His Holiness the Dalai Lama wrote the preface to Joe Fisher's third book, The Case for Reincarnation. It's said to be one of the better popular studies of the topic. Skin Dive is something else entirely. Fisher's only novel, it revolves around sad sack Clive Conroy, the proprietor of a failing downtown Toronto nudist club. Clive had borrowed good money to buy the place – The Blue Grotto – on a realtor's assurances that it was good investment. It wasn't. "NUDE MR. CABBY CONTEST," Clive's one idea for turning things around proves disastrous when Bertram Sheehy and his fellow brothers in the Taxi Driver's Association of Metropolitan Toronto threaten violence. "Cab drivers are serious people," says Sheehy, the Association's president, "a strata of society earning and deserving respect. If you think we're going to sit here and watch ourselves being deliberately slandered and humiliated you've got another think [sic] coming."
Clive is a serial sucker, the Blue Grotto being just the latest in a string of bad bets. As the club looks about to go under, Clive encounters Henry Bubbins, representative of Esquire Consultants Ltd, who encourages him to invest in the sale of fire detectors. Sucker that he is, Clive soon finds himself being transported in Bubbins' ageing Cadillac to a twelve-hour seminar at a suburban hotel. The whole thing stinks of a multi-level marketing scheme, but proves much the worse; Esquire Consultants Ltd disappears after Clive hands over a cheque for $2500 ($10,007.71 today).
I felt like a sucker myself. Back in 2014, I paid $20 ($21.76 today) for Skin Dive after reading the back cover copy:
Clive and Mary Anne do not "explore the mad world of Toronto's Sin Strip;" in fact, they're barely ever together.
No pun intended.
Mary Anne, who begins the novel as a Blue Grotto employee, encourages Clive to invest in a dating service cum brothel.
No pun intended.
Clive retreats to his rented flat, distancing himself from the Sin Strip, as money from Mary Anne's business flows.
Skin Dive promises something other than what it delivers. Going by cover copy, I'd expected a portrait, no matter how crudely drawn, of a time, a place, and its people, much like Hugh Garner had accomplished with Sin Sniper(which isn't much of a novel). Instead, Fisher takes a wealth of material and presents a novel composed of dull moments; the Esquire Consultants sales pitch runs seventeen pages.
I can't leave Skin Dive without remarking on the pub date: July 1977, the very same month as the Emanuel Jaques murder.
.
I was fourteen, two years older that the victim, and living in suburban Montreal, but I knew Emanuel Jaques' name well. His body was found on a Yonge Street rooftop, just across the street from the Eaton's Centre – and I'd been to the Eaton's Centre! In the summer of '77, the killers of Emanuel Jaques vied for column inches with the Son of Sam. His death brought the beginning of the end of Toronto's Sin Strip.
Skin Dive enjoyed no second printing, and is fairly uncommon. It's held by Library and Archives Canada and six of our universities.
No used copies are listed for sale online.
Given the timing, I'm guessing no one was much interested in a rollicking adventure set on the Sin Strip.
Object: A cheap mass market paperback bulked up by six pages of offerings from the PaperJacks catalogue; my favourite, of course, being The Last Canadian:
And doesn't this look interesting?
I read this at fifteen during a family vacation to Cape Breton:
Wish I still had a copy.
Brant Cowie is credited with the cover of Skin Dive. The uncredited model is overdressed.
Nobody told me there'd be days like these. The Nazis in the bathroom just below the stairs are the least of my worries.
I've been spending this time of self-isolation out and about in my role as an essential worker. On days off, I wander about the woods of our secluded home gathering firewood for next fall and winter. I sometimes fear I'm turning into the Michael Caine character in The Children of Men.
The Children of Men is not be the thing to watch just now. I managed to make it through the first episode of HBO's The Plot Against America, but could take no more. Since then, it's been SCTV and old episodes of 30 Rock.
I'm in need of a good laugh these days, though I well understand the curiosity of those who've asked me to recommend Canadian novels dealing with pandemics.
The craziest by far is May Agnes Fleming's The Midnight Queen (1863), which is set in London during the Great Plague. In Tom Ardies' Pandemic (1973), part-time secret agent Charlie Sparrow combats a millionaire who looks to unleash a killer virus upon the world.
But my greatest recommendation is The Last Canadian (1974) by William C. Heine, which just happens to be the first Canadian novel I ever read. Ten years ago, I shared my thoughts about the work in a blog post, which was subsequently taken down and reworked for inclusion in The Dusty Bookcase — the book.
I'm bringing it back for the curious. Enjoy... then look for something funny.
AT LONG LAST LUNACY
The Last Canadian
William C. Heine
Markham, ON: Pocket Books, 1974
253 pages
In the opening chapter of The Last Canadian, protagonist Gene Arnprior leaves his suburban home and speeds along the Trans-Canada toward Montreal. A to B, it's not much of a scene, but the image has remained with me since I read this book at age twelve. The novel was the first in which I encountered a familiar landscape. Of the rest, I remembered nothing... nothing of the sexism, the crazed politics or the absurdity.
Penned by the editor-in-chief of the London Free Press, it begins with late night news bulletins about mysterious deaths in Colorado. Gene recognizes what others don't and takes to the air, flying his wife and two sons to a remote fishing camp near James Bay. As a virus sweeps through the Americas, killing nearly everyone, the Arnprior family live untouched for three idyllic years, before coming into contact with a carrier. As it turns out, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger... Gene lives on, but must bury his wife and children.
The Last Canadian is a favourite of survivalists everywhere. Someone calling himself Wolverine writes on the Survivalist Blog:
The immediate response reaction is instructive. Second there are the North country survival techniques. Third there are psychological factors of being a survivor in a situation where most others die. And there is more, dealing with post-disaster situations, though I won't go into that because it would spoil the book for you.
I won't be as courteous. Spoilers will follow, but first this complaint: the title is a cheat. Gene is not "The Last Canadian" – there are plenty of others – rather he considers himself such because his citizenship papers came through the day before the plague struck. Gene is an American who came north for work. He'd enjoyed his time in Canada, had made many friends and "had come to understand the Canadian parliamentary system, and agreed that it was far more flexible and effective than the rigidity of the American system of divided constitutional responsibility."
Reason before passion.
Is it then surprising that, there being no parliament, he's drawn back to the United States? Heading south, Gene resists all invitations of the Canadians he meets, whom he considers "eccentric" because they've chosen to stay put, supporting themselves through farming and whatever might be found in local shops. There's much more excitement to be found south of the border.
First, he stumbles into a Manhattan turf war – but that's hardly worth mentioning. As a carrier, Gene inadvertently kills a number of Soviet military types who have set up a base in Florida. In doing so, he becomes Enemy #1 of the USSR. They send frogmen assassins, set off bombs, plant land mines, and lob nuclear missiles in his general direction, but still Gene beetles on. When a Soviet submarine destroys his Chesapeake Bay home, killing the woman he considers his new wife, Gene seeks revenge.
Though he has no evidence, Gene comes to blame the Soviets for the plague (in fact, it's a rogue Russian scientist), and dedicates himself to infecting the USSR. He begins with a short wave radio broadcast directed at the Kremlin: "If the Russian people were half as smart as your literature says they are, they'd have tossed you out long ago. Because they haven't, I have to assume they're as stupid as you are."
You see, because they are stupid, Gene has decided that all citizens of the Soviet Union should die. He cares not one bit that the plague will spread beyond the borders of the country, killing the rest of Asia and Europe, never mind Africa.
It's all crazy, but the reader is not surprised. Though Heine spills an awful lot of primary colours in an effort to paint the man as a hero, concern has been growing for quite some time. Remember when he hit his wife, just so she'd understand the gravity of their situation? How about when he'd threatened to tie his young son to a tree and whip him until he couldn't stand – all because he'd fallen asleep while tending a fire? Then there's that little glimpse of Gene's psyche provided when his new love, Leila, tells him a horrific story of being kidnapped, beaten and raped repeatedly by a psychopath:
"You can't imagine the things he made me do. And he killed a man to get one of his girls."
Gene felt another chuckle welling up. In the few years he'd spent in Korea and Japan, he'd read about most of the sex things there were to do, and tried a few himself. He stifled it, however, recognizing her revulsion.
Yep, pretty funny stuff... and don't forget to add that boys will be boys.
Intent on killing billions, Gene makes his way up the Pacific Coast, dodging Soviet and American forces, before crossing the Bering Strait into the USSR. Hundreds of Americans and an untold number of Russians die as a result. His journey and life are finally ended by a clusterfuck of nuclear strikes – Soviet, Chinese, American and British – which obliterate the Anadyr basin.
Lest the reader agree with the Soviets that Gene had become a madman, Heine is at the ready to set things right. You see, Gene's actions were perfectly understandable; the British prime minister tells us so.
We're left with the image of radioactive clouds composed of the people and terrain of Anadyr. They drift across Canada, sprinkling poisoned dust over the land. Some settles on the graves of Gene's wife and children:
In time the rains washed the radioactive dust down among the rocks and deep into the soil.
Something of Eugene Arnprior, who had suffered much and had done more to serve mankind than he could ever have imagined, had come home to be with those he loved.
Thus ends what I believe to be the stupidest Canadian novel.
Trivia: Published in the US under the snicker-inducing title Death Wind, and later as – go figure – The Last American.
Terrifying, either way. In 1998, the novel was transformed into a Steven Seagal vehicle titled The Patriot. Here the action hero plays Dr Wesley McClaren, a small town immunologist doing battle with Montana militiamen and the lethal virus they've released. Sure sounds like Gene Arnprior could help out, but he's nowhere to be found. Maybe he's up on Parliament Hill taking in the House of Commons. Who knows. The Dominion to the north is never mentioned, nor is the Soviet Union, for that matter. Truth be told, The Patriot has as much to do with the novel as it does good cinema. It can be seen, in its entirety, on YouTube:
Object: A typical mass market paperback. The cover photo is by Jock Carroll, who also served as editor of this and other paperback originals published by the Pocket Books imprint. The final pages advertise more desirable titles in the series, including:
FESTIVAL by Bryan Hay. A modern novel which reveals the rip-off of drug-crazy kids by music festival promoters.
THE HAPPY HAIRDRESSER by Nicholas Loupos. A rollicking revelation of what Canadian women do and say when they let their hair down.
Access: As far as I've been able to determine, The Last Canadian went through at least seven printings, making its scarcity in the used book market something of a mystery. Just two copies are currently listed online. At US$99.95 and US$133.53, both are described as being in crummy condition. Where do these survivalists get their money?
Take heart, April is less than four days away. The President of the United States has assured us that the virus will be gone by then. Something to do with the heat, he says.
Brian shares ten noteworthy finds on his bibliophilic journey, including gossip about the Eaton family, radish-heavy dialogue, and "the worst sex scene in all of Canadian literature."
The good folks at All Lit Up have just posted my overview of ten favourite Dusty Bookcase finds. You can read it through here.
Yep, the worst sex scene in all of Canadian literature – and it wasn't written by Dan Hill.
Not my pool, sadly, but that belonging to a friend and old work colleague. Today's Saturday Star features a piece by Nick Patch on the forthcoming Dusty Bookcase book. Although the article itself isn't available online – not to non-subscribers – my picks of five books worthy of attention is open to all:
In the opening scene of The Patriot, the 1998 motion picture adaptation of William C. Heine's The Last Canadian, small town immunologist Wesley McClaren (Steven Seagal) ropes cattle on his Montana ranch. The second scene shows McClaren working to save the life of a sickly young calf, as hired hand Frank (L.Q. Jones) looks on. In the third, local neo-Nazi militia leader Floyd Chisolm (Gailard Sartain) whips up his followers in a compound surrounded by the Feds.
McClaren doesn't feature in The Last Canadian, nor does Frank, nor does Floyd Chisolm, nor does the entire State of Montana. Conversely, Gene Arnprior, the novel's protagonist does not feature in the film. In fact, The Last Canadian and The Patriot don't share a single character or setting. Not one scene from the novel is depicted in the film.
Because I'm a firm believer in research, and am a glutton for punishment, I've watched all ninety minutes of The Patriot and have read all 253 pages of The Last Canadian. Twice. I can attest that there is as much similarity between the two as there is between Armageddon and The Queers of New York.
I'm fairly certain that The Patriot is the least faithful screen adaptation of a Canadian novel, but can't say for sure because I'll never get the chance to see The Critical Age, the 1923 film based on Ralph Connor's Glengarry School Days. Like so many thousand other silents, The Critical Age is a lost film. Everything I know about it – which isn't much – comes courtesy of 94-year-old reviews, like this one, written by Laurence Reid for the May 19, 1923 edition of Motion Picture News:
We don't see the reason for calling it
by its present title in view of the fact that
the original story was known far and wide
as ''Glengarry School Days." Perhaps they
felt that it might not interest the customers
who had emerged from adolescence. Some
title more suitable than "The Critical Age" should have been employed. This is the only
shaft of criticism which we can hurl at this
neat little production, which is strong in
atmosphere – which tells a story of political
conflict without any tedium being suggested
as is often the case in this type of plot.
The original yarn carried quite a schoolroom background. It has not been neglected
here. It serves here in introducing two highly
adaptable players in James Harrison and
Pauline Garon – as well as establishing the
romance. The political sequences follow and
bring forth the efforts of a rich Parliament
member [sic] and his son to put over a bill which
would dislodge the homesteaders. The
romance carries on apace through the efforts
of this son to win the daughter of another
lawmaker from a young homesteader. The
latter is successful in scenes which carry on
with sufficient color [sic] and movement – scenes
which take in the girl's rescue from the river
and a mad ride in a motor car by the champion of the farmers who casts his vote in
the nick of time.
Reviewer Reid assumes that the reader is familiar with Connor's novel. And why not? Glengarry School Days was an international bestseller. I expect I would have more than one shaft of criticism, but then I prefer adaptations that play some small deference to the source.
Maineiac Harlan Knight plays lead character Peter Gorach. James Harrison appears as Tom Findley, while Alice May brings life to his mother. Montrealer Pauline Garon, who would decades later land a bit part in How Green Was My Valley, plays love interest Maggie Baird. And then we have Wallace Ray as Bob Kerr, Raymond Peck as Senator Kerr, Marion Colvin as Mrs Baird, and William Colvin as Senator Baird. Not one of these characters appears in Glengarry School Days. The plot Reid describes in Motion Picture News will be entirely unfamiliar to readers of the novel.
The few surviving stills are equally unrecognizable.
Glengarry School Days does feature a heroic dog – name: Fido – who saves Hughie Murray from a bear attack. The son of a clergyman, young Hughie is the protagonist of Glengarry School Days, though he doesn't appear in the screen adaptation. In this way, he is no different than any of the other characters in the novel. Parliament Hill does not feature and Ottawa isn't so much as referenced. No girl is rescued from a river. There is no mad ride in a motor car, which is not surprising when one considers that Glengarry School Days is set in the 1870s.
Despite my misgivings, I'd gladly give The Critical Age a chance. I expect it is more enjoyable than The Patriot, if only because, at 46-minutes running time, it's barely half the length.
Sea Lord [The Swordsman] William C. Heine Don Mills: ON: PaperJacks, 1984
William C. Heine's The Last Canadian is one of the worst novels I've ever read; its ending stands as the stupidest.
God, it's awful.
You'll understand then why I so much wanted to read Sea Lord, the author's only other work of fiction. I hunted for years, scouring used book stores, thrift shops and garage sales, but never saw a single copy. It shouldn't have been such a challenge. A former editor of the London Free Press, Heine was a local author, and the novel had enjoyed a couple of good mass market paperback runs. The first, published as The Swordsman (Toronto: Seal, 1980), had the better cover, but I wasn't picky.
Sea Lord – the Swordsman, if you prefer – is Mirand, slave of Tehemil, born of a fallen Greek noblewoman in ancient Tyre. The first page is nearly his last as he suffers a near-fatal knife attack at the hands of a hired assassin. In the first page of The Last Canadian, hero Gene Arnprior stays up late watching TV in his suburban Montreal home.
On the surface, Heine's two novels seem very different, but they're not. Both adolescent fantasies, in the first, Gene Arnprior wanders a post-Apocalyptic world, beds some babes, and is remembered as one of the greatest figures in history; in the second, Mirand wanders the ancient world, beds babes, and is remembered as one of the greatest figures in history. In his own time he's considered a god.
Mirand is very much mortal. The slave owes his life to ironworker and renowned swordmaker Elisha, who hides the injured slave in his house. Beautiful daughter Naomi slowly nurses Mirand back from near-death as he stares at "the swelling lines of her dress, straining to hold her full breasts":
He amused himself as he sipped the broth with the thought that on [sic] day he would possess her. As a spasm of pain burned across his torn body, he choked on a half-laugh of self-pity and amusement. "If I live," he amended his promise to himself, "if I live I will lie with her one day."
Ah, classic Heine.
When the spasms subside and hearty laughter returns, Mirand becomes Elisha's apprentice, all the while fantasizing about his saviour's beautiful daughter:
Now he indulged himself in his daydream while his arms and hands methodically shaped hot iron under a hammer. "She is beautiful, and she is strong, too. I saw her practicing on the beach with bow and arrow and she could split a plank better than her father. Those arms are strong but her breasts are soft and someday I'll lie in her perfumed bed, with linen cloths like Tehemil had, and cool wine waiting in a flagon, while I kiss the ironworker's daughter and stroke her breasts and slide into her. I'll rouse her out of her coolness... she will beg for more..." and he gave the rod he was hammering a blow that snapped it in two.
Not only do Mirand and Naomi lie together, they marry and have children. With papa Elisha and a mother-in-law who barely exists, he amasses immense wealth trading goods throughout the Mediterranean. A mistress, a kidnapping and an attack by pirates bring excitement to what would otherwise be a rather mundane existence. The biggest and longest of Mirand's adventures begins with a voyage to the western coast of Africa made without Naomi and the in-laws. The ship is caught in a violent storm and, a couple of months later, he and his crew wash ashore in South America.
There Mirand finds favour and more with an Aztec king known as Iximhunti. Owing to Mirand's blond locks, the monarch determines that the newcomer is a god, showers him with gifts and insists he sleep with his beautiful daughter.
And yet, Mirand longs for home.
Using all they've managed to salvage from the Minnow, he and his crew construct a ship unlike any the world has ever seen, and set off in the expectation that they will find a current that will take them home.
Will they make it?
Did I care?
Heine learned something working on The Last Canadian. The writing on this sophomore effort is better, and yet I was bored to tears. All has to do with the fact that The Last Canadian takes place during Cold War, a time I remember well. Heine's take on the geopolitical world of Pierre Trudeau, Richard Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev is so absurd as to be entertaining, but I have no idea what to make of his depiction of ancient Tyre. Accurate? Astute? Silly? He didn't make me care enough to find out.
The only thing that kept me going was the hope of another stupid ending.
I wasn't disappointed.
Favourite passage:
It was as pretty a fight as Carthage had seen for many moons. It lasted as long as it takes a man to make a woman desperately anxious, which depends greatly on the skill of the man and the experience of the woman, but is measured by each in different terms.
Object: An entirely unattractive 256-page mass market paperback with cover art by Martin Visser. At first glance it looked to be one of PaperJacks' more competent productions, then I noticed this:
The Swordsman? But, um, we're calling it Sea Lord now, right? Remind me again why we're keeping the title of his book on historic sailing ships a secret.
Access:Library and Archives Canada has the novel in its collection, as do four of our universities. C'est tout.
As The Swordsman, used copies of the Seal first edition range in price from US$1.50 ("Very Good") to US$78.54 ("Good"). PaperJacks' butt ugly Sea Lord edition is far less common. As of this writing, just two are being offered online: US$6.25 ("Fair/Good") and US$12.00 ("VG+").
In 1984, Robert Hale published the first and only British edition (right). A hardcover, the only copy I've ever seen – indeed, the only copy listed online – is offered by Attic Books, mere blocks from Heine's old newspaper office. A Near Fine signed copy, it's being offered at US$100.
Pocket Books' 1974 edition of William C. Heine's The Last Canadian, our silliest novel, seen here with the edition Paperjacks packaged for the American market.
William C. Heine's Canadian bestseller, rechristened for the American market. The new title is the sort of thing that can send one's inner ten-year-old into a fit of giggles.
A writer, ghostwriter, écrivain public, literary historian and bibliophile, I'm the author of Character Parts: Who's Really Who in CanLit (Knopf, 2003), and A Gentleman of Pleasure: One Life of John Glassco, Poet, Translator, Memoirist and Pornographer (McGill-Queen's UP, 2011; shortlisted for the Gabrielle Roy Prize). I've edited over a dozen books, including The Heart Accepts It All: Selected Letters of John Glassco (Véhicule, 2013) and George Fetherling's The Writing Life: Journals 1975-2005 (McGill-Queen's UP, 2013). I currently serve as series editor for Ricochet Books and am a contributing editor for Canadian Notes & Queries. My most recent book is The Dusty Bookcase (Biblioasis, 2017), a collection of revised and expanded reviews first published here and elsewhere.
