Margaret Millar en français (et une petite histoire)

Several years ago, I had the idea of including Margaret Millar in the Véhicule Press Ricochet series. My plan was to revive every one of the out-of-print novels she'd set in Canada: The Devil Loves Me, Wall of Eyes, The Iron Gates, and Fire Will Freeze. I was hoping to find some way of adding An Air That Kills, her last with a Canadian setting, though it was then in print from Stark House Press.

By great coincidence, I knew Millar's literary executor; we'd first met decades ago, when the author was still alive. Response to my query brought the news that Syndicate Books had just negotiated the rights to reprint every single Margaret Millar title.

As a series editor, I was discouraged; as a fan, I could not have been more excited. At long last, I'd be afforded the opportunity to read uncommon Millar novels like The Invisible Worm, The Weak-Eyed Bat, Experiment in Spring, and Wives and Lovers.

The first volume of Syndicate's seven-volume Complete Millar, was published in September 2016. Titled The Master at Her Zenith, it includes Vanish in an Instant, Wives and Lovers, Beast in View, An Air That Kills, and The Listening Walls. Four more volumes have followed, returning a total of twenty-two novels to print. I've been pacing myself. The last two volumes of the Complete Millar will be published this year.

"Arguably the most talented English-Canadian woman writer of her generation, as a genre writer who lived much of her life in the United States Millar is often ignored by Canadian critics," I wrote in Millar's Canadian Encyclopedia entry. Had it not been for Gabrielle Roy, "English-Canadian" would've been unnecessary.

Is Roy still well known amongst Anglophones? The Tin Flute is studied, which is more than can be said about anything by Millar. This month, Roy's Street of Riches and The Road Past Altamont are being added to Penguin's Modern Classics series.

Sixty-seven years have passed since the publication of The Invisible Worm, Millar's debut, and she has never once had a Canadian publisher. Now is the time for French-language publishers of my home province to embrace her. Nearly every Millar mystery has been translated by Parisian publishers... and nearly all are out of print. As a starting point, I recommend Omelette Canadienne, the translation of Fire Will Freeze, the only Millar novel set in Quebec.

I'll leave you with four favourites.

La femme de sa mort [Vanish in an Instant]
Paris, Presses de la Cité

Mortellement votre [Beast in View]
Paris: Presses de la Cité, 1957

Un air qui tue [An Air That Kills]
Paris: Presses de la cité, 1958

Au violeur! [The Fiend]
Paris: Gallimard,1966

Related posts:

Damaged, Dysfunctional and Decadent Toronto

Kitchener's Grand Dame

Margaret Millar and the Air Up North

Margaret Millar's Great Toronto Murder Mystery
Margaret Millar's Michigan Murder Mystery
The Telephone Always Rings

Desperately Seeking Violet
An 'Other' Novel by Margaret Millar

Kenneth Millar at 100; Ross Macdonald at 59

Kenneth Millar/Ross Macdonald: A Checklist
Compiled by Matthew J. Brucolli
Introduction by Kenneth Millar
Detroit: Gale, 1971

Kenneth Millar was born one hundred years ago today. The first recognition of the anniversary I saw came this past May when Linwood Barclay reviewed the new Ross Macdonald Library of America collection for the Globe & Mail.

Library of America. And why not? After all, Millar was born in Los Gatos, California. His Canadian parents returned to their home and native land a few months later, marking the beginning of a confusing childhood that included a variety of addresses and living arrangements in Vancouver, Kitchener, Wiarton, Winnipeg and Medicine Hat. Kitchener is key. He returned repeatedly to the Southern Ontario city, and as a child lived there longer than another other. It was in Kitchener that he first met and fell for fellow Kitchener-Waterloo Collegiate Institute student Margaret Sturm. In 1931, their respective short story debuts were published in The Grumbler, the school's literary magazine. His, "The South Sea Soup Co.", suffered a printer's error: "Ken Miller".

After graduation, Millar attended Waterloo College (now the University of Waterloo), the University of Western Ontario and the University of Toronto. He married Margaret, who had dropped out to become a writer. And she did… they both did. Ken sold stories, poems and reviews to Saturday Night, but Margaret Millar was the first to publish a novel: The Invisible Worm (1941). The year after publication, the couple moved to Ann Arbor, where Ken had accepted a fellowship at the University of Michigan. Visits aside, the Millars never returned to Canada, settling instead in Santa Barbara, some 450 kilometres south of Ken's birthplace.

Measuring such things is a fool's game, but I think it safe to say that Millar is much more American than, say, Vladimir Nabokov, whose work is also included in the Library of America. Millar saw himself as both Canadian and American, and considered his greatest character to be the same.

I make a deal about of Millar's early years – again – because we Canadians don't. Three years ago, I had to convince the folks at The Canadian Encyclopedia that he was worthy of an entry.

Margaret, too.

The greatest value in Kenneth Millar/Ross Macdonald: A Checklist lies not in the checklist itself, now very much out of date, but in Millar's seven-page Introduction. Here he provides a rather distorted account of that very messy childhood, and the long, agonizing attempts to capture same in "Winter Solstice", an abandoned autobiographical novel. The struggle went on for years, unresolved until "transformed and simplified into a kind of legend, in The Galton Case."

His favourite novel and I still haven't read it.

I've gone over every page in this slim volume, from Matthew J. Brucolli's Compiler's Note ("This checklist is not a bibliography…"), through Kenneth Millar's Introduction ("Having a bibliography put together is in some ways like being psychoanalyzed…"), to the checklist bibliography checklist itself. Introduction aside, the best of it is found in the images.

The end papers are pretty great, though I do wish they were in colour.

(cliquez pour agrandir)

The title pages, also reproduced, provide a nice reflection of the author's decade-long transition from Kenneth Millar to Ross Macdonald:

Millar was just fifty-five when this checklist was published. No one could have known that his career was in its final years. He managed just two more novels before Alzheimer's began taking its toll. Some of the best things about the book are reproduced manuscript pages – five in all – providing glimpses of a keen mind at work… the keen mind that was lost.

(cliquez pour agrandir)

(cliquez pour agrandir)

I'd happily read entire Millar novels this way, beginning with "Winter Solstice". Next Library of America volume, perhaps.

Object and Access: Eighty-six pages in black boards, issued sans dust jacket. I bought my copy two years ago at a London bookstore, a pleasant stroll from the University of Western Ontario. Price: $6.99.

Copies are held by Western and fourteen other Canadian universities. The Toronto Public Library also comes through; Library and Archives Canada does not.

Fifteen copies are listed for sale online, all but one ranging in price from US$12.50 to US$90. Condition is not a factor. The fifteenth, the exception, is inscribed by Millar to his lawyer Harris Seed, and features laid-in "a bookmark issued by the publisher that prints a poem by the author that also bears his holograph signature in ink." Clearly, the copy to present during this season of gift giving. Price: US$1250.

Related post:

Munro, Bellow, Millar and Identity

A Rant on Saul Bellow's 100th Birthday

Today marks the one hundredth anniversary of Saul Bellow's birth.

Take my word for it.

The Canadian Encyclopedia, The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature and the Encyclopedia of Literature in Canada have no entries. Why should they? After all, he was only born in Canada. He only began his education in Canada. He only decided to become a writer in Canada.

Saul Bellow was nine when his family left for the States.

Those aren't formative years, right?

Weird that we named a library after him.

Related posts:

Munro, Bellow, Millar, Macdonald and Identity

Reclaiming Mark Strand

Late of the Bowery

Remembering Ron Scheer… on a Friday

Ron Scheer died this past weekend. He was my teacher. We never met.

A son of Nebraska, for more than four years Ron served as a patient guide through the frontier literature of a century past. His blog, Buddies in the Saddle, opened the eyes of this cynical easterner so that I might recognize that these weren't simple novels of cowboys and Indians, but of commerce, railroads, mining, farming, timber, politics, suffrage, temperance, religion and racism.

Early last year Ron was diagnosed with brain cancer. Buddlies in the Saddle took a turn toward the personal. Ron's posts on books were now punctuated by musing on life, health, beauty, family. Family was the subject of his final post.

Ron posted his last book review seven weeks ago. His subject was Blue Pete: "Half-Breed", a popular 1921 novel by Ontarian Luke Allan (né William Lacey Amy).  The Canadian Encyclopedia has no entry on Allan, nor does The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature, nor does W.H. New's Encyclopedia of Literature in Canada; everything I know about the writer and his work comes from Ron.

In the four years and nine months of Buddies in the Saddle, Ron tagged thirty book reviews with the word "Canada". Most were written by Canadians, while others had a Canadian setting. Some covered contemporary writing, but most came from the days of great and great-great-grandparents:

The Outlander – Gil Adamson
Blue Pete: "Half-Breed" – Luke Allan
The Blue Wolf – William Lacey Amy
Alton of Somasco – Harold Bindloss
The Boss of Wind River – A.M. Chisolm
Desert Conquest – A.M. Chisolm
The Doctor – Ralph Connor
The Story of the Foss River Ranch – Ridgwell Cullum
Woodsmen of the West – Martin Allerdale Grainger

A Man of Two Countries – Alice Harriman
The Promise – James B. Hendryx
Out of Drowning Valley – Susan Carleton Jones
The Stone Angel – Margaret Laurence
A Daughter of the Snows – Jack London
Scarlett of the Mounted – Marguerite Merington

The Lost Cabin Mine – Frederick Niven
Northern Lights – Gilbert Parker
The Backwoodsmen – Charles G.D. Roberts
Breaking Smith's Quarter Horse – Paul St. Pierre
Smith and Other Events – Paul St. Pierre
The Spell of the Yukon and Other Verses – Robert W. Service
The Trail of '98 – Robert W. Service
Raw Gold – Bertrand W. Sinclair
Big Timber – Bertrand W. Sinclair
Wild West – Bertrand W. Sinclair
The Prairie Wife – Arthur Stringer
The Last Crossing - Guy Vanderhaeghe
A Good Man – Guy Vanderhaeghe
Frontier Stories – Cy Warman
The Settler – Herman Whitaker

So many neglected titles. Small wonder that Ron was a regular at Friday's Forgotten Books, that weekly round-up hosted by mystery writer Patti Abbott. His was a unique voice. Friday's Forgotten Books will not be the same without him.

"I read old books so you don’t have to," Ron wrote more than once. The thing was that he made you want to read them. His enthusiasm was infectious. He was a dogged researcher; I suspect he often had a hard time moving on. Ron's thoughts on Raw Gold by British Columbian Bertrand W. Sinclair spanned two posts. His longest review, it begins:

I have this funny habit when I hold an old library book. I wonder how long it’s been sitting on the shelf in the stacks untouched, then of the different hands that have turned its pages over the years.

I share the very same habit. Now, picking up Ralph Connor's The Doctor, I can't help but think of Ron.

Ron read this novel. 

RIP

Mistake at Beechwood Cemetery?

As 2012 draws to a close, I find myself wondering whether this was the year in which we should have been celebrating the sesquicentennial of William Wilfred Campbell's birth. If so, where would we have held the parade?

It's a mystery to me that such uncertainty envelopes the date and place of this Confederation Poet's birth. After all, 'twas only 150 (or so) years ago; one would think that the son of an Anglican clergyman would have a good solid record of his christening.

The plaque pictured above, standing not twenty paces from Campbell's grave at Ottawa's Beechwood Cemetery, tells visitors that the poet's year of birth was 1862, yet the unusual bench/memorial marking the grave itself records the year as 1858.

In her Introduction to William Wilfred Campbell: Selected Poetry and Essays (1987), editor Laurel Boone writes that the poet was born in 1860 at Athens, a township not too far from Brockville in eastern Ontario. Ms Boone revises her claim in the fourteenth volume of The Dictionary of Canadian Biography (1994), providing only a probable date – 15 June 1860 – and a likely place of birth: Newmarket, some 300 or so kilometres to the west. 

 Tracy Ware is confident in The Canadian Encyclopedia, naming Berlin – now Kitchener – as Campbell's birthplace, but shows caution concerning the date: "1 June 1858?"

In his Encyclopedia of Canadian Literature, W.H. New shows no hesitation whatsoever: "b Berlin (Kitchener), ON, 1 June 1858".

The entry George Wicken penned for The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature challenges with the pronouncement that Campbell was born in 1860 "in Newmarket, Canada West (not in Berlin/Kitchener, in 1858, as has been supposed)".

from The Poems of Wilfred Campbell (Toronto: William Briggs, 1905)

All agree, at least, that Campbell was born somewhere in Ontario in 1858 or 1860, but there's not a single source out there that supports 1862, the year cast (pun intended) by Beechwood. I'd like to think that the cemetery's plaque is the result of further research, but I'm not so sure. My queries have brought this response:

From the information available in our records, the informant for the passing of Mr. William Wilfred Campbell was his son in law [sic] Mr. E. Malloch. He is probably the person who provided the information on Mr. Campbell to the funeral home (‘Rogers & Burney Fineral Home’) and to the cemetery. Our records indicate that Mr. Campbell was 56 when he passed, that is why you get the ‘abt 1862’ year of birth on the ancestry website. We do not have any other details on the date of birth. 

Confidence is further shaken by the plaque itself, which sums up Campbell's life in just two sentences:

AN OUTSTANDING FIGURE IN CANADIAN POETRY, CAMPBELL HAD A LONG AND DISTINGUISHED CAREER AS A WRITER, CLERGYMAN AND CIVIL SERVANT. HE AUTHORED MANY NOVELS AND WAS APPOINTED INTO THE DEPARTMENT OF MILITIA IN 1883 AND THEN IN 1897 MOVED TO THE PRIVY COUNCIL OFFICE.

"HE AUTHORED MANY NOVELS"?

I knew of two obscurities, Ian of the Orcades (1906) and A Beautiful Rebel (1909), when I began this investigation. I've since learned of a third, "Richard Fizzell", which was serialized in 1909 and 1910 issues of The Christian Guardian (it has never appeared in book form). Apparently, two others exist as manuscripts only. 

Can this be considered "MANY"?

Perhaps.

Meanwhile, the real Mystery at Beechwood Cemetery remains unsolved.

Maybe next year.

Dyson Carter's Long Exercise in Political Pathology

Despite Moscow's best efforts, it wasn't until a decade or so after the collapse of the Soviet Union that I first became aware of Dyson Carter. Northern Neighbors, "Canada's Authoritative Independent Magazine Reporting on the U.S.S.R.", which he edited for some 32 years, was not something I saw on news stands. I didn't notice his books, including those published by the Communist Party of Canada, though they were distributed in the thousands at home and abroad.

In my defence, I point out that Carter is not found in The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature or Encyclopedia of Literature in Canada. He is very much a forgotten figure, as is reflected in The Canadian Encyclopedia entry, which has yet to record his death.

Further defence: Nearly all of Carter's books were published before I was born. What's more, his moment in the sun had come decades earlier. In 1940, Carter published Sea of Destiny, a much-discussed work in which he warned that undefended Hudson Bay could be used by the Nazis for an invasion of North America. The following year, months before the United States entered the Second World War, Carter predicted the development of the atomic bomb. It would, he wrote, bring a sudden end to the conflict.

The Portsmouth Times, 5 May 1940

In 1942, Carter's first novel, Night of Flame, drew considerable praise from the New York Times and the Globe and Mail. In the Ottawa Citizen, reviewer W.J. Hurlow described Carter as possessing a talent "only a little down the street from genius... We cordially hail Mr. Dyson Carter as a Canadian writer of brilliant possibilities."

Possibilities require opportunities, and for a Communist like Carter these became fewer with the advent of the Cold War. Just look what happened to Night of Flame. The 1942 first edition was published in New York by Reynolds and Hitchcock. Four years later, the novel was reissued in Canada by Collins White Circle. But by 1949, when American paperback giant Signet looked to do likewise, authorship had to be hidden behind a nom de plume.

Could Joseph McCarthy and company really be so easily deceived? Yes, yes they could.

Carter was born and raised in a religious household, surrounded by the troubled youth that his parents sought to save. In his own youth, he turned away from Christ and towards Lenin, only to see – and recognize – the lies of the Soviet Union laid bare by glastnost. In 1990, at age eighty, he wrote one friend, "I publicized so many Soviet 'achievements' that were total falsifications that I consider my 'work' an exercise in political pathology."

Dyson Carter's contributions to this country's literature are slight, and his oeuvre might hold little interest outside the world of academe, but is it not time for The Canadian Encyclopedia to acknowledge his death?

Related post: A Communist's Bodice Ripper?

Jack Kent Cooke in Extra Innings

Looking into The Chartered Libertine I was surprised – shocked – to find that The Canadian Encyclopedia has no entry on Jack Kent Cooke. In fact, Mel Hurtig's baby contains not even a passing mention of the man. What gives? Yes, he left Canada in 1960... sure, he became an American citizen... but Cooke was a Hamilton boy born and bred. Self-made, before heading south he'd come to own the most listened to radio station in Canada. His Triple-A Toronto Maple Leafs led the International League in attendence. What's more, bucking stereotype, this high school drop-out turned Saturday Night into the best Canadian literary magazine of its day. Robertson Davies was one of his hires.

So, why no entry? Cooke underwrote the first Ali/Fraser fight, built the Los Angeles Forum with his own money and owned of the Lakers, the Kings and the Redskins. I mean, c'mon, the man bought the Chrysler Building.

In Toronto, Cooke was a very powerful man; Ralph Allen, who relied on print media for his livelihood, was brave in taking him on. The reader of 1954 would've had no problem in identifying Cooke as the inspiration for Garfield Smith. Cooke owned CKEY, Smith owns CNOTE; Cooke made the Maple Leafs a success with gimmicks that are similar to those used to sell the Queens d'Amour. Then there are the lesser known things; like his model, Smith has an enviable library and an appreciation of fine art.

Reviewing The Chartered Libertine in the Globe and Mail, William Arthur Deacon displayed a certain caution, complimenting Allen on his use of "imaginary characters". The novel itself features no disclaimer – you know the type: "...any resemblance to persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental." Allen covers himself by having Smith twice mention Cooke as a talented business rival. He also provides no glimpse of Smith's personal life... that is, until the very end of the novel, when he marries between innings in a game against the Cincinnati Barmaids. The bride, Queen d'Amour Honeybear Rodney, served as Smith's male assistant before agreeing to change sex as a publicity stunt to help sell tickets.

Barbara Jean Carnegie Cooke and Jack Kent Cooke, Maple Leaf Park, Toronto, c. 1954

Cooke's own marriages were only a touch more conventional. Where The Canadian Encyclopedia is silent, Wikipedia steps in. The entry is awkward and repetitive, but the facts are spot on:

Cooke's first marriage, his longest, lasted 45 years. He and Barbara Jean Carnegie married in 1934, and were divorced in 1979. Carnegie was awarded what was then the largest divorce settlement in history - $42 million. The presiding judge during the bench trial was Joseph Wapner, who later became famous as the judge on television's The People's Court. Cooke and Carnegie had two sons: John Kent Cooke and Ralph Kent Cooke.

Cooke's second marriage, to Jeanne Maxwell, lasted only 10 months.

Cooke's third marriage, to Suzanne Elizabeth Martin, was even shorter: 73 days. During that brief marriage Martin, age 31, gave birth to a baby girl whom the couple named Jacqueline Kent Cooke. At the time of Jacqueline's birth, Cooke, her father (age 74), was 43 years older than Martin (age 31). Martin in the divorce action sought $15 million from Cooke.

Following Cooke's death, it was revealed that his final wife, Marlene Ramallo Chalmers - a former drug runner from Bolivian who was 40 years his junior - had been cut out of his will. Cooke and Chambers had married in 1990, divorced in 1993 (after she made headlines in May 1992 by accidentally shooting herself in the finger and in September 1993 by driving drunk in Georgetown with a man pounding on the hood of her Jaguar convertible), and remarried in 1995. Chambers filed suit against Cooke's estate and reportedly received $20 million in a settlement reached about a year after Cook's death.

To the good folks at The Canadian Encyclopedia: Please don't make me have to turn to Wikipedia again.

Related post:

Baseball in Panties, of Course

John Glassco: 100 Years

"I believe, actually, that birthdays should be dated from the moment of conception or fertilization, because that was undoubtedly a pleasanter occasion for everyone concerned."

John Glassco, letter to A.J.M. Smith, 27 Oct 1964

John Glassco was born at his parents' Montreal home one hundred years ago today. There are toasts to be made, of course, but I'm reminded that this was rarely a happy time of year for the poet. The birthday, followed so closely by Christmas, New Year's Eve and New Year's Day only served to remind him of the dreaded passage of time. In Glassco's final years, his wife, Marion McCormick, moved the day of celebration to 15 June.

Twenty-eight years after the man's death, reference works have come to record 19 December as Glassco's date of birth – an error that can be traced back to his entry in The Canadian Encyclopedia. I expect Glassco, that great practitioner of deceit, would have enjoyed the confusion.

(Probably Not) The David Lewis Centenary

Youngsters David Lewis and A. M. Klein

Recognition today of David Lewis, né Losz, born sometime around one hundred years ago in Svisloch, Russia. The Canadian Encyclopedia has Lewis' date of birth as 23 June 1909, but family biographer Cameron Smith tells us that the happy event likely took place a little over three months later. In his Unfinished Journey: The Lewis Family, Smith writes that 23 June was 'the first date that popped into David's twelve-year-old head' when confronted by a Halifax immigration officer. The Parliament of Canada website provides the same date, without comment, and muddies the water by placing Svisloch in Poland. In fact, the town has been Russian since 1795.

While Lewis isn't thought of as literary figure, he did count a number of writers among his friends. A. M. Klein was a pal from his days at Montreal's Baron Byng High School. Lewis' first book, Make this Your Canada, was co-authored by F. R. Scott. There followed another couple of titles: A Socialist Takes Stock and Louder Voices – the latter introducing the term 'corporate welfare bums', for which he is, perhaps, best remembered. Lewis was working on his biography when he died. What he did manage was published posthumously as The Good Fight: Political Memoirs 1909-1958.

Hey Kids! Comix!

I imagine that there is no more cautionary a tale in comicdom than that of Toronto-born Joe Shuster. Things seemed to have got off to such a good start (though perhaps not quite as swell as is portrayed in the Historica Minute): kid cartoonist Joe and his writer friend Jerry Siegel create Superman and spend several years flogging the character before finding a home with Detective Comics Inc. Then they make the mistake of selling their creation for US$130. Never mind, for the next ten years the pair rake in big bucks working for DC, until they take their employer to court in an ill-fated effort to win back the rights.

Shuster's entry in The Canadian Encyclopedia tells us that he was fired and 'stopped drawing completely.' It's a sloppy error. Shuster and Siegel went on to create Funnyman, a 'two-fisted howlarious scrapper' that soon appeared in dustbins everywhere. A few years later, having finally parted ways with Siegel, Shuster was reduced to providing fetish art for cheap publications like Hollywood Detective, Rod Rule and, above all, Nights of Horror.

Last month, the multi-talented Craig Yoe published Secret Identity, an entertaining and informative look at Shuster's later artistic endeavours. The most interesting aspect of our countryman's work is the inclusion of characters that resemble members of what DC calls 'the Superman family'. Yoe's cover image features a scantily-clad Lois Lane look-alike whipping a man who resembles Superman. And is this cub reporter Jimmy Olsen putting his hand up Lois Lane's skirt? In a library? For shame.

Nights of Horror was eventually banned, its destruction called for by no less a body than the Supreme Court of the United States. Blame for this censorship rests squarely on the shoulders of the Thrill Killers, a Brooklyn-based group of Jewish neo-Nazis. I kid you not, and direct those interested to Yoe's 23 April interview on NPR's Fresh Air.