The Dreams That Things Are Made Of

Farewell My Dreams [La fin des songes]
Robert Élie [trans. Irene Coffin]
Toronto: Ryerson, 1954 

Farewell My Dreams isn't a title I would've used; "The End of Dreams", the most literal translation, works just fine. No wispy romance, this debut novel is one of the most depressing and rewarding books I've read this year – and there are just thirty-seven more days to go.

Friends in youth, Marcel Larocque and Bernard Guerin enter middle-age connected only through respective marriages to sisters Jeanne and Nicole. No one is happy. Pudgy Marcel, a Montreal journalist, stares too long at his wife's youngest sister and dreams of past infatuations. Privileged Bernard, a lazy lawyer, wanders aimlessly, half-hoping that something will interest. When offered a seat in Quebec City, he goes through the motions, but stops in his tracks at the sign of the first obstacle. Meanwhile, the wives suffer.

Though the plot suggests otherwise, this is much more than a novel of mid-life crises. Démon de midi takes on new meaning as Marcel's mental illness, so very subtle in the early pages, comes to dominate his actions.

Six decades after first publication, La fin des songes remains in print; not so the English-language translation. I doubt this has anything to do with Irene Coffin, though her work is clumsy and talents ill-suited. The language is stilted, her dialogue peppered with words like "shall" and "forsooth".

Yes, forsooth.

Beaver Hall Hill is "Cote Beaver Hall" and Montreal's great commercial street appears variously as "Ste.-Catherine" and "Sainte-Catherine". The biggest gaff of all comes when the translator has Bernard announce that he is looking to be elected federally.

My advice? Read it in the original if you can. Read the translation if you can't. Either way, you'll be both depressed and rewarded.

A coincidence: Remember Douglas Sanderson's The Deadly Dames? Sure you do. That's the thriller in which a woman is killed by a streetcar rounding Peel and Ste-Catherine. Well, the very same corner features in La fin des songes:

He stopped a taxi which took him to the corner of Peel and Ste.-Catherine. The street-cars were making an infernal din and the crowd, as dense as at noon, flowed slowly. He landed in a tavern where smoke and bad lighting gave the beer drinkers a phantom-like appearance. It suited his mood well, but Bernard began to laugh. "I surely am not going to live in the atmosphere of detective stories."  

The critics rave: La fin des songes received the Prix David and has been described as the great novel of la Grande Noiceur. Reception of the English-language edition was enthusiastic – the exception being a critic I know only as "A.G.P.". Here he is in the 4 March 1955 edition of the Quebec Chronicle-Telegraph:

When the psychologically sound people must face a reality that continues to be fairly rugged and seek escape through the medium of fiction, to depress them with neurotic maunderings is to substitute a stone for nourishing bread.

The critic later provides these words of advice:

There is an abundance of material in French Canada for more cheerful and more constructive themes. Judged by the standards of Mr. Elie's [sic] literary school these may be less dramatic but, so far as I have been able to feel their collective pulse, the contemporary reading public, by a large majority, want to be amused and to laugh. At the very least, it would be interesting for him to provide this sort of escape by way of change of pace, if nothing more.

A.G.P. makes the mistake of identifying Bernard as "Bertrand". Pay him no mind.

Object: An attractive 213-page hardcover bound in pale blue cloth with burgundy print, my copy belonged to my father. The dust jacket sells other Ryerson novels by Ada Pierce Chambers, Will R. Bird, Gaie Taylor and E.M. Granger Bennett. I'm a proud owner of the Bird title – bought for a buck last year in London.

(Cliquez pour agrandir)

Access: John Glassco once stole a copy of the first edition from the Royal Edward Laurentian Hospital; you'll find it with most of his other books at Queen's University. A total of twenty-three Canadian libraries have copies of the Coffin translation.

Though uncommon. decent copies of the Ryerson edition begin at under ten dollars. One copy – and only one copy – of the American edition, published in 1955 by New York's short-lived Bouregy & Curl, is on offer for US$14,

La fin des songs is currently available from Bibliothèque Québécoise, For some reason, I prefer Fides' earlier  Bibliothèque Canadienne-Français edition, even though the building on the cover does not appear in the novel. I purchased mine through the mail from a Montreal bookseller who claimed it was signed by Élie.

It wasn't… and the condition was much worse than described.

T is for Thievery

Pettes Memorial Library, Knowlton, Quebec

Hugely flattered to hear you stole my book. This is fame. I used to steal a lot of books myself, mostly from libraries: my method was to look at the little card in the back envelope and if it hadn’t been taken out more than twice in the past year I would figure I needed it more than the public. 

— John Glassco, letter to Al Purdy, 18 September 1964

John Glassco, that self-proclaimed "great practitioner of deceit," made a very fine book thief. His personal library, most of which was purchased by Queen's University, included volumes lifted from McGill University, Macdonald College, the Westmount Public Library and the Royal Edward Laurentian Hospital.

Queen's is not alone in having profited from Glassco's ill-gotten gains. Twenty-three years ago, I purchased what I thought to be his copy of Irving Layton's Balls for a One-Armed Juggler (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1963).

A couple of decades passed before I happened to notice this on the top edge:

Glassco dated the copy April 1963, the month of publication. It is presented here as evidence that he was not above breaking the rule described in his letter to Purdy:

Two summer's ago, I purchased another of Glassco's books, Henry de Montherlant's Perish in Their Pride [Les Célibataires] (New York: Knopf, 1936), only to notice this after the sale:

(cliquez pour agrandir)

The Laurentian Sanitarium became the Royal Edward Laurentian Hospital, at which Glassco spent a nearly all of 1961 undergoing treatment for tuberculosis. On 3 November of that year he wrote his wife:

Now that I’m getting ready to leave I’m casting a selective eye on the books in the library. There’s just so much stuff here I’d like to opt (organizieren) that no one has ever read or will ever read. But I’d better not: that’s bad medicine. Only two: Robert Elie’s La fin des songes (there are three copies, all untouched) and Madame Ellis’ book on Garneau. They’ll none of them be missed, as Gilbert says. Anyway, I’d like to give them a good home.

How's that for gratitude?

Trivia: The book Purdy pilfered was The Deficit Made Flesh (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1958). The victim was a Montreal bookseller.

Plug: Both Glassco letters quoted feature in The Heart Accepts It All: Selected Letters of John Glassco, edited by yours truly.

Cross-posted at A Gentleman of Pleasure.