The Dusty Bookcase at 1000

Last Tuesday's post marked the one thousandth since this blog began. I saw it coming, took my eye off the ball, and didn't notice when it hit. Nevertheless, that post, on a lost film adaptation of a once-popular work by one-time bestselling author Ralph Connor, seems appropriate enough. The Dusty Bookcase began in early 2009, with a review of novelist Brian Moore's suppressed debut Sailor's Leave (a/k/a Wreath for a Redhead). The idea back then, as it is now, was to read and review all the suppressed, ignored and forgotten Canadian books I've been collecting.

I'm falling behind.

One thousand. I thought I'd mark the start of second thousand by listing the ten most visited posts in this blog's history. For obvious reasons, older posts have an advantage. These aren't necessarily my favourites, you understand, but the fans have spoken!

1

Pictures of Harriet 

A collection of covers (with commentary) depicting the heroine of Governor General's Award-winning poet John Glassco's pornographic novel. I suspect it's popularity was boosted somewhat by a New York dominatrix's use of the same name. 

The post was later expanded upon – more images – for A Gentleman of Pleasure, the blog used to promote my Glassco biography of the same same. 

Buy it here! 

2

Alpha, Beta, Dada 

The first of four posts – here are the second, third, and fourth – on the surreal covers produced by rip-off artists VDM Publishing. Recommended reading for anyone who still needs convincing that Amazon knows no shame. 

3

Margaret's Marriage in Mass Market 

She haunts us still, I suppose, but then so do the rest of the family. Another Trudeau title features below, and pretty much everything I wrote that included the surname proved popular: Sex and the Trudeaus: The Bachelor Canada, Sex and the Trudeaus: Son and Hair, Pierre Trudeau's Letter to the Children of Troy, Trudeau Redux: Compare and Contrast, Trudeau Redux: Compare and Contrast II, Wishing the Prime Minister Dead, Trudeaumania II. 

My posts on Stephen Harper – on his forgotten speech and his forgotten hockey book – deserve more attention. 

A revised and expended version of the post on Margaret Trudeau: The Prime Minister's Runaway Wife features in my forthcoming book, The Dusty Bookcase. 

Buy it here!

4

Jalna's Dirty Little Secret (Parts I & II) 

I had an awful lot to say about this awful book and the awful television series that encouraged its publication – so much that I had to cut it in half. Both halves will feature – revised – in the forthcoming Dusty Bookcase book. 

Have I mentioned it can be bought here? 

5 

A POD Publisher's Alternate Universe 

Forget VDM, no print on demand publisher has given me more enjoyment than Tutis Classics. This was my first post about these crooks, though my favourite is It's Tutis Time, posted a few weeks later. Sadly, Tutis is no more. Fortunately, their covers remain.

6

Maria Monk's Immortal Book 

My earliest writing on Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk (1837), the oldest book reviewed here, proved to be one of the most commented upon posts in the blog's eight years. The book and associated scandale are also the subjects of ongoing research and a future book.

7

Galt's Damaged Pastor Novelist 

A post about the forgotten and unlucky Robert E. Knowles, whose debut novel, St. Cuthbert's, was the most torturous read of my life.

8

Canada's Olympians, Part III 

Who dares deny the popularity of Harriet Marwood? Posted less than a month into the blog, this piece on The English Governess was the third in a four-part series focussing on the four Olympia Press titles written by Canadians: Diane Bataille's The Whip Angels, John Glassco's complete of Aubrey Beardsley's Under the Hill (by far the most attractive volume the press ever produced), Glassco's pseudonymously published The English Governess, and Jock Carroll's Bottoms Up (inspired by his assignment to photograph Marilyn Monroe at Niagara Falls). 

The English Governess is the best of the lot. 

9

Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Ladies Man 

A slight post about a slim book of humour, I can't quite get over its popularity. Michelle Le Grand, Alison Fay, I'd love to hear from you!

10

Pornography of the Puritan 

It may be word "pornography". Seven years ago, a post I'd titled A Prudish Policewoman's Porn attracted visitors by the thousands. Click on the link and imagine their disappointment! 

Must say, I find the popularity of this old post, which draws on images from various editions of Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk, encourages work on my Maria Monk book. 

More to come. For now, I'd like to thank readers and fellow bloggers who have been supportive these past one thousand posts: Patti Abbott, John Adcock, Bowdler, Curtis Evans, Le Flâneur, Kristian Gravenor TracyK, Leaves & Pages, Jean-Louis Lessard, Melwyk, J.R.S. Morrison, J.F. Norris, Noah Stewart, and the late, much-missed Ron Scheer. The Dusty Bookcase would've become mouldy without you.

St. Cuthbert's and the Rest

The new issue of Canadian Notes & Queries arrived Friday, just in time for the first day of summer, bringing another Dusty Bookcase sur papier. Under the microscope this time is St. Cuthbert's of the West, the debut novel by Reverend Robert E. Knowles, who by small coincidence was the subject of Friday's post.

St. Cuthbert's of the West – a/k/a St. Cuthbert's – is the most difficult, most time-consuming novel I've read since embarking on this exercise. Knowles had defeated me in the past, but this time I persevered, pushing mind and tortured soul through what may very well be the most trying 317 pages in our country's literature.

To anyone who questions the weight of this accomplishment, I present this sample dialogue:

“The session ’ll mebbe listen to me, for I’ve been yir precentor these mony years. We’ll hae nae mair o’ thae havers. Wha wants their hymes? Naebody excep’ a when o’ gigglin’ birkies. Give them the hymes, an we’ll hear Martyrdom nae mair, an’ Coleshill an’ Duke Street ’ll be by. For what did oor fathers dee it wasna for the psalms o’ Dauvit? An’ they dee’d to the tunes I’ve named to ye.”

The novel deals primarily with the politics and parishioners of a nineteenth-century Ontario Presbyterian church.

No more need be said.

Hey, remember these?

I do in this issue's "CNQ Timeline".

As always, the rest is rich. Editor Alex Good contributes a twenty-page essay on last year's Scotiabank Giller Prize, joining Stephen Henighan as one of the few critics to who really understand what the hell is going on. We also have a Ray Robertson essay, Carmine Starnino's interview with Michael Harris, Harold Heft's interview with Kenneth Sherman, new fiction from C.P. Boyko, three poems by Kerry-Lee Powell  and, ahem, Bruce Whiteman's review of The Heart Accepts It All: Selected Letters of John Glassco. John Degen, Diana Tamblyn, Kerry Clare, J.C. Sutcliffe , Michael Bryson, Emily Donaldson and Jeff Bursey round out the issue. As always, Seth provides the cover, this time adding an appreciation of Duncan Macpherson. He was, writes Seth, "Canada's greatest political cartoonist". True, so very true.

Yes, summer is here. Emboldened by having at long last tackled a Robert E. Knowles novel I look to my shelves and see that the damaged reverend offers five more.

But they can hardly be considered summer reading.

Related posts:

Galt's Damaged Pastor Novelist

Misfortune Follows Reverend Knowles

Misfortune Follows Reverend Knowles

Robert E. Knowles is the very sort of fellow one would expect to have been the subject of a biography. I'm thinking here of those dry, polite stories of a life, often penned by friends, that were published in the early half of the last century. Not only was Knowles "One of Canada's Best Known Novelists" – this according to the March 1909 Canadian Bookman – but he was once Canada's preeminent Presbyterian preacher, a man renowned throughout the Dominion for his sermons and oratorial skills.

That same March 1909 Canadian Bookman positions Knowles as "the Ian Maclaren of Canada", in large measure due to St. Cuthbert's, his wildly popular debut novel.

Unlike Maclaren, Knowles' sermons were never collected. Most were delivered at Knox's Galt Presbyterian Church, which I visited last Sunday.

Literary sleuths will find it on Queen's Square, just across from Central Presbyterian Church, in that awkward composite city we know as Cambridge, Ontario.

Reverend Knowles once preached at St Marys Presbyterian Church, the steeple of which you can see from our garden… in winter.

He stayed in a house that is now owned by friends…

…during which time he worked on his commercially successful second novel:

The Undertow was published by Revell in the autumn of 1906, just months before the reverend's blessed life became less so. On 26 February 1907, Knowles was a passenger on a train that left the track outside Guelph, then travelled a further 356 metres. Mr Charles R. Rankin of Stratford was killed in the accident. It would appear that Knowles' recovery did not proceed as anticipated:

The Globe & Mail, 13 March 1907

The City of Cambridge is cagey concerning the accident's impact on the author – and messes up the year of the accident. Jean O'Grady is more forthright, writing in The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature that Knowles, a prohibitionist, likely descended into alcoholism. In January 1915, at forty-six years of age, he formally retired from his ministry, but not before having suffered through two further tragedies.

The Globe & Mail, 8 September 1913

On 7 September 1913, Robert Knowles, Sr, in whose footsteps the popular pastor novelist had tread, was struck by a Toronto streetcar. Rendered semi-conscious, he was first brought to the surgery of Dr Robert T. Noble, and was then "taken to his home by a carriage… suffering greatly from shock."

A larger tragedy, perhaps the greatest in the Knowles family history, occurred one hundred years ago today – 19 June 1914 – when the novelist's brother was killed by a blow to the head with a milk bottle wielded by a drunk named Émile Lebrie.

The Globe & Mail, 20 June 1914

"The blow fell upon a portion of the skull, it is said, where a silver plate had been placed in treatment of a wound received in battle in South Africa", reported the Globe. The altercation between James Knowles and Émile Lebrie was supposedly over a trivial matter. When arrested at the Miners' Hall in Cobalt, Lebrie was unaware he'd killed Knowles.

"MANSLAUGHTER LIKELY CHARGE" reads a headline in the 22 June 1914 Globe. What little I know about our legal system leads me to agree. I've not been able to find out whether I'm right, nor do I know the fate of Émile Lebrie, the Milk Bottle Murderer™.

If only there was a biography of Robert E. Knowles.

Addendum: I don't mean to suggest that the reverend's life had been untouched by tragedy before the train derailment. On 18 June 1905, a few months before the publication of his first novel, Knowles had officiated at the marriage of Mr William Lash and Miss Jane Anderson.

The Globe, 19 June 1905

The Globe reported that eats were served, glasses were raised, and the groom replied to a toast to his bride. The happy couple had then retired to an upstairs bedroom "to prepare to take the 2.45 Grand Trunk train", at which point the newly-wed Mr Lash collapsed. The paper was nothing if not polite: "It is supposed that, unaccustomed to speaking, the strain of replying to the toast had unduly excited him".

Related posts:

Galt's Damaged Pastor Novelist

Galt's Damaged Pastor Novelist

92 Glenmorris Street, Cambridge, Ontario, home of Robert E. Knowles

I spent much of this past Father's Day in Cambridge, that awkward, factitious product of forced amalgamation. It's a city without a centre, dominated by a strip of parasitic plazas, malls and big box retailers. Still, the older areas have retained much of their beauty. The gem remains the weakened downtown of what was once Galt. Margaret Avison was born here and, as a girl, Mazo de la Roche called it home.

One hundred years ago, Galt's literary community was dominated by Robert E. Knowles, novelist and very popular pastor of Knox's Presbyterian Church. It's said that for a time Knowles' Canadian sales rivaled those of L. M. Montgomery and Ralph Connor. Between 1905 and 1911 the reverend published seven novels, including The Handicap (1910), which I have before me. I confess that I've never made it past the first page:

"An' how far might it be to Liddel's Corners now, boss?"

The man who asked the question seemed very much in earnest about it and his tone. which, by the way, was distinctly Irish, implied that considerable hung upon the answer.

As one sets down the commonplace inquiry after the long lapse of years it certainly sounds insignificant enough. But it was quite a different matter to the rosy-cheeked traveller that frosty winter morning as the heavily-laden stage made its creaking way along the primitive road that led from Hamilton to Glen Ridge.

Nor did the question seem a trifling one to the other occupants of the four-seated sleigh, if quick and eager glances in the direction of the driver may be considered evidences of interest. As a matter of fact, some of them stirred a little in their seats as...

Yes, yes, yes, but how far to Liddel's Corners?

(The answer – nine miles – comes at the end of the third page.)

Thumbing through The Handicap, I see that I may have been too ready to dismiss. 'The Canadian atmosphere gives it a touch of the unusual', says an anonymous 1911 New York Times review, but I see signs of even greater quirkiness.

In the novel's concluding chapters, 'The Right Hon., The Premier' and 'Sir John A.'s Handiwork', none other than John A. Macdonald shows up to save the day.

After The Handicap Knowles wrote only one more novel, The Singer of the Kootenay. Jean O'Grady, who penned Knowles' entry in The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature, suggests that alcoholism brought an end to his careers as a novelist and as a minister of the cloth. Not at all fitting for a man who'd previously devoted much energy to the goals of the temperance movement. Knowles spent his later years working as a journalist for the Toronto Daily Star.

Cambridge has honoured Knowles with a spot in its 'Hall of Fame', making much of his work against that old demon alcohol, while carefully avoiding mention of his personal struggles with drink.

The city's large public library system doesn't have a single one of his books.