On Abebooks' '20 must-read Canadian authors'

If memory serves, my first Abebooks transaction took place in 1997, roughly two years after the site launched. I purchased a copy of Mordecai Richler's Stick Your Neck Out, Simon & Schuster's first American edition of the novel we Canadians know as The Incomparable Atuk.

Whatever you think of the two titles, there's no denying that the Canadian cover, credited to Len Deighton – yes, Len Deighton – is superior.

My second find was a very nice first edition of George Gissing's Eve's Ransom. If memory serves, it set me back all of eight quid.

There were very real bargains to be had in Abebooks' early days, and it pleased me to think that the company was Canadian.

Abebooks is no longer Canadian. In 2008, it was sold to Amazon. I still use it, though less with each passing year. Bargains are now few and far between. The company does its best to encourage, emailing daily lists like '30 essential mystery authors,' 50 essential non-fiction books,' and 'World's most valuable children's books,' which presents '10 books that commend high prices.'

Last week, I received this:

The graphic caught my eye because all of the authors are still very much with us. The titles featured were published within the last thirty years.

The text struck the usual notes: "range of voices," "unique history," "multicultural identity," "indigenous storytelling," and "narratives of everyday life," reaching a crescendo with: "Canadian literature is as diverse as the people who call it home."

"From the North to the lively cities" was something original, and the reference to "bilingual works" was intriguing. The handful of bilingual works in my collection are results of academic collaborations between French and English-language scholars. 

Abebooks' list is presented in four rows, each consisting of five books.

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We begin with Margaret Atwood's big book. And why not? Forty years after initial publication, The Handmaid's Tale is more timely than ever. The first season of the Hulu adaptation is recommended.

The late Alice Munro stands with Mavis Gallant as the younger of Canada's two greatest short story writers. Both deserved the Nobel Prize. It's odd that her final book, Dear Life, is shown – and with its American paperback cover – when it is her weakest collection. It's odder still that the author is written about in the present tense.

"Joseph Boyden is known for his novels that explore Indigenous identity in Canada," begins the short entry.
 
I sense no irony.

Next comes Robert Munch, the only children's author on the list. To date, I've read only three books by the man: The Paperbag Princess, which I liked;  Jonathan Cleaned Up – Then He Heard a Sound, which I really liked; and Love You Forever, which is one of the worst books I've ever read.

I've not read anything by Suzette Mayr. This has more to say about me than her. Published not three years ago, The Sleeping Car Porter is the most recent book amongst the five.

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Because this is the year I stopped paying attention to Canada Reads, I was unaware of Mai Nguyen's Sunshine Nails. Women Talking, on the other hand, is a novel I know well, as are Heather O'Neill's Lullabies for Little Criminals, L.M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables and Yann Martel's Life of Pi.

Montgomery has not been posthumously recognized by the Canadian Literary Walk of Fame, as is claimed, for the simple reason that there is no Canadian Literary Walk of Fame.

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Rohinton Mistry's 1991 novel Such a Long Journey was not awarded the Giller Prize. The Giller was established in 1995.

The Inconvenient Indian by Thomas King is a work of non-fiction, not a novel.  

Is that cover of Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town not strange? Turns out it's a print on demand edition that comes courtesy of Britons dedicated to furthering "The Hippy Dream." The image used is a portion of a digitally produced work of a city hellscape that is in the public domain.

That ain't Mariposa. That ain't no little town.

Eden Robinson's novel Son of a Trickster has indeed received critical acclaim, however it did not win the Giller, (though it was a finalist). Given that Robinson is a BC writer, it will come as no surprise that Son of a Trickster did not receive the Writers Guild of Alberta's Howard O'Hagan Award (which, I note, is given for "outstanding single short story").

As a great admirer, I was pleased to see Anne Hébert recognized, but at the same time wondered why the paperback cover of The Silent Rooms, the 1974 Kathy Mezei translation of Les chambres du bois (1958), was chosen as the image. Sadly, the text provides no clue. While it is true that Hébert was awarded France's Prix de librairies and Prix Femina, it is also true that she received Canada's Governor General's Award no less that three times. One would think those accomplishments would deserve mention.

Carolyn Arnold was not known to me, which could be explained by my focus on the past. According to her website she has self-published forty-six novels in the past fourteen years.

I do know the work of Susan Joly, and not because Alice, I Think has been adapted by the Comedy Network.

One can't avoid Malcolm Gladwell in this country. These days, I encounter him most often in his role as co-founder of Pushkin Industries and through his podcast Revisionist History. If you aren't aware of the latter, do check out the the the episode on Randy Newman's Good Old Boys.

As with Alice Munro, the Marie-Claire Blais entry is written as though the writer is still with us. Sadly, she died in 2021. In the years that followed the death of Brian Moore, she was my favourite living Canadian author. Not only did she win the Governor General's Award, she did so four times, which is more than any other author. The bland grey, red, and black print on demand edition shown is an insult.

Roch Carrier is another favourite. Montcalm and Wolfe, a work of non-fiction written by a novelist, is an odd choice. Not to suggest that the book doesn't deserve attention, but I would've chosen to highlight La Guerre, yes sir! or De l'amour dans la ferraille. It's amusing to see the Governor General's Award for the first and only time referred to as the Prix du Gouverneur général. Roch Carrier has never once received the Prix du Gouverneur général... or Governor General's Award, if you prefer. 

Abebooks' Amazon's list reminded me of nothing so much as CBC Books' ridiculous '100 Novels That Make You Proud to Be Canadian,' though there are significant differences. For one, there seems to have been no attempt at gender parity; where the CBC Books list was an even 50/50, the Abebooks list is 12/8 favouring female authors. If anything, this imbalance is more reflective of reality. 

What brought the CBC Books list to mind was the stark contrast between past and present. Sixteen of the twenty must-read Canadian authors are still with us. Our literary history stretches back to the eighteenth century, yet the earliest titles presented date from the twentieth century. The vast majority – thirteen of twenty – were published in the last twenty-five years.   

The selection of the 20 must-reads is presented as the result of a team effort. How big was the team? Who were its members?

My queries to Abebooks have gone unanswered. 

Related posts:

Why You Shouldn't Feel Bad about the 100 Novels That Make You Proud to Be Canadian List

(and why the CBC should)

On the Disgrace That Is CBC Books' 100 Young Adult Books That Make You Proud to Be Canadian

My First Canadian Book of Lists List: Ten Lists That Have Aged Poorly (Featuring Barbara Amiel!)

Being the second post on

The First Original Unexpurgated Authentic Canadian Book of Lists. 

I read Barbara Amiel's columns in Maclean's through my high school years, doing my best to understand her points of view. By university, I understood fully, and yet I'd still read her. Friends and Enemies: A Memoir (Toronto: Signal, 2020) was last thing I read by Baroness Black of Crossharbour. In it, she writes this of husband Conrad Black's convictions on counts of fraud and obstruction of justice in the United States: "our only revenge would be to see our persecutors guillotined. I have worked out 1,001 ways to see them die, beginning with injecting them with the ebola virus and watching."

It was at that point that I stopped reading Barbara Amiel, and then stopped thinking about her. Still, she was top of mind in creating this list of lists:

TEN LISTS THAT HAVE AGED POORLY

1. THE 10 MOST BEAUTIFUL WOMEN IN CANADA

At first glance, THE 10 MOST BEAUTIFUL WOMEN IN CANADA seems a piece of fluff, particularly when compared to, say, THE 10 BEST CANADIAN COMMANDING OFFICERS IN CANADA'S MILITARY HISTORY, but I would argue it's the book's most noteworthy list in that it, more than any other, is a reflection of the time in which the Canadian Book of Lists was published.

Actually, no... The list is more a reflection of a time that had not long passed when married women were treated as appendages, rather than persons in their own right. List maker John Bassett does a disservice to  "MRS JOHN BASSETT, she of the "wonderfully expressive face," whose career as a broadcast journalist was well underway before the couple wed. I remember Isabel Bassett (née Macdonald) best as Minister of Citizenship, Culture and Recreation under Mike Harris and as CEO of TV Ontario. I knew her name, but not his. I at first confused John W.H. Bassett with John F. Bassett of Face-Off fame.

I am familiar with Julian Porter (and his father, Chief Justice Dana Porter). I've had the pleasure of meeting Mrs Julian Porter, whom I know as writer and publisher Anna Porter.

Is Mrs John Bassett's third place finish worthy of note? Perhaps not. The names appear to be presented in alphabetical order. Or is that just coincidence? After all, the first, Barbara Amiel, is clearly identified as "the most beautiful woman in Canada." 

Amongst Bassett's other contributions to the Canadian Book of Lists is THE 10 MOST OUTSTANDING CANADIANS, which is somehow comprised of one woman and fifteen men.

2. 10 INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT ESKIMOS AND INDIANS

One of only two lists with a First Nations focus, the other being THE TEN LARGEST NATIVE LINGUISTIC GROUPS IN CANADA, it serves to draw attention the book's most glaring flaw. And then we have this photo and caption:

Both are appended to 10 GREAT CANADIAN SPORTS ACHIEVERS, which acknowledges Tom Longboat as the greatest Canadian marathoner. It is the only photograph of a First Nations person in the entire book.

3. 10 GREAT CANADIAN QUOTATIONS ON WOMAN [sic]

Seven of the ten come from men, including one each by Stephen Leacock and Irving Layton:

In all fairness, Leacock's words come from 'An Appeal to the Average Man,' the preface to his 1926 collection Winnowed Wisdom, in which the economist and humorist takes far more swipes at the male sex than the female. The photo used in the Canadian Book of Lists does not feature in Winnowed Wisdom. Evidence suggests it was taken sometime after 1926. 

4. 10 CORPULENT CANADIANS

Judy LaMarsh is #1. She reappears eight lists later as the fifth worst dressed Canadian celebrity.

5. THE 10 MOST PREVALENT CANADIAN HANG-UPS

The first of five contributions from Dr Daniel Cappon, Professor of Environmental Studies at York University, on this list is "women who don't know that to do with themselves and menopause."

Doctor Cappon is best remembered today for Toward An Understanding of Homosexuality (Prentice-Hall, 1965), in which he writes that homosexuals do not exist, rather they are "people with homosexual problems."

6. BIRTHDAYS AND ASTROLOGICAL SIGNS OF 

10 FAMOUS CANADIANS

7. 10 WAYS TO FINANCE A CANADIAN MOTION PICTURE

Ten tips from Garth Drabinsky!

8. THE 6 MOST HATED FOREIGNERS IN

CANADIAN HISTORY

A list contributed by Paul Rutherford, Chairman on the History Department at the University of Toronto, it runs as follows: 

                    1. Satan
                    2. George Washington
                    3. Josef Stalin
                    4. William of Orange
                    5. Any Pope
                    6. Lord Durham

Of course, "Any Pope" throws the whole thing off. At time of publication, there had been 262 popes. This newly confirmed Anglican didn't hate any of them, not even John XII or Urban VI. In 1978, my teenage self  knew nothing of William of Orange or Lord Durham, but I did know quite a bit about Adolf Hitler.

In short, this is a list that would've seemed dated in 1939.

9. 10 PEOPLE MOST LIKELY TO INFLUENCE

THE COURSE OF EVENTS IN CANADA

Referenced in Monday's post, this Peter C. Newman list is most notable for the fawning admiration of Brian Mulroney. John Turner also features. Notably absent is then-current prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau. Very much a spent force in 1978, Trudeau would lose the 1979 election (while handily taking the popular vote), only to return nine months later, just in time to lead the federalist victory in the 1980 Quebec Referendum. The Charter of Rights and Freedoms and repatriation of the Constitution followed in 1982.

10. THE TEN HIGHEST TEMPERATURES EVER RECORDED IN EACH OF CANADA'S PROVINCES

Related posts:

My Canadian Book of Lists Lists: An Introduction

My Second Canadian Book of Lists List:
The 10 Most egregious Errors (with Timothy Findley!)

My Third Canadian Book of Lists List:
The 10 Biggest Contributors (Featuring Claire Wallace!)

Teamwork

Freedom for Fanny

Average Leacock for the Average Man

The Globe's Best Books of 1923: 'Canadian Authors Can Be Read With Pleasure, Profit and Pride'

The Globe, 10 December 1923

Three men feature on the first page of the 1923 'Recent Books and the Outlook,' the 'Globe 100' of its day. The first, Paul A.W. Wallace, is recognized for his debut, Baptiste Larocque: Legends of French Canada. The second man, W.J. Healy, wrote Women of Red River, which was "arranged and published under the Women's Canadian Club of Winnipeg by Russell, Land, and Company." Norris Hodgins, the third, was recognized for Why Don't You Get Married.

All three are Canadian and all three are new to me.

I've been following the Globe's century-old lists of best books for nearly a decade now, and so think I know what to expect. There will be a dour pronouncement – in this case, "there is a dearth of outstanding books, especially novels, at the present time" – which will, in turn, be counterbalanced by something of a positive nature:

Under the 'More Canadiana' banner are books by Americans LeRoy Jeffers, Charles Towne, John M. Clarke, Charles W. Stokes, Paul Leland Haworth, and Briton Wilfred Grenfell. The final ingredient in this messy mix is George King's self-published Hockey Year Book. Its inclusion marks the first ever mention of the sport in 'Recent Books and the Outlook.'

I can't imagine how much it would fetch today. 84 Victoria Street itself is worth a bloody fortune.

Despite the flag waving, Canadian writers don't fair all that well in the Globe's 1923 list, accounting for just 46 of the 196 titles featured. As in 1922, poets dominate: 

Ballads and Lyrics - Bliss Carman

Selected Poems - W.H. Davies*

Morning in the West - Katherine Hale

Flint and Feather - E. Pauline Johnson

The Complete Poems of Archibald Lampman

Shepard's Purse - Florence Randal Livesay 

 The Miracle Songs of Jesus - Wilson MacDonald

The Complete Poems of Tom MacInnes

The Songs of Israfel and Other Poems - Marion Osborne

The Garden of the Sun - A.E.S. Smythe

The Empire Builders - Robert Stead

Woman - Albert Durrant Watson

That's twelve titles! From a nation of nine million! The Globe informs that the rest of the world produced just five collections of note!

For the second year running, we have the inclusion of The Complete Poems of Archibald Lampman, of which there is no record. And so, for the second year, I'll suggest that what is being referred to is The Poems of Archibald Lampman, first published in 1900 by George N. Morang. As Ryan Porter notes, the collection enjoyed several reprints. Still, I see no evidence of a new edition in 1923, never mind 1922. I'll say the same of E. Pauline Johnson's 1912 Flint and Feather. There was a new edition of Robert Stead's The Empire Builders, which just happens to be the only poetry title I own.

Curiously, Wilson MacDonald's The Song of Prairie Land is singled out for mention in the introduction to the poetry list, yet only his The Miracle Songs of Jesus makes the cut.

Our non-fiction writers fare the worst with just four of the fifty titles listed. I don't have a copy of even one, though I am interested in the Marjorie Pickthall, "a memorial volume edited by Helena Coleman," which does not seem to exist.  

Our writers of fiction don't fare much better, contributing just eight titles to the list: 

The Gaspards of Pine Croft - Ralph Connor

Lantern Marsh - Beaumont S. Cornell

Why Don't You Get Married? - Norris Hodgins

The Happy Isles - Basil King

When Christmas Crossed the Peace - Nellie L. McClung

Emily of New Moon - L.M. Montgomery

The Viking Heart - Laura Goodman Salverson

Spirit of Iron - Harwood Steele

There were twenty-one Canadian works of fiction on the 1922 list.

Here are some that made it:

And here are some that did not:

Frank L. Packard's The Four Stragglers is at the bottom of the pile, Stephen Leacock's Over the Footlights is at the top. Between the two is Winnifred Eaton's "Cattle" – or is it Cattle? – which may just be the best Canadian novel of 1923. 

The Gaspards of Pine Croft, which I've not read, is one of my $2 Connors.  

I've long been on the lookout for Beaumont S. Cornell's second and final novel Lantern Marsh because it's set in a thinly disguised Brockville, Ontario, which is where I do my weekly grocery shopping.  

Basil King's novel The Happy Isles is praised as the best since his 1909 breakthrough The Inner Shrine. I do like it, but nowhere near as much as The Empty Sack (1921).

I was once engaged to a woman who knew a woman who had been engaged to Harwood Steele. 

And so it goes.

* Correction: Roger Allen writes, "Are you sure the dozen poets are Canadian? The W.H. Davies nearly everyone thinks of - still in print - is the author of The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp. He only became a poet because he lost a leg jumping on a train in Canada and had to go back to Britain, but that doesn't make him Canadian."

He's correct, of course. I can't explain the error, though it might have something to do with a bottle of Canadian Club sent by an aunt as an early Christmas gift. 

Related posts:

Best Books of 1922: Amidst a Flood of Mediocrity

The 1921 Globe 100 206: Don't Mention the War 

Best Books of 1920: Beware the Bolshevik Poets

The Globe 100 One Hundred Years Ago: Poets are Struck Dumb

and Capitalism Proves Embarrassing (1919)

The Globe 100 178 of 2018

The Season's Best Books in Review - A.D. 1917:

The String of Canadian Patriotism is Fingered

The Season's Best Books in Review - A.D. 1916

The Season's Best Books in Review – A.D. 1915;

Featuring the Best Canadian Book Ever Published

Not Very Occult

Cousin Basil's Dickensian Christmas Gift

The Great Canadian Post-War Great War Novel

Entering the Unknown With Frank L. Packard

Alberta Gothic

$2 Connors

Average Leacock for the Average Man

Winnowed Wisdom
Stephen Leacock
New York: Dodd, Mead, 1926
300 pages

The author's sixteenth book of humour in as many years, one wonders how he managed; it's not as if Professor Leacock had no day job.

Winnowed Wisdom came in mid-career with the best of his writing in the past. Look no further than the six-page italicized preface for evidence:

It is the especial aim of this book to make an appeal to the average man. To do this the better, I have made a study of the census of the United States and of the census of Canada, in order to find who and what the average man is.
     In point of residence, it seems only logical to suppose that the average man lives at the centre of population, in other words, in the United States he lives at Honkville, Indiana, and in Canada at Red Hat, Saskatchewan. 
     In the matter of height the average man is five feet eight inches, decimal four one seven, and in avoirdupois weight he represents 139 pounds, two ounces, and three pennyweights. Eight-tenths of his head is covered with hair, and his whiskers, if spread over his face...  

You get the idea. Still, this made me laugh:

The percentage of women in the population being much greater in the eastern part of the country, the average woman lives one hundred and five miles east of the average man. But she is getting nearer to him every day. Oh yes, she is after him, all right!

The thing with Leacock is that even his most middling work has something that catches the light and shines. The same might be said of the collections themselves; Winnowed Wisdom may be weak, but three of its essays – 'How We Kept Mother's Day,' 'The Laundry Problem,' and 'How My Wife and I Built Our Home for $4.90' – were included in Laugh With Leacock: An Anthology of the Best Work of Stephen Leacock (1930).

Deservedly so.

This early passage from 'The Laundry Problem' had me sold:

In the old days any woman deserted and abandoned in the world took in washing. When all else failed there was at least that. Any woman who wanted to show her independent spirit and force of character threatened to take in washing. It was the last resort of a noble mind. In many of the great works of fiction the heroine's mother almost took in washing.

This comes later:

In the old days if you had a complaint to make to the washerwoman you said it to her straight out. She was there. And she heard the complaint and sneaked away with tears in her eyes to her humble home where she read the Bible and drank gin.

J.B. Priestley looked at Winnowed Wisdom and selected 'Our Summer Convention' and 'At the Ladies Culture Club' for 1957's The Bodley Head Leacock (aka The Best of Leacock).

I wouldn't have chosen either. 

My Winnowed Wisdom favourites have never featured in a Leacock anthology, so I thought I'd share. Each is as relevant today as a century ago.

The first, 'The Outline of Evolution,' is the second of Prof Leacock's 'The Outlines of Everything' essays.

It begins:

It seems that recently there has been a lot of new trouble about the theory of evolution in the schools. Either the theory is being taught all wrong or else there is something the matter with it. For years it had seemed as if the doctrine of Evolution was so universally accepted as to lose all its charm. It was running as a close second to Spherical Trigonometry and Comparative Religion and there was no more excitement about it than there is over Anthropology.

     Then suddenly something seems to have happened. A boy in a Kansas public school threw down his book and said that the next time he was called a protozoon he’d quit the class. A parent in Ostaboola, Oklahoma, wrote to the local school board to say that for anyone to teach his children that they were descended from monkeys cast a doubt upon himself which he found intolerable.

I never experienced such a fuss, but then I attended school in Montreal.

Sounds smug, I know. Given what's going on in the republic to the south, I can't help it.

My second favourite essay is titled 'Are We Fascinated with Crime?'

I've never been much fascinated myself, though I once made a good living writing true crime books published under a nom de plume. This was a decade ago. The books were sold around the English-speaking world – French and Polish translations appeared in other spheres – and I got a fair cut.

There's been talk about the rising interest in true crime, but I don't buy it. The fascination pre-dates London's Police Gazette. Montreal had Police Journal, and, in my day, Photo Police and Allo Police. 

Allo Police, 16 September 1984

As a younger man, I watched 48 Hours, Unsolved Mysteries, America's Most Wanted, and...

Mea culpa.

I was fascinated with crime. We are all fascinated with crime. In 1926, Leacock recognized as much, all the while questioning our interest: 

If a rich man is killed by his chauffeur in Tampa, Florida, and his body hidden in the gasoline tank, why should you and I worry? We don’t live in Tampa and we have no chauffeur and gasoline is too expensive for us to waste like that.

     Yet a whole continent will have to sit up and read a column of news about such a simple little event as that.

I read the professor's article as BBC and New York Times reports on the arrest of the Long Island Killer vied for my attention. 

The Montreal Gazette, 7 December 1957

Busby? Preistley? You tell me who chose better. Winnowed Wisdom can be read online here courtesy of the fine folks at the Faded Page.

Whatever you decide, I guarantee the average man will something that amuses, as will the average woman.

Object: One of the many Leacocks purchased up over the years at the McGill Book Fair. I'm fairly certain this one, a first American edition, was picked up in the early 'nineties. Price: $2.  

Access: First published by Macmillan (Canada), Dodd, Mead (United States) and John Lane (United Kingdom). The Macmillan and Lane editions feature the same dust jacket illustration by John Hassall.

The cover of the Dodd, Mead edition is by Jazz Age illustrator John Held, Jr.

In 1971, Winnowed Wisdom was added as #74 to the New Canadian Library. It holds the distinction of being the first NCL title without an introduction. It survived long enough to benefit from the third series design.

Related posts:

Lunar Attractions; or, The Leacock I Like
Professor Leacock Sets the Stage
Am I the Only One Laughing with Leacock?

The Very Best Reads of 2022: Ladies First

Late last night, as Christmas festivities drew to a close, I pulled Victor Lauriston's The Twenty-first Burr (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1922) from the shelves. It seemed appropriate way to end the holiday. One hundred years earlier, my copy was presented by the author to a woman named Olive Shanks.

I enjoyed the first four of its twenty-eight chapters, but know I won't be finishing the novel before year's end, meaning it's time for the annual Dusty Bookcase recap of best reads, books to be revived, etc.

This was a year unlike any other in Dusty Bookcase history. For the first time, women wrote a majority of the titles; twelve of the twenty-two reviewed here and in the pages of Canadian Notes and Queries.

Sara Jeannette Duncan's A Daughter of To-day and Joanna E. Wood's The Untempered Wind stand well above the other twenty. Both are available in Tecumseh's Early Canadian Women Writers Series, which goes some way in explaining how it is that only male authors feature in my annual selection of the three books most deserving of a return to print:

Philistia
Grant Allen

London: Chatto & Windus,

   1901

It was publisher Andrew Chatto who encouraged Allen to try his hand at fiction. This debut novel, first published in 1884, furthers the author's writing on philosophy,  naturalism, religion, and socialism. Ironically, its ending was spoiled by Chatto's intrusion. 

Whispering City
Horace Brown
Pickering, ON: Global

   Publishing, 1947

A noir thriller set in Quebec City, Whispering City pre-dates Hitchcock's I Confess by five years. Both have their weaknesses. Brown's adaptation of the former – likely the first novelization of a Canadian feature film – improves upon its source material.

Moonbeams from the

   Larger Lunacy

Stephen Leacock
Toronto: S.B. Gundy, 1915

Leacock's legacy suffered a blow this year when McGill announced that the building named in his honour, would be renamed after a venture capitalist who had pledged $13 million to the the university.

It's the stuff of a Leacock story.

As series editor of Véhicule Press's Ricochet imprint, I was involved in reviving Arthur Mayse's 1949 debut novel Perilous Passage. 'Telling the Story,' the introduction provided by the author's daughter, Susan Mayse, is one of my favourite in the series. Reprinted in Canadian Notes & Queries, it can be read through this link.

Recognition this year goes to England's Handheld Press for its reissue of Marjorie Grant's 1921 novel Latchkey Ladies.

I knew nothing of Marjorie Grant or Latchkey Ladies before reading this March 22 review in The Times. 

Finally, sadly, I report that the New Year's resolutions made last December didn't go far:

• I resolved to focus more on francophone writers, yet read just one: Philippe-Joseph Aubert de Gaspé (and then only in translation).
• I resolved to feature more non-fiction, and yet this writer of non-fiction reviewed nothing but fiction.
• I resolved to keep kicking against the pricks. This was easily done. Witnessing the  miscreants of the Freedom Convoy roll past on its way to Ottawa gave extra incentive.

This December I make no resolutions.

Here's to the New Year!

Bonne année!

Related posts:
The Very Best Reads of the Second Plague Year (2021)
The Very Best Reads of a Plague Year (2020)
The Very Best Reads of a Very Strange Year (2019)
Best Books of 2018 (none of which are from 2018)
The Year's Best Books in Review - A.D. 2017
The Year's Best Books in Review - A.D. 2016
The Year's Best Books in Review - A.D. 2015
The Christmas Offering of Books - 1914 and 2014
A Last Minute Gift Slogan, "Give Books" (2013)
Grumbles About Gumble & Praise for Stark House (2012)
The Highest Compliments of the Season (2011)
A 75-Year-Old Virgin and Others I Acquired (2010)
Books are Best (2009)

An Egotist of Yesterday

A Woman Who Did
Spoiled by a Publisher

Quebec City Noir

Lunar Attractions; or, The Leacock I Like

Just Kids

West Coast Canadian Noir

Ten Poems for National Poetry Month, Number 4: 'You' by Ram Spudd Stephen Leacock

For the month, the fourth of ten poems

I find interesting, amusing, and/or infuriating.

Verse from Ram Spudd, "one of nature's gentlemen," as celebrated in Stephen Leacock's Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy (Toronto: Gundy, 1915).

YOU

                                          You!

With your warm, full, rich, red, ripe lips,

And your beautifully manicured finger-tips!

                                          You!

With your heaving, panting, rapidly expanding and contracting chest,

Lying against my perfectly ordinary shirt-front and dinner-jacket vest.

                                 It is too much

                                 Your touch

                                 As such.

                                 It and

                                 Your hand,

                           Can you not understand?

Last night an ostrich feather from your fragrant hair

                                Unnoticed fell.

                                I guard it

                                Well.

                                Yestere’en

                           From your tiara I have slid,

                               Unseen,

                               A single diamond,

                               And I keep it

                               Hid.

Last night you left inside the vestibule upon the sill

                               A quarter dollar,

                               And I have it

                               Still.

Related post:

Lunar Attractions; or, The Leacock I Like

Lunar Attractions; or, The Leacock I Like

Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy
Stephen Leacock
Toronto: Gundy, 1915
282 pages

My introduction to Stephen Leacock came through a copy of Laugh With Leacock belonging to my father. A squat mass market paperback, it sat on peach crate shelving in our basement. As a child, I was drawn to its cartoon cover.

 No pun intended.

Montreal: Pocket Books, 1946
First published by Dodd, Mead in 1930

The scene depicted comes from "The Hallucination of Mr. Butt," which in turn comes from "Afternoon Adventures in My Club," which first appeared in book form in Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy, which I read for the first time last week.

Made me laugh.

"The Hallucination of Mr. Butt" is one of seven tales the narrator tells of fellow club members. Butt (his first name is never disclosed) sees himself as a most generous and self-sacrificing person, ever ready to assist others. In the episode covered, he's setting out to help the Everleigh Joneses:

“Isn’t it rather late to go there?” I protested.

     “My dear fellow,” said Mr. Butt warmly, “I don’t mind that a bit. The way I look at it is, here are these two young people, only married a few weeks, just moving into their new house, everything probably upside down, no one there but themselves, no one to cheer them up,”—he was wriggling into his raincoat as he spoke and working himself into a frenzy of benevolence,—“good gracious, I only learned at dinner time that they had come to town, or I’d have been out there days ago,—days ago-”

The night is cold, and rainy, and dark, but after knocking on several doors – "‘Do you know where the Everleigh Joneses live?’ They didn’t. ‘All right,’ I said, ‘go back to bed. Don’t bother to come down.’" – Butt succeeds in finding the newlyweds' house. At the club the next day, Butt shares what followed:

"Hullo," I called out; "it’s Butt." "I’m awfully sorry," he said, "we’ve gone to bed." "My dear boy," I called back, "don’t apologize at all. Throw me down the key and I’ll wait while you dress. I don’t mind a bit."

     "Just think of it," continued Mr. Butt, “those two poor souls going to bed at half past ten, through sheer dullness! By George, I was glad I’d come." ‘Now then,’ I said to myself, ‘let’s cheer them up a little, let’s make things a little brighter here.’"

Butt visits the Everleigh Joneses on a near-daily basis, rolling up his sleeves to help them settle in – "got the pictures up first—they’d been trying to put them up by themselves in the morning. I had to take down every one of them—not a single one right." Ultimately dissatisfied, he has them move to a downtown flat – "I like an apartment far better than a house" – when tragedy strikes:

“'He’s ill—some sort of fever—poor chap— been ill three days, and they never told me or sent for me—just like their grit—meant to fight it out alone. I’m going out there at once.” From day to day I had reports from Mr. Butt of the progress of Jones’s illness. “I sit with him every day,” he said. “Poor chap,—he was very bad yesterday for a while, —mind wandered—quite delirious—I could hear him from the next room—seemed to think some one was hunting him—‘Is that damn old fool gone,’ I heard him say. “I went in and soothed him. ‘There is no one here, my dear boy,’ I said, ‘no one, only Butt.’ He turned over and groaned.

That's not the end of Everleigh Jones, nor is it the conclusion of the story. Much as I like "The Hallucination of Mr. Butt," it is far from the best in Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy; it isn't even the best of "Afternoon Adventures in My Club." That distinction belongs to "The Spiritual Outlook of Mr. Doomer," whose titular character is first depicted looking gloomily out the club library's windows. He is a man saddened by, as he puts it, "the sense of the irrevocability of death and the changes that must come after it.” “You think of these things a great deal, Mr. Doomer?” the narrator asks.

“I do,” he answered. “It may be that it is something in my temperament, I suppose one would call it a sort of spiritual mindedness. But I think of it all constantly. Often as I stand here beside the window and see these cars go by”— he indicated a passing street car —“I cannot but realise that the time will come when I am no longer a managing director and wonder whether they will keep on trying to hold the dividend down by improving the rolling stock or will declare profits to inflate the securities. These mysteries beyond the grave fascinate me, sir. Death is a mysterious thing.”

"The Hallucination of Mr. Butt" is the only story from Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy to feature in Laugh With Leacock, which according to the back cover of my father's copy is "the cream of Stephen Leacock's humor [sic]." It is also the only story to make it into The Leacock Roundabout, Laugh With Leacock's successor.  

New York: Dodd, Mead, 1956

What I've coming to realise is that my taste in Leacock is markedly different than those of the anthologists. As the covers of Laugh With Leacock and The Leacock Roundabout suggest, the stories contained provide good-natured laughs; black humour has no place.

I've worked as an anthologist myself, so understand the constraints, one of which is length. Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy begins with "Spoof."

At twenty-four pages, it's by far the longest piece. It appealed to me not only for the passages of Spoof Leacock provides, but as a satire of publisher marketing:

This novel represents the last word in up-to-date fiction. It is well known that the modern novel has got far beyond the point of mere story-telling. The childish attempt to interest the reader has long since been abandoned by all the best writers. They refuse to do it. The modern novel must convey a message, or else it must paint a picture, or remove a veil, or open a new chapter in human psychology. Otherwise it is no good. SPOOF does all of these things. The reader rises from its perusal perplexed, troubled, and yet so filled with information that rising itself is a difficulty.

Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy was a gathering of fairly recent magazine pieces and previously unpublished work intended to capitalise on the Christmas market. And, because it was the 1915 offering, the Great War intrudes for the first time: "The War Mania of Mr Jinks and Mr Blinks," "Last Man Out of Europe," "Sidelights on the Supermen," and "In the Good Time After the War." The last, which also happened to be the final piece in the collection, imagines the post-war as a time of great cooperation, in which political differences are non-existent. It is the weakest piece, while "Last Man Out of Europe," ranks amongst the very best. Here, Parkins, yet another member of the gentleman's club tells of the days of horror he and travelling companion Loo Jones suffered in trying to leave the continent. In Hungary when war was declared, the pair made for the nearest railway station:

“They said they’d sell us tickets. But they questioned us mighty closely; asked where we wanted to go to, what class we meant to travel by, how much luggage we had to register and so on.”

They reach Genoa only to find that it is three days until the next steamer to New York:

"Stuck it out as best we could: stayed right there in the hotel. Poor Jones was pretty well collapsed! Couldn't do anything but sleep, and eat, and sit in the piazza of the hotel."

Cutting, but not dark; it stands in such contrast with Leacock's later writing about the Great War. In our own darkening days, I recommend "The Boy Who Came Back" from The Hohenzollerns in America (Toronto: Gundy, 1919). 

An unfocussed post, I know, but then this book, like so many Leacocks is a bit of a grab bag. "Our Literary Bureau" made me laugh out loud; "Weejee the Pet Dog" is, I hope, the worst thing I'll read by the man.

My point is that there is so much more to Leacock than Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town and anthology servings. Seek out the long out-of-print volumes. As with any writer, the most popular isn't necessarily the best.

Object: A nicely-proportioned hardcover, very typical of its time. My first Canadian edition was purchased three decades ago at the annual McGill Book Fair (held in Redpath Hall, mere metres away from the university's Leacock Building). Price: $1.00. At the end of the volume is found three pages of advertisements for the author's other books: Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich, Behind the Beyond, Nonsense Novels, Literary Lapses, and Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town. These are followed by an advert for The International Studio magazine.

Sadly, but unsurprisingly – it was published in 1915, after all – my copy lacks its dust jacket (above).

Should I have expected more for a dollar?

It once belonged to a G.R. England. Going through the 949 Englands in the 1921 census, I find Gordon England (age 19), Gaspard England (age 21), George England (age 51). Gosselin England (age 71)... and that's just Quebec.

Access: Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy enjoyed several Canadian, British, and American editions before going out of print in the 'twenties. It returned in 1964 as #46 in the New Canadian Library, and remained in print well into the 'eighties. I once purchased a copy with the third series design at Eaton's in downtown Montreal, not 100 meters from the university at which Leacock taught.

Used copies of are both plentiful and inexpensive. If you've got the cash, the one to buy is offered at US$150 by a Milton, Ontario bookseller. It has the dust jacket.

Related post:

Am I the Only One Laughing with Leacock?

Professor Leacock Sets the Stage