie of Montreal was not a runaway best seller. My copy, in which this claim is made, is the first and only edition. An uncommon book, it's held by Library and Archives Canada, the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec, the University of Alberta, and Simon Fraser University. All of two copies are currently listed for sale online.

It took some time to get through Josie of Montreal. The novel is a difficult read, not because it challenges – as, say, Nabokov's The Gift or Tull's Untitled – but because incest and paedophilia feature. I won't argue with anyone who suggests necrophilia plays a part.

You may not wish to read further.

The titular character is a fifteen-year-old orphan who lives with Joseph, her sexagenarian grandfather, in Plateau-Mont-Royal. Joseph lusts after Josie, and keeps a poster-size photograph of her, in bikini, on his bedroom wall. Josie teases by trying to slip him the tongue with each goodnight kiss, and asking questions about sex:

"Grandpa, what does it mean, sixty-nine? The other girls talk about it and they laugh. I don't know what is it but I laugh. I'd like to know, just in case. Suppose they ask me to explain what it is... I feel stupid."

Joseph believes his granddaughter an innocent, when in fact she's been sexually active since the age of twelve. The novel's first sex scene involves Jeanne, a classmate who misses the genitive pleasures she once received from her mother. Laurent, Robert, and Pierrot get together with Josie on a daily basis, each taking his turn as Jacques pleasures himself with her discarded panties.

Of course, there's much more sex, as one might expect in a 126-page novel. In this scene, Josie throws herself – quite literally – at Jean, a plasterer working in Joseph's home:

The bold maneuver turned the trick and blew away the man's fears. Panting, breathing hard, he wildly plunged his hand inside the dress which fell slowly to the floor. Jean lifted Josie and he threw her on the bed.
     — Hey, get up! Josie said, giving the plasterer a feeble slap on the cheek. You'll fall asleep.
     Everything had occurred according to plan, completely, rapidly, vehemently and Jean was still dazed.

Jean is dazed. The reader is dazed. What just happened?

This later scene, in which Joseph and his friend Albert hire two teenage prostitutes during a trip to New York, is similarly vague:

Joseph and Albert undress. The girls wash them. They find it odd because they're not used to prostitutes. Funny, the girls don't act like whores. They are outspoken, gay. Alfred says he has no money, Joseph carries the dough. How much? How much do you have? Thirty dollars! That'll do. Give. Joseph gives. Tomorrow, come again? No. We're leaving town. Too bad.
     They leave the house smiling like two college boys having copulated for the first time. 

The week that Joseph spends in New York, leaving his granddaughter alone is the house, is described as the most marvellous of Josie's life. "Never had she been so free, never had she enjoyed such a sustained thrilling sex life." The adolescent love of the cover copy does not feature in the novel. Josie loves no one, and comes to hate her grandfather for being the one man she cannot seduce. After he returns, she enlists Laurent, Robert, Pierrot and Jacques in plotting his murder.

"There have been few heroines more fascinating than Josie, nor heroes more compelling than her incredibly virile 68-year old [sic] grandfather."

Sadly, this is just another publisher's lie.

A mystery: Josie of Montreal appears to be a translation of Les deniers émois, which was published in 1968 by Éditions du Belier. Or is it that Les deniers émois is a translation of Josie of Montreal? The latter has no date of publication, but it does feature this copyright notice:

Les deniers émois provides a 1968 copyright listing Éditions du Belier as its holder. While Library and Archives Canada makes no link between the two novels, Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec not only records Josie of Montreal as a translation of Les deniers émois, it lists its publication date as 1969, and has it that Florian Delorme is a pseudonym.

I'm not sure I care enough to dig deeper.

Fun fact: Josie of Montreal was never adapted to the screen, but Après-ski was! I was surprised to see it included a who's who of vedettes québécoises, including the late René Angélil. Released in 1971, the film is also known as Sex on Skis, Winter Games, and Snowballin'.

Object and Access: A slim mass market paperback. The cover, every bit as accomplished as that of Après ski, is credited to Robert Hennen. The cover of Les deniers émois is credited to R. Henen. The cover illustration is signed Hénen. Take your pick.

As mentioned, two online booksellers offer copies. The cheapest, "very good plus," can be had for US$6.00. The other, "a near to perfect copy," is listed at US$85.00. You know which to buy.

Related post:

Not to be Confused with Bust Planet

The Ten Best Book Buys of a Very Bad Year

An annus horribulus, the death of David Bowie ten days in cast a pall that just wouldn't lift. These have been days of loss and unwelcome surprises, and November 8 killed all hopes for a better New Year.

The evening before the American election, the great Leonard Cohen died. I'd found his Flowers for Hitler a week earlier, squeezed between neglected books in a sidewalk dollar cart. Storm clouds were just about to burst. It's a first edition, but the condition is not the best; booksellers would describe it as a "reading copy." I'm all for reading copies. Books are meant to be read, as this one clearly has. My favourite purchase of 2016, this is how I choose to remember the year... rescuing a book from the rain.

This was the year my collection of Canadian literature took over the ninth of our nine bookcases.

You always knew there was more than one dusty bookcase, right?

Foreign authors have been relegated to the attic, though some sit in the basement of the St Marys Public Library awaiting the semi-annual Book Sale. Anyone looking for a century-old set of Conrad will find themselves in luck this spring.

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Yes, this proved a particularly good year for buying books, despite an increasingly tightening budget. Case in point: the first American edition of Hilda Wade: A Woman of Tenacity of Purpose pictured above. Typically priced comfortably in the three digits, I paid US$6.00 after winning it in an online auction. With ninety-eight illustrations by Gordon Browne, I don't exaggerate in describing it as one of the most beautiful in my collection.

What follows are the eight other favourite acquisitions. You'll note that some weren't book buys but gifts. Given my name, you'll understand that I'm drawn to alliteration.

Linnet: A Romance
Grant Allen
New York: New Amsterdam, 1900

"Allen's last substantial novel," writes biographer Peter Morton. I first learned of this work while researching my first book, Character Parts, and have been hoping to score a copy ever since. Another online auction victory, I won this first American edition for US$16.00.

Black Feather
Benge Atlee
New York: Scribners, 1939

Atlee served in the Royal Army Medical Corps during the Great War. In civilian life, he served as Chair of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at Dalhousie. His only novel, this was a gift from James Calhoun, my collaborator on the reissue of Peregrine Acland's All Else Is Folly.

Josie of Montreal
Florian Delorme
Montreal: Bodero, 1967

Despite the (implied) success of Aprés-Ski, I had no idea this fine example of "ADULT READING" existed until it was given me by author Fraser Sutherland.

Note: A volume in the Aphrodite Collection.

The Midnight Queen
Mrs May Agnes Fleming
New York: Hurst, [n.d.]

One of the three books I'm urging publishers consider returning to print, The Midnight Queen is the one of the most entertaining novels I've read since beginning this exploration. It's no small wonder that Mrs Fleming (1840-1880) was our first bestselling author. You can read my review here.

Edith Percival; Or, Her Heart or Her Hand?
May Agnes Fleming
New York: Street and Smith, [n.d.]

A later edition – perhaps the last – of Mrs Fleming's 1893 bestseller... But wait, didn't she die in 1880? Is it really hers?  This is one of five Street & Smith Flemings won for US$1.99 each on eBay. Mine were the only bids.

Legends of My People the Great Ojibway
Norval Morrisseau
Toronto: Ryerson, 1965

Bought for a dollar earlier this month at the Stratford Salvation Army Thrift Store. Signed by the artist.

A book I'll be handing down to my daughter.

Dust and Ashes
A.C. Stewart
n.p.: Published by the Author, 1910

A curious collection of verse. Regular readers will remember Stewart's "On the Drowning of a French-Canadian Laborer", which I shared this past Labour Day.

A gift from booksellers Vanessa Brown and Jason Dickson of Brown & Dickson in London, Ontario.

The Silver Poppy
Arthur Stringer
New York: Appleton, 1903

I thought I was pretty much done with collecting Stringer, but then spotted this first edition of his debut at London's Attic Books. Price: $10.

The scan doesn't do it justice.

Those poppies really shine.



Let us all work to make 2017 a better year.

I myself resolve to kick harder against the pricks.

Related posts:

Ten of the Best: Spanking Good Book Buys of 2015

Done With Buying Books