Irving Layton Rides a Rooster

Frank Newfeld doesn't figure in Irving Layton's memoir Waiting for the Messiah, he makes no appearance in Elspeth Cameron's 517-page Layton biography, and yet I'd argue that the designer's work played a key role in the poet's public persona.

I don't think I'm stepping out on too frail a limb in writing that The Laughing Rooster (working titles: Poems in Bad Taste and The Indelicate Touch) is the most illustrious Layton cover. It displays a bit of the whimsy that we might have seen in Newfeld's rejected "tits" cover for Leonard Cohen. Published by McClelland & Stewart in 1964, it opens in cinematic style with sixteen pages of images, credits, contents, dedication and more. At one point, rooster and poet face off.

The former seems to win – the rooster's image appears four more times before Layton begins his Preface.

Of course, it all really begins with Newfeld's first Layton cover, A Red Carpet for the Sun (1959). The poet's big press debut, it sold more than 8000 copies, elevating Layton to the level of national celebrity.

A Red Carpet for the Sun

Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1959

Those eyes. Were they too intense for our cousins to the south? A different Newfeld design was used in the American edition. A shame. 

A Red Carpet for the Sun

Highlands, NC: Jonathan Williams, 1959

The Swinging Flesh

Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1961

Balls for a One-Armed Juggler

Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1963

Periods of the Moon

Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1967

Related posts:

McClelland's Expriment, Newfeld's Art

Frank Newfeld's Masterpiece (and Leonard Cohen's Unseen Face for Tits)

The Brilliance of Frank Newfeld

Freedom to Read Week: Episode

"A remarkable first novel about madness – its feelings, treatment and powers."

— Books of the Month 

"Filth and muck."

— Raoul Mercier, K.C.

On 17 February 1956, a bitterly cold day in Ottawa, the American News Company was found guilty of having in its possession for the purpose of distribution "obscene written matter, to wit: 117 copies of a book entitled 'Episode', written by Peter W. Denzer."

The distributor was fined $5000 ($42,500 today), roughly $43 ($356) for each and every copy of the 25¢ paperback. This absurd amount would be described in The Canadian Bar Review as "by far and away the heaviest penalty imposed for an offence of this nature in Ontario, and probably Canada." Meanwhile, Crown prosecutor Raoul Mercier, the future Attorney General of Ontario, was clicking his heels.

The Vancouver Sun, 18 February 1956 

Peter Denzer died earlier the month at the age of ninety; his friend Peter Anastas paid tribute with a very fine obituary. It's important to note, I think, that the author of Episode, a novel about a man's struggle with mental illness, had himself suffered. What's more, Peter Denzer had been an early defender and sympathetic champion of those struggling with mental health disorders.

Episode is, I suppose, somewhat autobiographical. Hugh MacLennan was an admirer of the novel. His biographer, Elspeth Cameron, describes it as a precursor to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. I've yet to come across a negative review. Everything I've read about Episode indicates that it is both fascinating and important. And yet, Canadians who want to read Episode are out of luck. You see, while Episode, can be found in libraries throughout the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia, not a single Canadian library – public or academic – has a copy.

Those looking to place blame need only look to this little, little man:

 Raoul Mercier

1897-1967

Ex Libris: Hugo McPherson

Nothing at all remarkable about the inscription here to critic Hugo McPherson, interest is to be found in the book itself. Nearly half a century after publication, Das Romanwerk Hugh MacLennans still ranks as one of a very few foreign language works of criticism devoted to a Canadian author. Its existence reflects the once great spread of MacLennan's work outside the English speaking world. His novels were translated into French, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Swedish, Estonian, Czech, Romanian, Polish and German. In Hugh MacLennan: A Writer's Life (University of Toronto, 1981), biographer Elspeth Cameron writes that between 1963 and 1969 the German language edition of Barometer Rising sold over 100,000 copies.

I venture to say that not one of these translations is in print today. Here, in his home and native land, the fall of MacLennan's star has been even more dramatic. Two of his seven novels are out of print, as are every one of his collections of essays. I'd like to think that a revival is on the horizon. In Canadian letters there are so few second acts.