Talking Ted Allan with Dick Bourgeois-Doyle

The second of my two conversations with Leacock Medal scholar Dick Bourgeois-Doyle is now available here on Soundcloud.

The topic is Ted Allan's Love is a Long Shot – in its 1949 and 1984 incarnations – and why I believe the latter was ineligible for the award.

I first wrote about Love is a Long Shot in the 2011 Fall/Winter issue of Canadian Notes & Queries; then reworked the piece for The Dusty Bookcase book. I'm sharing it here for the first time:

NEVER SO DISTURBING

Love is a Long Shot

Alice K. Doherty [pseud. Ted Allan]

Toronto: News Stand Library, 1949

160 pages

Can a writer, even a deceased writer, be stripped of the Leacock Medal? It’s a fair question, particularly when one considers the late Ted Allan, who received the honour in 1984 for Love is a Long Shot. This slight, uninspired novel tells the story of seventeen-year-old David Webber and his sometimes ribald adventures tending the till in a thirties-era Montreal cigar store-cum-bookie joint. It features a cast of characters that are characters; each ultimately and invariably proving themselves loveable types despite earlier indiscretions. Readers familiar with Lies My Father Told Me, the 1975 film that earned Allan an Academy Award nomination, will recognize some of these folks, including David’s frustrated inventor-father and his ideas for moveable cufflinks and permanently creased trousers.

This is not to suggest that there’s anything deceitful here; not with the film, at least. The overlap between Lies My Father Told Me and Love is a Long Shot is trifling, and in no way makes the latter ineligible for the Leacock. The medal’s rules inform: adaptations are fair game, we need only discount works of which “significant or substantial parts have been previously published in book form.”

Like so many tomes, the 1984 Love is a Long Shot includes a list of the author’s previous works. Allan’s first novel, This Time a Better Earth (1939), is followed by The Scalpel, The Sword (1952), the commercially successful biography of Norman Bethune that he wrote with Sydney Gordon. There’s Quest for Pajaro (1957), the science-fiction novel Allan published under nom de plume “Edward Maxwell,” and his children’s book Willie, the Squowse (1973). Also included is a comprehensive list of Allan’s plays and screenplays. What’s missing is telling: an earlier Love is a Long Shot.

Published by News Stand Library in September 1949, two months before newspaperman Al Palmer’s Sugar-Puss on Dorchester Street, this Love is a Long Shot holds the distinction of being the first pulp noir novel set in Montreal. Its setting is a Depression-era city that’s as dark as the second Love is a Long Shot is light. Where in the remake David Webber gets his job through a helpful, good-natured uncle, our desperate protagonist—recently orphaned teenager Katie Doheny—is out of options. Like David, she takes a job in a cigar store that’s little more than a front for illegal gambling. The early pages of the girl’s bleak world are broken by fleeting moments of black humour—all of which Allan reused in his Leacock-winning novel. Here, for example, is the most memorable, a comic scene that features Molly, the wife of the cigar-store owner. It begins with a boast:

“Never wore a corset in my life. Never had to.” She swaggered out from behind the counter.  “If you don’t believe me, feel,” she said, offering me her hip.

     “I believe you,” I said.

     “Feel. Feel. Don’t be shy.”

     I touched her quickly with the tips of my fingers.

     She started to laugh again, a loud, hearty laugh. “How old are you?”

     I dug the broom into the floor, pushed hard and told her my age.

     “I bet you never had a man.”

The Molly of the 1984 Love is a Long Shot, also married to the cigar-store owner, is equally proud:

“Never wore a corset in my life. Never had to.” Weaving from behind the counter, she offered me her backside. “If you don’t believe me, feel.”
     “I believe you.”
     “Feel, feel, don’t be shy.” She wiggled her behind. I touched her hip quickly with the tips of my fingers. This made her cackle. You have to hear a woman with a bass voice cackle before you can believe the sound.
     “So help me, he’s blushing. How old are you?”
     “I’m twenty-one,” I lied.
     “I bet you’re still a cherry.”

Any further frivolity in the original Love is a Long Shot is soon overwhelmed by the noir. The greatest difference between the two novels lies in their depictions of organized crime. While the Leacock-winning Love is a Long Shot has the “syndicate” as a group of misbehaving boys, the 1949 original comes uncomfortably close to ugly reality.

Young Katie falls for “tall, rugged-looking, tanned” mob boss Hazen Black, a relatively young man rendered impotent by a life of debauchery. In what is surely one of the darkest scenes in Canadian literature, the appropriately-named Black masturbates while instructing his henchman Herbert to rape Katie:

Herbert grabbed me and held his hand over my mouth. I tried to bite it. “Go ahead,” Black was shouting. “Go ahead, damn it, go ahead.” His eyes looked insane. His breath was coming in short gasps, as if he’d been running. He was close to me, but hadn’t touched me yet. “Go ahead. Pick up her dress… do it, do it, do it.”

The original Love is a Long Shot ain’t that pretty at all—nor is it funny. Printed only once, in a fragile, disposable edition that credits the author variously as “Alice K. Doherty,” “Alice H. Doherty,” and simply “Alice Doherty,” it slipped by the judges of the 1984 Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour. The most one can say about the award-winning Love is a Long Shot that is that is was far superior to the previous year’s winner, Gary Lauten’s No Sex Please… We’re Married. Allan didn’t deserve the honour; the $3,500 cheque should have rightfully gone to fellow nominee John Gray, whose debut novel, Dazzled, had been issued by the anaemic Irwin Publishing. It’s a sad fact that the best novel Ted Allan ever wrote was one that he chose not to recognize. A cheap mass-market paperback issued under a pseudonym that the publisher couldn’t get right, it has been out of print for over half a century.  

Related posts:

Pulp Noir à Montréal

Love is a Long Shot on the Nose

He and His Arrow

Little Willie, Willie Won't Go Home

The Dustiest Bookcase: V is for van Vogt

The Dustiest Bookcase:

Short pieces on books I've always meant to review (but haven't).

Destination: Universe
A.E. van Vogt
New York: Signet, 1958
160 pages

The Dustiest Bookcase series is meant to highlight books I've had forever, and have always meant to read and review, but haven't. Destination: Universe is a cheat. It was given to me just last year by someone who knew I liked vintage paperbacks. The pages are loose, the cover is more than scuffed, and still I'm happy to have it, despite my previous encounters with the author.

In the fourteen-year history of the Dusty Bookcase, I've given van Vogt two kicks at the can. I was first dawn into his orbit in by the 1952 Harlequin cover of The House That Stood Still.

(In all seriousness, WTF, Harlequin?)

I disliked The House That Stood Still so much that I included it in my book The Dusty Bookcase. Then gave van Vogt a second chance with Masters of Time, about which I remember nothing. This old review suggests I was unimpressed.

Philip K. Dick was an admirer of van Vogt. I'm not – not yet at least – though I've enjoyed bits of his writing. The beginning of The House That Stood Still reads like pretty good post-war noir pulp before becoming a muddled mess. That van Vogt had a habit of cobbling together disparate short stories for resale as novels may explain my dissatisfaction.

Destination: Universe looks promising as a collection of ten short stories first published in Astounding Science Fiction, Thrilling Wonder Stories, the Avon Fantasy Reader, and similar publications. As such, there should be no awkward couplings or ménages à trois.

"Want to take a rocket ship tour into space that lasts 500 years?"

Not really.

Still, I look forward to reading this collection.

I'll read it this year.

Ten stories.

Ten more kicks at the can.

Related posts:

SF, not S/M

Wasting Time With A.E. van Vogt

The Dominatrix of Time (and other fantasies)

The Homoerotic A.E. van Vogt

The Atomic Dale; or, The Mounties Mess Up?

Dale of the Mounted: Atomic Plot
Joe Holliday
Toronto: Allen, [1959]
158 pages

The ninth in the twelve-volume Dale of the Mounted series, Atomic Plot is a novel I'd long wanted to read, but stubbornness stood in my way. For years, I watched copies being bought and sold online, all the while convinced I'd stumble upon one at a garage sale or thrift store.

I scored Atlantic Assignment, my first Dale, at a Friends of the St Marys Public Library book sale. Dale of the Mounted in the Northwest was found at a yard sale ten minutes from our home. I can't remember how I came to own Dale of the Mounted in Newfoundland. All that effort, all that searching, and yet Atomic Plot remained elusive.

Then came this generous gift from Chris Otto of Papergreat.

Dale of the Mounted: Atlantic Assignment is one the most amusing novels I've ever read. I enjoyed it so much that I reworked my original review for inclusion in The Dusty Bookcase book. Rereading those reviews today, after Atomic Plot, has me wondering whether I wasn't too harsh on the mountie.

Hear me out.

Dale of the Mounted: Atomic Plot opens at Ottawa's Uplands Airport – now Macdonald-Cartier International – where Constable Dale Thompson awaits the arrival of Doctor Sachi Rami, "a man learned in physics, a man whose knowledge the atomic sciences made him one of the leading figures in the Far East field of atomic energy." A Pakistani (Holliday refers to his nationality as "Pakistan"), Rami is travelling from his home country so that he might study the nuclear reactors at Chalk River Laboratories. Dale's assignment is to protect the doctor and his travelling party while they're in the country. He's been informed, by the Deputy Commissioner no less, that "certain fanatical, political groups in India" look to prevent Rami from taking this "atomic knowledge" back to Pakistan.

Rami arrives on a Trans-Canada Air Lines Viscount, accompanied by an imposing Sikh bodyguard, and a young secretary named Kelomé. As he disembarks, the doctor is attacked by a fellow passenger. The bodyguard takes action, throwing the assailant off the stairway and onto the tarmac. Dale rushes Rami and his party into an awaiting limousine and they head off to a suite that has been reserved at the Château Laurier. From there, the constable phones RCMP headquarters to report the incident:

The Deputy Commissioner finally came on the telephone. His instructions were, as usual, short and to the point. "I want you to make arrangements to be with Doctor Sachi Rami at all times. I understand he has some sort of Sikh bodyguard with him, but I want you to be personally responsible for him!" 

Let us pause to consider:

The RCMP has received intelligence that a group of Indian fanatics look to target a prominent Pakistani scientist on Canadian soil. The threat is taken so seriously that the Deputy Commissioner is personally involved, and yet he assigns just one member of the force to provide security for the scientist and his companions. That man, Constable Dale Thompson, holds the lowest rank in the RCMP. When told of the thwarted attack at the airport, the Deputy Commission does nothing more than repeat his original instructions. No additional security is provided.

And now, consider this:

The following afternoon, a Pakistan High Commission limousine arrives to transport Rami and his party to Rockcliffe, where they are to watch the famous RCMP Musical Ride. The chauffeur, Dale has been told, knows the area well, and yet – curiously – needs directions. On the drive back, Dale notices that they're being followed by an old Pontiac. This doesn't prevent him from directing the chauffeur to Nepean Point, so that the foreign visitors can admire the view. The Pontiac follows the limo into the park, but Dale dismisses this as a coincidence. There's a sudden flurry of activity as the chauffeur points the limo toward the river and leaps from the vehicle. Dale grabs the wheel. The Pontiac rams their car, picks up the chauffeur, and takes off. Rami and company receive minor injuries. It's later discovered that the actual High Commission chauffeur had lost the limo to a carjacking.

So, where are we now?

There have been two assassination attempts in the first twenty-four hours, and Dale was present for both. He thought nothing about the High Commission chauffeur's ignorance, and wasn't concerned about the Pontiac. The Deputy Commissioner doesn't remove Dale from the case, nor does he assign additional members of the force. It's off to Chalk River!

Chalk River Laboratories in 1958

Things slow down at this point so as to familiarize the reader with Chalk River Laboratories, the "famed Colombo Plan," and Atomic Energy of Canada Limited. Eight pages are devoted to a high school-level physics lecture delivered to visiting students from "Ottawa University." Dozens more pages are sacrificed to the nature of the atom, descriptions of Chalk River's various reactors, a Van der Graaff generator, the various vehicles owed by the facility, living accommodations offered to employees of AECL, and the municipal status of nearby Deep River. Mixed into all this are dribs and drabs of plot and plotting, as when copper medallions turn up in the doctor's room and those of his companions. A panicked Rami hands his over to Dale:

Now, one-third of the way through my second Dale of the Mounted book, I'd come to know the man. It was for this reason that it came as no surprise that the constable fails to inform the Deputy Commissioner of this turn of events. Dale rarely checks in – though, to be fair, no one at RCMP headquarters expects him to do so.

Days pass.

Dale notices that three Indian atomic scientists are also visiting Chalk River. Quite by chance, he discovers that Kelomé, Dr Rami's secretary, is secretly communicating with the trio. Next, a shipment of uranium rods is found to be faulty, and the truck returning them to the manufacturer is hijacked. A second truck arrives carrying the very same rods. The driver is held. Fingerprints are sent to the RCMP in Ottawa, where it's discovered that he's the owner of the Pontiac used to ram the limousine at Nepean Point.

Do the RCMP send more officers to Chalk River?

They do not.

The truck driver is killed, and two guards are injured, when the car in which they are travelling is forced off the road by another carrying the three Indian scientists.

Dale encourages the trio's release:

Dale uses the very same wait-and-see tactic in Atlantic Assignment – which, I remind, is an earlier adventure – resulting in the escape of a saboteur, the kidnappings of two servicemen (one of whom is left blind), the loss of two Royal Canadian Navy Grumman Avengers, and the near destruction of HMCS Bonaventure.

Despite Dale's history, the Deputy Commissioner agrees to the plan, adding that two more constables will be assigned in the case. Unfortunately, they never arrive. Did the Deputy Commissioner forget? Did Joe Holliday? Either way, things go very badly... after several pages devoted to the Betameter, sodium 24, and cobalt-60. Somewhere in the mix, we learn that the man who had attacked Rami at Uplands Airport escaped RCMP custody, only to be shot dead by his compatriots.

At long last, the Indian scientists, who we now know to be fanatics, attack as Dale, Rami, the bodyguard, and Kelomé are watching the installation of new uranium rods in the NRX reactor. What follows doesn't make much sense. Keith Ward's jacket illustration reflects its weakness in that five more figures should feature. Confusion often accompanies violence, but here the fault lies in Holliday's inability to keep track of his characters. Any description of the action would be pointless; it is the outcome that matters:

• Kelomé has been revealed as one of the Indian fanatics;
• an employee has suffered a blow to the head and a six-foot fall;
• a broken uranium rod has caused a deadly build-up of radiation;
• two of the Indian fanatics died of gunshot wounds;
• the third Indian fanatic stole a truck, only to die in a crash;
• the NRX reactor has to be shut down for several months. 

It was Kelomé who shot and killed the two Indians because – I'm guessing – she was angry that the attack didn't come off exactly as planned. Her motivation isn't clear.

And what of the fanatics? Was their real goal to destroy the reactor? Why didn't Kelomé shoot Rami when she had the chance? Why didn't her fellow fanatics? What were they all about, anyway? "These [Indian] fanatics are utterly opposed to atomic energy and want no part of this knowledge to come to their country," the Deputy Commissioner says when handing Dale the assignment; yet, Kelomé aside, each of the fanatics involved were atomic scientists.

In the closing pages, the reader learns that Kelomé herself is expected to suffer an agonizing death as ta result of her exposure to the broken uranium rod... and so, everything wraps up nicely:

Dale and the RCMP, satisfied that the danger to the Pakistan doctor and his party was now over, decided there was no further need for Dale to act as daily bodyguard.

I wouldn't have thought that fanatical groups give up so easily – but then, what do I know about security, law enforcement, and intelligence?

For that matter, what do Dale and the RCMP?

Editorial note: Everything I've read about the Khaksar Movement suggests it is grossly mischaracterized by Holliday.

Favourite passage: It should come as no surprise that Dale's main contact at Chalk River Laboratories isn't its Chief of Security, but a public relations man named Clyde Karnell. After the novel's climax, the character exits the book thusly:

"Boy! It's going to be dull when you leave Chalk and Deep River. We haven't had that much excitement since the NRX blew its stack in 1952! Well! see [sic] you tomorrow1" He put on his jacket and departed.

Here the public relations man is referencing an event that is generally considered the first serious accident involving a nuclear reactor. It is rated 5 on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale. For the sake of comparison, Three Mile Island shares the very same rating.

Mea culpa: I've broken a New Year's resolution.

Object and Access: A slim volume bound in burgundy boards with blue text. Dale of the Mounted: Atomic Plot enjoyed one printing with Thomas Allen. An American edition was published in 1959 by Pennington Press.

One copy of the Pennington edition is listed for sale online. Priced at US$8.18, is it a bargain? It has no dust jacket. A Good+ (w/ Good dust jacket) copy of the Allen edition is on offer from an Edmonton bookseller. Price C$13.00. Needless to say, this is the one to purchase.

Library and Archives Canada and seven of our academic libraries have copies.

Related post:

Dale's Dumb Luck; or, A Mountie Messes Up

Where to Begin with Margaret Millar: A Top Ten

I got off to a bad start with Margaret Millar. Of the twenty-six books published during her lifetime, the first I read was Fire Will Freeze, sent by a friend who was working for Harold Ober Associates, Millar's literary agents. This was back in the 'eighties, when her novels – some anyway – were being reissued in inelegant editions by International Polygonics. I didn't think much of Fire Will Freeze, in part because I couldn't accept its setting. The dust jacket to the 1944 first edition describes it as a "run-down Quebec chateau," but I knew better. Fire Will Freeze takes place the province's ski country, and there are no chateaus in the Laurentians.

The cover of the International Polygonics edition, depicting a scene and character not found in the novel, is no better.

Twenty-four years passed before I gave Margaret Millar a second chance. I chose a pristine first edition of An Air That Kills I'd found buried in a bin at a Toronto Goodwill. It won me over. I've been pushing Millar ever since. Can you blame me? Margaret Millar was easily one the most talented Canadian writers of the last century, and yet she's almost entirely ignored in this country.

Because I go on so, a friend has asked that I do with Millar what I had done with Grant Allen:

Starting In On Grant Allen: A Top Ten

Though I've read only thirteen Margaret Millar books – half of her total output – I'm happy to advise. What follows, in order of preference, are my ten favourite Millar novels. Titles with links point to blog posts. Titles without links are reviewed in The Dusty Bookcase, the book born of this blog. It's sold by the very finest booksellers.

An Air That Kills (1957)

Two favourite topics, infidelity and murder feature in many Millar novels, though the two aren't always linked. They come into play here. That An Air That Kills is set in Toronto and Ontario's cottage country, both of which I know all too well, may have elevated it a notch or two in my estimation. As in so many of her novels, recognition that a crime has taken place comes quite late.

The Fiend (1964)

Anthony Boucher described The Fiend as something quite extraordinary. If anything, this is an understatement. Here is a novel about a registered sex offender, whom the author dares us to view with sympathy. He is loved by a woman who is unloved, and we – this reader anyway – come to hope that she gets her man.

Vanish in an Instant (1952)

Set in the fictional town of Arbana (read: Ann Arbor, Michigan). A wealthy, married playboy has been stabbed to death, and an equally wealthy married woman is fingered for the crime. The novel is spoiled somewhat by the intrusion of a love story, but that comes in late and passes soon enough.

Wall of Eyes (1943)

The once well-to-do, dysfunctional Heaths are at the centre of this, Margaret Millar's first Toronto murder mystery. Because it is so entangled in family, an argument may be made that it is her greatest domestic drama. The opening, in which a young woman with sight leads a seeing eye dog through city streets cannot be forgotten.

The Iron Gates (1945)

The novel that paid for Margaret and Kenneth Millar's Santa Barbara home. The Iron Gates was adapted for what was meant to be – but wasn't to be – a Bette Davis film. A psychological thriller (see cover) set in Toronto, at one point the murderer imagines a talking sugar bowl. Perfect for David Cronenberg, right?

Do Evil in Return (1950)

After The Fiend, this is Millar's boldest novel. Bad things happen, but the worst occur after protagonist Dr Charlotte Keating turns away a woman seeking an abortion. I liked this novel when I read it, and was complimentary, but was not complimentary enough. I may be making the same mistake in placing it sixth.

Wives and Lovers (1954)

This is the second of Millar's non-mysteries, which is not to say that there isn't mystery. The first concerns dentist Gordon Foster and his niece's friend. Why is he uncomfortable when her name is mentioned? It's a novel in which one expects a murder, but it never happens.

Beast in View (1955)

The short work for which Millar won the 1956 Edgar Award for Best Novel. Adapted to the small screen in a 1964 episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Do not watch the 1986 version, which is Beast in View in name only. Another of the author's psychological novels, I'd like to see Cronenberg give this one a go, too.

Rose's Last Summer (1952)

The only other Millar novel adapted and broadcast on the small screen, this one, appropriately, concerns a faded film star named Rose French. Reduced to living in cramped room, surrounded by her memorabilia, she surprises her landlady by taking a housekeeping job in San Francisco. The next day, her death makes the papers.

The Listening Walls (1959)

Wilma Wyatt is at the tail end of a very bad year in which she suffered  the loss of her parents (plane crash) and husband (divorce), so the idea of a girls' getaway with old friend appealed. One of the pair ends up dead after a fall from their hotel room balcony, and then the other goes missing.




Of the other three that didn't make the cut, Experiment in Springtime is the only one I can recommend. Another non-mysteries, anyone at all interested in the depiction of mental illness in fiction will find it essential reading. The Invisible Worm, Millar's debut, also failed to make the cut, as did Fire Will Freeze – and you know how I feel about Fire Will Freeze.

Related posts:

Kitchener's Grand Dame

Margaret Millar and the Air Up North

A Millar Mystery and the Art of Deception
Margaret Millar's Michigan Murder Mystery
Damaged, Dysfunctional and Decadent Toronto
An 'Other' Novel by Margaret Millar
Desperately Seeking Violet
The Telephone Always Rings
A Margaret Millar Mystery Spoiled
Mary Astor, Margaret Millar, and Celuloid Hell

Margaret Millar Simplified and Spoiled

Millar's Experiment in Springtime in Springtime
Margaret Millar Makes Something of Herself

Bach to the Future, Part III: The Squeaking Wheel

Final words on A Voice is Calling and its author.

About eight years ago, I posted a piece on The Squeaking Wheel, an ugly, bigoted screed that was self-published in 1966 under the pseudonym "John Mercer." All I knew of its authorship came from the book itself, which claimed "John Mercer" to be two men, both English-speaking Montrealers, who worked in the fields of advertising and medicine.

That's not much to go on.

"Even today their identities are a mystery," I wrote in my review. I doubt anyone was on the case – and wasn't myself – so, it was unhappy coincidence that in researching A Voice is Calling I came upon the obituary of its author (Montreal Gazette, 5 December 2001). It includes this sentence:

As an author he wrote A Voice is Calling, published in 1945; Trespass Against None, published in 1950; Le Dernier Voyage with Martine Hebert-Duguay, published in 1951; The Squeaking Wheel as John Mercer, published in 1965; Against the Tide, published in 1989; and Focus and Middle Distance, two autobiographical novels published recently.

And so, the identity of one of the two men behind The Squeaking Wheel is revealed. I wouldn't have guessed it from reading A Voice is Calling. The Squeaking Wheel is an anti-francophone rant, yet the hero of A Voice is Calling, Andre Brousseau, is a sympathetic and talented French Canadian. The novel's few anglophones are pleasant and encouraging. Given that every other character is a francophone, I don't think anything can be read into the fact that their number includes the three villains.

Eric Cecil Morris was the ad man behind The Squeaking Wheel – he was working for Cockfield-Brown at the time – but who was the medical man?

As before, I can't be bothered.

My original post on The Squeaking Wheel was deleted and rewritten for publication in The Dusty  Bookcase. Because I feel so strongly about the "John Mercer" book, I'm reposting my review as it first appeared on this blog on 27 December 2011:

The Squeaking Wheel;

     Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying About the French
and Love the Bomb

John Mercer [Eric Cecil Morris]

n.p.: Rubicon, 1966

Let's get rid of this so as to not track it into the New Year.

I came upon The Squeaking Wheel in an Ontario thrift shop; its bold, if inept declaration—"4TH. [sic] PRINTING OF THE BEST-SELLING BOOK ALL CANADA'S TALKING ABOUT!"—did attract.

I don't remember talk of this book; but then I was only just learning to speak when The Squeaking Wheel was first published. Sure looks like it was popular. The copyright page records four printings in three months! Two in February 1966 alone! In the foreword, author John Mercer tells us that the first two printings amounted to "many thousands" of copies. So why is this the only one I've ever seen? And why was there no fifth printing?

I'd ask John Mercer, but he's a fabrication, a pseudonym for two men to hide behind. "English-speaking Montrealers who have a curious desire not to be blown sky-high to a Protestant Heaven by a few well-placed sticks of dynamite," they reveal nothing more about themselves than that they work in the fields of advertising and medicine. Even today their identities are a mystery.

More furious than funny, those familiar with Rebel Media comment pages will recognize the John Mercer style. Irrational anger and uncontrolled ranting accompany fantastical statistics presented without citation. Quotations, even those pitching the book, lack attribution. It's all here, including that old saw about Quebecers being horrible drivers: “It has often been said by opponents of French-Canada that one way to solve the problem of Quebec is to give every inhabitant a car and turn all the traffic lights green for one day.”

Take care now. Those words come not from the authors, but the "opponents of French-Canada." Or so the John Mercer men would have you believe. The reader will soon recognize that they too are opponents.

The Quiet Revolution is five years old, the Bi and Bi Commission is just beginning, and already the authors, who "have lived all their adult lives in Quebec," are fed up. Their message is clear: "Quebec is a conquered country and its people are a conquered people"... and somewhat inferior:

We are a little tired of hearing about biculturalism and French-Canadian culture. We don’t quite agree with a noted politician who recently said the only thing French-Canadian culture has produced is strip-teaser Lily St. Cyr and hockey-player “Rocket” Richard.

Again, don't you be pinning this on John Mercer. That stuff about the stripper and the hockey player comes from some politician. Who? Who knows. The men behind the pseudonym are only repeating what they've heard, and they don't quite agree.

Not quite.

The Squeaking Wheel was never talked about by "everyone in Canada"; not even Montreal's English- and French-language presses gave it much attention. Serious discussion of the book is limited to a few sentences in journalist Solange Chaput-Rolland's Reflections (1968):

The pens of these English-speaking compatriots are certainly not very brave. Of course it is true that, when one describes unpleasant reality, one receives in return unpleasant insult. But liberty of speech demands the dignity and courage of that speech. And those who hurl invective at their compatriots, while keeping themselves well hidden, are not really respectable citizens.

Though I can’t top that, I’ll add that I don't think the cowards hiding behind the pseudonym were Montrealers. Real Montrealers know it's Lili, not "Lily"; and they know she was not French-Canadian, but American.

I'll add that we Canadians know not to hyphenate "hockey player."

There, sweet Virginia, I've scraped the shit right off my shoe.

Lili St. Cyr [née Willis Marie Van Schaack]
1918  - 1999
RIP

Maurice "Rocket"  Richard
1921 - 2000
RIP

Related posts:

Bach to the Future: A Voice is Calling

Bach to the Future, Part II: Le dernier voyage

The Great Canadian Post-Great War Novel?

The Empty Sack
Basil King
New York: Harper, 1921
446 pages

"We're all different. Life as we used to live it begins to seem so empty. We weren't real; we people who spent our time entertaining and being entertained. It's all very well to say that we're much the same since the war as we were before, but it isn't so. I know I'm not."

— Junia Collingham in Basil King's The Empty Sack

In September 1918, two months before the Armistice, the Pictorial Review published "Going West," a new work of fiction by Basil King. The writer was then at the height of his popularity, with novels appearing regularly on Publishers Weekly bestseller lists; the magazine had recognized King's The Inner Shrine, as the bestselling novel of 1909. A retired Anglican clergyman from Prince Edward Island, King's books focussed on fidelity, honour, the sanctity of marriage, and the tragedy of divorce. "Going West" was something altogether different. A long short story, it concerns two enemy soldiers – one American, the other German – who kill each other on the battlefield, and then reunite to visit their respective families in the afterlife. The more spiritual of the dead men – interestingly, the German – finds he can communicate with his loved ones, while his agnostic companion cannot.

The story's popularity ensured its republication as a book, which was in turn followed by a second altogether different King title: The Abolishing of Death.* Because I like the reverend, and don't doubt his honesty and good intentions, I accept his presentation of The Abolishing of Death as a work of non-fiction. I'm sure he believed it to be true. Published first in Cosmopolitan (July-October 1919), it is very much a book of its time – that time being one of significant interest in communion between the living and the dead, spurred on by the war, Sir Oliver Lodge, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Doyle believed his strongest contact with the spiritual plane to be Lily Loder-Symonds, his children's nanny, while King relied on a young woman identified only as "Jennifer." Through her, the clergyman was able to communicate with a dead man who, amongst other things, spoke of the "mission of sex" for which Canadians had been "specially selected."

I await my orders.

Of King's novels – the five I've read, anyway – The Empty Sack features the most profound expression of the spiritual beliefs he'd come to adopt during the Great War. Dark and distressing, the only rays of hope come in the penultimate chapter with evidence of an afterlife in which we will all be reunited with loved ones.

I've spoiled little here, because The Empty Sack doesn't unfold anything like the reader might expect. The novel begins with wealthy New York banker Bradley Collingham's dismissal of employee Josiah Follett; the latter is approaching old age, and his work isn't turning quite the profit it once did.  Focus then shifts to painter Hubert Wray's studio, where Jennie Follett poses "in a Greek peplum of white-cotton cloth." Josiah's daughter, Jennie's work as a model helps maintain the Follett family's modest middle class lifestyle in New Jersey's Pemberton Heights. Hubert has an obvious thing for her – and she him – so why doesn't his friend Bob see? "Listen, Hubert. I'm going to marry that girl," Bob tells his pal. Incidentally, coincidentally, Bob's father is Bradley Collingham, the man who had just kicked Jennie's dad to the curb.

Two chapters in, I thought The Empty Sack would be all about Jennie Follett, but it is really a tale of two families.

The Folletts are devastated by the news of the sacking. Josiah hopes that his forty-seven years' experience in the banking industry will win him some sort of position with another financial institution, but at sixty-three he's considered too old. Jennie's modest contribution to the family ends when she refuses to pose in the nude for Hubert. She looks for other work, but finds that stores, factories, offices, and dressmaking establishments aren't much interested in a young woman whose only skill is the ability to stand still. Sister Gussie gets a low-paying job in a department store, but nearly everything comes down to brother Teddy, who has a lowly position in the very same bank from which his father was dismissed.

Meanwhile, Bradley Collingham and wife Junia, sequestered in their Marillo Park mansion, try to make sense of the post-war world and the strange behaviour of privileged offspring:

There were the Rumseys, whose twin sons had refused an uncle's legacy amounting to something like three millions, because they held views opposed to the owning of private property. There were the Addingtons, whose son and heir had married a girl twice imprisoned as a Red and was believed to have gone Red in her company. There were the Bendlingers, whose daughter had eloped with a chauffeur, divorced him, and then gone back and married him again. These were Marillo incidents, and in no case had the parents found any course more original than the antiquated one of discarding and disinheritance. 

Against their wishes, son Bob – you remember Hubert Wray's friend – had gone off to fight overseas, even though the United States was then neutral. Not a year later, he returned with a bad limp, scarred forehead, and some rather unorthodox views on Christianity.

Bob Collingham figures greatly in the plot, but doesn't have nearly the influence of Teddy Follett. The weight of the Follett family's misfortune falls on his shoulders, and he begins stealing from the Collingham Bank in order to keep the gas on. Young Teddy is immature, impulsive and, frankly, none too bright. He remembers news stories of a teller at rival bank who managed to pocket $23,000 for five years before he was caught. Teddy banks – sorry, couldn't resist – that he too won't be caught for five years, by which time the Jennie and Gussie will surely be married and the family finances will be on more steady ground.

The greatest tragedy here is that Teddy's stealing is wholly unnecessary in that Jennie has more than enough money to stave off the Follett family's financial ruin. In a moment of weakness, recognizing the desperate need for money, she'd secretly wed Bob Collingham. Jennie never cashes the cheques he sends for her support because she believes Teddy's stories explaining his sudden change in income. The model regrets her decision to marry Bob, and hopes that she'll somehow wriggle out of the situation so that she might be with Hubert.

As I say, nothing in this novel unfolds as the reader expects. The aforementioned penultimate chapter of light is proceeded by hundreds of pages detailing how the avarice and prejudices of the wealthy threaten the middle class, writing that the reader of King's previous fiction would've found foreign.

Returning to the beginning of the novel, we find this exchange between Bradley Collingham and the soon to be dismissed Josiah Follett:

"What do you think, Follett? I told you then that you were not earning your salary. You haven't been earning it since. What can I do?"
     "I could work harder, sir. I could stay overtime, when none of the young fellows want to."
     "That wouldn't do any good, Follett. It isn't the way we do business."
     "I've been five years with you, sir, and all my life between one banking house and another, in this country and Canada. In my humble way I've helped to build the banking business up."
     "And you've been paid, haven't you? I really don't see that you've anything to complain of."

In fact, Josiah Follett had been earning his salary. The real issue is that Bradley Collingham is able to pay "young fellows" much less.

Not much has changed.

"Wasn't it one of the things we fought for in the war – to wipe out the lines of caste?" Bob asks his mother.

Sadly, no.

The Empty Sack is not a great work, but it's by far the best King novel I've read to date – and I do enjoy reading the reverend. With Bertrand W. Sinclair's The Hidden Places, it is essential reading anyone looking to understand the post-war world – that which followed the War to End All Wars – of our grandparents and great-grandparents.

Curiously, hauntingly, so many of their struggles are our struggles.

* I've written more on The Abolishing of Death in The Dusty Bookcase book.

An aside: As this post was getting long, I cut all mention of the Follett family history. Josiah began his banking career at age sixteen in Nova Scotia. He was still a bank clerk when he married stunningly beautiful clergyman's daughter Lizzie Scarborough, UEL:

The Scarboroughs had been great people in Massachusetts before the Revolution. The old Scarborough mansion, still standing in Cambridge bears witness to the generous scale on which they lived. But they left it as it stood, with its pictures, its silver, its furniture, its stores, rather than break their tie with England. Scorned by the country from which they fled, and ignored by that to which they remained true, their history on Nova-Scotian soil was chiefly one of descent. 

All the Follett children were born in Nova Scotia. After the family's move to the United States, Josiah bought a house in Pemberton Heights because of "the presence there of other Canadians."

Little Canada, I guess.

Object and Access: A bulky brown hardcover with three plates by J. Henry. My copy, a first edition, was purchased in 2014 at the Antique Mall in Strathroy, Ontario. Price: $2.00.

A year earlier, I'd bought an undated Hodder & Stoughton reprint – also $2.00 – in a London bookstore. Canadians who can't stand to read "check" for cheque and "color" for colour will want this edition. As far as I can tell, the novel was last published sometime in the 'twenties in a cheap Grosset & Dunlop edition.

Only seven copies are currently listed for sale online, the least expensive being a library discard of the Harper edition. Price: US$3.68. The one to buy is the most expensive: a second printing with dust jacket going for US$25.00.

While Library and Archives Canada and over a dozen of our universities hold copies; the University of Prince Edward Island does not.

The Thomas Fisher Canadiana Collection copy can be read here – gratis – thanks to the good folks at the Internet Archive.

Related posts:

Reverend King's Great War Novelette
The Retired Reverend King on Abolishing Death
The Mission of Sex: Canadians, Do Your Duty!
Basil King's Silent Unseen World
Sex, Betrayal and the Scars of the Great War

Not Very Occult

The Barefoot Fugitive and Other Mysteries

Cousin Basil's Dickensian Christmas Gift

Starting in on Grant Allen: A Top Ten

Over pints this past weekend, I remarked to a friend that I'd just begun reading my thirteenth Grant Allen novel. This friend responded that he'd never heard of the man, but was very interested. I think it was the drink.

"Where's the best place to start?" my friend asked. Where indeed! Allen published over seventy titles in his fifty-one years. My good fortune was that the first I read, Michael's Crag, was so good that I wanted more.

Describing Grant Allen as nineteenth-century Canada's greatest novelist may seem a bit much, but who else did we have? Robert Barr is very nearly as good, May Agnes Fleming is wonderfully entertaining. Who else? Sir Gilbert Parker? Sir Charles G.D. Roberts?

Allen was a writer of great imagination; he created memorable characters and had a dab hand at clever, intricate plots. What's more, he never hesitated in introducing social commentary to his fiction (see: The Woman Who Did and The British Barbarians). I think so much of the man that I devoted the first section of my most recent book, The Dusty Bookcase, to Allen.

With twelve Allen titles tackled – and nearly sixty to go – my interest in Allen remains strong. I have no doubt that I'll read every novel the man wrote before I leave This Mortal Coil (title of the first of his three 1888 novels). What follows are the ten best Allen novels tackled to date, in order of preference. Five of the ten are covered in The Dusty Bookcase book. Links to my online reviews of the other five are provided.

The Devil's Die (1888)

The story of upstanding Muslim doctor Muhammed Ali and his gradual realization that friend and fellow physician Harry Chichele is a psychopathic murderer. The novel shocked George Bernard Shaw, influencing his 1893 play The Philanderer.

For Maimie's Sake (1886)

Of Allen's "commercial" novels, For Mamie's Sake stands as the only one he wouldn't dismiss in conversations with friends. Am I wrong in thinking it a satire? For Mamie's Sake is not recognized as such. Either way, it's the most humorous Allen I've read to date. Black humour, of course.

Michael's Crag (1893)

A civil servant is struck on the head by falling rock and comes to believe he is the Archangel Michael. His suffering wife struggles to keep him in check until their daughter can be married off. It all ends very badly, but not in a way that anyone could've anticipated.

What's Bred in the Bone (1891)

Identical twin brothers of unknown origin embark on very different paths, one of which leads to forgery and fraud. What's Bred in the Bone was awarded £1000 as best serial story by Tit-Bits magazine. If that doesn't entice, I'll add that it is the most sexual Allen book I've read this far.

Under Sealed Orders (1895)

A child is groomed to be a self-sacrificing political assassin only to fall in love with a New Woman adventuress as a young man. Murder is now out of the question, which isn't to suggest that it doesn't happen just the same.

Hilda Wade (1900)

Grant Allen's last novel. On his deathbed, the author told the conclusion to his friend Arthur Conan Doyle, who then wrote the final chapters.  The resulting book, profusely illustrated, was published posthumously with obvious affection. But don't think its appearance swayed my judgement; Hilda Wade is a strong novel, centred on the strongest of Allen's women.

The British Barbarians (1895)

The story of a time traveller's visit to Victorian England, this novel is short on plot but long on acute, clever, and cutting social commentary. I'm beginning to wonder whether it shouldn't be higher on the list. Perhaps so. At the very least, it's worth rereading and reconsidering.

Recalled to Life (1891)

A mystery in which a significant advancement in photography plays a key role, like so very many Allens its protagonist is a young woman. Moved up a notch because it is one of the few Allens that takes place in Canada. Quebecers and British Columbians will be the most satisfied.

The Type-Writer Girl (1897)

Late in his brief life, Allen wrote several novels narrated by New Woman protagonists. Of these, The Type-Writer Girl holds a special  place in having been published under a female pseudonym. This slight novel concerns a Girton girl who looks to support herself through office work. Agrarian anarchists feature.

The Cruise of the Albatross (1890)

An adventure story for boys, complete with cannibals, human sacrifice, sea travel, and a twist that owes everything to Jules Verne's Around the World in Eighty Days. I remain thankful that I didn't read it first.





Why have I not included The Woman Who Did, the scandalous novel for which Allen is best remembered?

The answer is simple: I ain't read it yet.

A bonus: The two novels that didn't make the Top Ten:

A Terrible Inheritance (1890) 

A Splendid Sin (1898) 

Related posts:

Terrible, Just Terrible
No Nurture, Just Nature

A Nineteenth-Century What's Bred in the Bone

Mister Allen Writes a Murder Mystery

Grant Allen Tells It Like It Was

Cruising Towards Cannibals With Grant Allen