Bach to the Future, Part II: Le Dernier Voyage

Le dernier voyage: Un roman de la Gaspésie
     [A Voice is Calling]
Eric C. Morris [trans. Martine Hébert-Duguay]
Montreal: Chanteclerc, 1951
255 pages

A brief addendum to last week's post on Eric Cecil Morris' A Voice is Calling.

A debut novel by an unknown, A Voice is Calling received little attention when published and has been pretty much ignored ever since. So, how to explain this translation?

Consider this: A Voice is Calling was published in 1945, the very same year as Hugh MacLennan's Two Solitudes, described at the time as "the GREAT Canadian novel" (Chicago Sun). "Two Solitudes may well be considered the best and most important Canadian novel ever published” said the Globe & Mail. MacLennan's second novel, following the acclaimed Barometer Rising, Two Solitudes received the 1945 Governor General's Award for Literature and has been on high school, college, and university curricula ever since.

Two Solitudes wasn't available in French until 1963, a full eighteen years later... and, curiously, long after published translations in Spanish, Swedish, Polish, Dutch, and Estonian. Le dernier voyage, in contrast, appeared a mere six years after its English-language original.

I first heard of A Voice is Calling through Jean-Louis Lessard, who wrote about Le dernier voyage eight years ago. I'm a touch – just a touch – more positive about the work, though his review left me wondering whether we'd read the same novel. Had anything been cut in translation? A Voice is Calling is 487 pages long, while Le dernier voyage numbers 255. French translations of English texts are typically longer, not shorter.

And so, I bought and read Le dernier voyage. I can report that nothing was excised. Differences in layout, design and font size explain the divergent page counts. Translator Martine Hébert-Duguay is faithful to the original. My only criticism is that she is a touch – just a touch – more liberal in her use of exclamation marks.

Her efforts did not bring a change of mind concerning the original text.

The best Canadian novel of 1945 was, of course, Bonheur d'occasion – it, not Two Solitudes, is the GREAT Canadian novel.

Object: A nicely designed, well-bound paperback printed on good paper stock. Sadly, the cover image is uncredited.

Access: Held by Library and Archives Canada, Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec, and thirteen of our universities, Le dernier voyage is nearly as common as A Voice is Calling.

I purchased my uncut copy last month from a Montreal bookseller. Price: US$8.00.

Related post:

Bach to the Future: A Voice is Calling
Bach to the Future, Part III: The Squeaking Wheel

Mrs Lowry's West Coast Murder Mystery

"Malcolm Lowry has an entry in The Canadian Encyclopedia, so why not wife Margerie?" This is the question I pose in reviewing Margerie Bonner's 1946 novel The Shapes That Creep for the new Summer edition of Canadian Notes & Queries. As I point out, Bonner lived in Canada just as long as her husband, and published three novels during the couple's Canadian years. The Shapes That Creep, the first, is set in motion by the discovery of a murdered recluse in a community modelled on Deep Cove, British Columbia.

My review of The Shapes That Creep – with argument for Bonner's inclusion in the Encyclopedia – is the subject of my Dusty Bookcase column. Over at the What's Old feature, I recommend reissues of two Canadian classics, Hugh MacLennan's Two Solitudes and The Black Donnellys by Thomas P. Kelley; along with Jimmie Dale, Alias the Gray Seal, a new Gray Seal adventure written by fan Michael Howard.

This being the Genre Issue, Deborah Dundas writes on her relationship with romance novels, Rui Umezawa looks at Enter the Dragon, and Robert J. Wiersema considers Stephen King's It as a work of empathy. Gemma Files, Sandra Kasturi, David Nickle, Andrew Pyper, and Robert Rowe dare revisit their first monsters.

Seth provides a cover that can double as a Halloween mask.

All is overseen by guest editor James Grainger, who also contributes an excellent piece on the disturbing 1972 horror/comedy Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things. Other contributors include:

Myra Bloom

Daniel Donaldson

Justin Donnait

André Forget

Chris Gilmore

Alex Good

Camila Grudova

Sandra Kasturiit

Sibyl Lamb

Annick MacAskill

David Mason

Patricia Robertson

Keven Spenst

Jay Stephens

JC Sutcliffe

Drew Hayden Taylor

and

Bruce Whiteman

As always, things wrap up with Stephen Fowler. This issue he exhumes the Civil Defence Health Service's Casualty Simulation (Ottawa: Department of National Health and Welfare, 1955).

The horror! The horror!

Related post:

Late of the Bowery

Hugh MacLennan, My Favourite Martian

Each Man's Son
Hugh MacLennan
Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1962

Cover by Frank Newfeld

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Pierre Berton as Casey's Scary Uncle
The Brilliance of Frank Newfeld

Frank Newfeld's Masterpiece

About Those Ugly NCL Covers

NCL: Devolution, Evolution, and Lateral Moves

The Ugliest Canadian Book Cover of All Time

The Greatest Canadian Magazine Cover of All Time

The Second Greatest Canadian Magazine Cover of All Time

Dorothy Dumbrille is Accepted By the Communists

All This Difference

Dorothy Dumbrille

Toronto: Progress, 1945

208 pages

Progress Books, publishing arm of the Communist Party of Canada, announced April 15, 1945 as the publication date of Dorothy Dumbrille’s All This Difference. I’ve found no evidence that the novel hit the shelves on that day, that month, or in the three months that followed. The earliest reviews — and there were many — are from early August of that year. I can’t help but wonder whether its delay had something to do with the publication of Two Solitudes, which occurred a few weeks before All This Difference was to have been released. 

MacLennan's novel was received not as a book of the season, but a book for all time. Globe and Mail literary editor William Arthur Deacon’s April 7 review begins: 

Spectacular as was Canadian achievement in the novel in 1944, Hugh MacLennan of Montreal has opened 1945 with greater power. In light of Two Solitudes, the excellence of Barometer Rising diminishes to the level of an apprentice piece. The promise of the first book is justified abundantly in the second. Considering style, theme, characters, craftsmanship, significance and integrity, Two Solitudes may well be considered the most important Canadian novel ever published. 

The English press praised the book, as did the French, and sales were strong. By that October, MacLennan’s novel had sold 45,000 copies and was in its sixth printing. I can’t say I’ve ever visited a used bookstore in this country that didn’t stock a copy. And yet, though I kept an eye out, it was years before I first saw a copy of All This Difference. The first was at the home of my Montreal friend Adrian King-Edwards, owner of The Word bookshop. A couple of years later, I spotted another on a dollar cart outside Attic Books in London, Ontario. I haven’t come across another since.

So begins my review of All This Difference, posted yesterday at Canadian Notes & Queries online. You can read the whole thing here:

Dorothy Dumbrille's Communist Manifestation

Her second novel, but first to be published in book form, it's a highly ambitious work, as reflected in this publisher's advert:

The Globe & Mail
4 August 1945

I stopped short of describing All This Difference as "great," but had so much to say that I never got around to discussing the book's appearance. The bland jacket does it a disservice, particularly in light of the illustrations within. Each of its twenty chapters opens with a line drawing by self-taught Glengarry artist Stuart McCormick. Montrealers will recognize the Museum of Fine Arts.

The only other edition of All This Difference followed eighteen years after the first. Lacking the McCormick illustrations, it came from a very different publisher.

Toronto: Harlequin 1963

As I point out in the review, All This Difference was the very last Harlequin published before committed itself to romance... which is not to say it didn't try to sell the novel as a romance.

It also holds the distinction of being the only "HARLEQUIN CANADIAN."*

Wish they'd kept that up. Would've made my work a whole lot easier.

* My friend bowler informs that one other title, Kate Aitken's Never a Day So Bright, also bears the "HARLEQUIN CANADIAN" label.

Related post:

Dorothy Dumbrille's Easter Prayer

Who Is Canada's Outstanding Novelist? (1945)

Critic William Arthur Deacon isn't much discussed these days – or even much recognized – but for a good part of the last century he was Canada's foremost literary champion. As book editor, he held sway for forty years in the pages of the Manitoba Free Press (1921), Saturday Night (1922-28), the Mail & Empire (1928-36), and the Globe & Mail (1936-61),

I've taken a few swipes at Deacon over the years, including this one in defence of Collins White Circle. His judgement was often questionable – Robert Norwood? Really? – but I do admire his enthusiasm and dedication. Looking through his correspondence, it sometimes seems he was in touch with anyone who ever penned a novel, poem or play in this Dominion. Dorothy Dumbrille was one such person. It was in researching her second novel All This Difference (the subject of a forthcoming review), that I came upon the following comments published on 3 February 1945 in "The Fly Leaf," Deacon's weekly Globe & Mail column. It's interesting not only a snapshot of a dire time in the country's literature, but as a reflection of Deacon's aforementioned questionable judgement.

I've added the covers of what were then the most recent books by the authors Deacon mentioned. My comments are in italics.

Most frequently asked and least answerable is the question. Who is Canada's Outstanding Novelist? This week it came in the form of a request to choose between Morley Callaghan, Mazo de la Roche, Frederick Philip Grove and Hugh MacLennan. Fortunately, there is no towering genius in Canadian fiction to prevent others from receiving attention. In these early days, the notable acts are that Canadian authors display the most varied preferences for subject and style treatment and that readers also differ widely in their judgments.

The Building of Jalna
Mazo de la Roche
New York: Little, Brown, 1944

Certainly the works of Miss Mazo de la Roche have attained a world-wide popularity far beyond those of any other Canadian writer in any field. Her Jalna fixation is the result of stupendous demand. Millions of people in many countries are familiar with the Whiteoaks family.

Miss de la Roche's Jalna fixation was then nine novels into its sixteen novel run.

More Joy in Heaven
Morley Callaghan
New York: Random House, 1937

The Master of the Mill
Frederick Philip Grove [pseud. Felix Paul Greve]
Toronto: Macmillan, 1944

Mr. Callaghan showed exceptional talent as a member of the Hemingway school and seems to be going into partial eclipse with it. It is some years since he published a new book. Very different in type, Frederick Philip Grove, a somewhat heavy writers merits too solid to be ignored. He brought into Canadian fiction an intellectual and artistic integrity that was and is important. Neither the novels of Mr. Grove nor those of Mr. Callaghan have been specially popular.

It had been seven years since Callaghan had published a novel. Four more years would pass before the next, Luke Baldwin's Vow. It's considered a children's book.

Barometer Rising
Hugh MacLennan
Toronto: Collins, 1941

It is comment enough on the impression of Barometer Rising that my correspondent should include Hugh MacLennan in the quartet. Two Solitudes, when it is in circulation, will do much to reinforce Mr. MacLennan's position as a potential best Canadian novelist. He will be watched to the last comma.

Two months later, when it was "in circulation," Deacon wrote, "Two Solitudes may well be considered the most important Canadian novel ever published." It remains MacLennan's best-known novel (though The Watch That Ends the Night is much better).

Earth and High Heaven
Gwethalyn Graham
Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1944

But there are plenty of others. Gwethalyn Graham's Swiss Sonata placed her among the leading Canadian novels [sic], as Earth and High Heaven has now elevated her to a similar prominence among American novelists.

Earth and High Heaven was Graham's second novel. It followed Swiss Sonata, her first, by six years. She never wrote another. I speculate as to the reason here.

The Pied Piper of Dipper Creek
Thomas H. Raddall
Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1943

Forges of Freedom
Franklin Davey McDowell
Toronto: Macmillan, 1943

The Higher Hill
Grace Campbell
Toronto: Collins, 1943

Thomas M.H. Raddall, author of Roger Sudden, His Majesty's Yankees and Pied Piper of Dipper Creek, may well wind up as the Canadian novelist whom everyone reads. Franklin Davey McDowell has already, in The Champlain Road, given Canada one novel of permanent worth and his far-finer Forges of Freedom deserves a much wider public than it has reached. Grace Campbell has a very large and ever-growing audience for her two books.

I studied Raddall in university, but not The Pied Piper of Dipper Creek. Decades passed before I so much as heard of The Champlain Road, despite the fact that it won the 1939 Governor General's Award for Fiction (The Pied Piper of Dipper Creek won in 1943). Another decade passed before I learned of Franklin Davey McDowell's "far-finer" Forges of Freedom. I've never so much as seen a copy, and could find no better image of the book than the screen grab presented above. Grace Campbell was much easier.

Carrying Place
Angus Mowat
Toronto: Saunders, 1944

Among the new writers of higher promise is Angus Mowat, who is sure to be a writer intensely admired by other writers. I think his books will endure as long as any written in our generation.

Father of Farley, Angus Mowat wrote just two novels: Then I'll Look Up (1938) and Carrying Place (1944). His enduring books have been out-of-print for over seven decades. 

Thirty Acres [Trente arpents]
Ringuet [pseud. Philippe Panneton; trans. Felix & Dorothy Walter]
Toronto: Macmillan, 1940

But there are now so many dozens of these Canadian novelists. Ringuet's Thirty Acres, for instance, comes pretty near to  being a perfect performance. Alan Roy Evans [sic] is another up near the top in merit. I have faith in the sensitive abilities of Jessie L. Beattie and wish she would publish more. Alexander Knox, playwright and actor, did one exquisite novel of the Ottawa Valley, called Bride of Quietness, before turning to better-paid work. He should be induced to continue with fiction. And so on... and so on.

The English translation of Ringuet's Trente arpents was a staple of the New Canadian Library and is still published in the original French. Allen Roy Evans is one of those odd Canadian writers who achieved far greater sales in a language other than their own. Der Zug der Rentiere, the German translation of his 1935 fictionalized memoir Reindeer Trek, has enjoyed at least six different editions. When Deacon wrote his column, Evans' newest work was All in a Twilight (1944). I've never seen a copy, and can find no image online. Ditto Jessie L. Beattie's Three Measures (1938) and Alexander Knox's Bride of Quietness (1933). That said, I have seen Knox in film adaptations of Nicolas and Alexandra, Joshua Then and Now, Tinker Tailer Soldier Spy, and Gorky Park. More than anything, I remember him acting opposite Edward G. Robinson in The Sea Wolf.

It may be of great ultimate advantage in our literature that the variety of cultural backgrounds among Canadians precludes any uniformity in our fiction and in the tastes of Canadian readers. But we waste talent shockingly. I think of a woman like Irene Baird writing two novels like John and Waste Heritage and then being allowed to sit back and write no more. Darkly the River Flows will be along shortly to launch a new novelist, John MacDonald, and the manuscripts of other men in the armed services will presently be in print. Florence Randal Livesay, also, might do another novel to the advantage of all and sundry.

Darkly the River Flows
John MacDonald
New York: Coward-McCann, 1945

Deacon seems unaware that Irene Baird followed up John (1937) and Waste Heritage (1939) with He Rides the Sky (1941)... another book I've never seen. I've had better luck with John MacDonald's Darkly the River Flows. Sadly, the novel-writing days of Florence Randal Livesay, Dorothy's mother, were in the past. Her last novel, Savour of Salt, was published in 1927 by Dent.

We have not had time yet to acquire perspective, but I have no doubt that the fiction of this era will finally be judged to be relatively as fine as the Canadian poetry produced between 1880 and 1920.

W.A.D.

Deacon lived another three decades after writing those words. Did they offer enough perspective to make him realize he'd been wrong? Most of the fiction of that era pales beside Carman and Lampman. You may take issue, but can we at least agree that the absence of a towering genius is not "fortunate"?

Related posts:

Canada's Best 100 Books? 102? 111?
First Ignored, Then Slighted
The Paralysing Success of Gwethalyn Graham

About Those Butt-Ugly Laurentian Library Books

"'Butt-ugly' is a bit harsh, don't you think?" writes a friend in response to my description of Macmillian of Canada's not-much-missed Laurentian Library.

I'm not so sure.

I bought my first Laurentian Library book, Canada's First Century by Donald Creighton, in preparation for my first semester at John Abbott College.* Its pages had turned brown before leaving the campus bookstore. My second Laurentian Library purchase, volume two of Mason Wade's The French Canadians 1760-1967,  developed a curled spine, yet I never read the thing.

(Volume two of Mason Wade's The French Canadians 1760-1967 is nearly six hundred pages long.)

The Laurentian Library was meant to be Macmillan's answer to McClelland & Stewart's New Canadian Library. Cousins, they shared many of the same afflictions. NCL suffered no spinal deformities, but its pages were similarly discoloured. The covers of both were susceptible to wear; as with Tsarevich Alexei, the gentlest handling might bring harm.

Begun in 1967, nine years after NCL, Macmillan's series was heavy with Macmillan authors: Hugh MacLennan, Morley Callaghan, Robertson Davies, Ethel Wilson, Mavis Gallant, W.O. Mitchell, young pup Jack Hodgins and others. It was an awkward list conceived with a weak eye on the academic market; the other concentrated on an effort to keep Macmillan titles in print and, by extension, in house. Robert Kroetsch's But We Are Exiles rubbed shoulders with Pierre Trudeau's Federalism and the French Canadians, which was followed by Erik Munsterhjelm's The Wind and the Caribou: Hunting and Trapping in Northern Canada.

The NCL offerings of the same years were the ugliest ever, but Laurentian Library's were uglier still. Future publisher Hugh Kane acknowledged as much in a 1973 memo to John Gray: "Our books are manufactured very cheaply, printed on newsprint, and do not contain introductions." Sadly, his push for a general editor, the introduction of introductions and proper production values were ignored.

Directionless, the Laurentian Library stumbled along for nearly two decades. In The Legacy of the Macmillan Company of Canada (University of Toronto Press, 2011), Ruth Panofsky counts fifty titles and pegs 1979 as the series' final year, but I know of over thirty more, including #77, The Periwinkle Assault by Charles Dennis.

I'd never heard of The Periwinkle Assault before today. The second volume of something called the Broken Sabre Quartet, it was followed by Mavis Gallant's neglected novels Green Water, Green Sky and A Fairly Good Time. The last Laurentian Library title of which I'm aware – #83 – is The Winter of the Fisher by Cameron Langford. It was published in 1985. Did The Winter of the Fisher mark the end of the series? If so, should we not acknowledge that the Laurentian Library went out on a fairly high note?

I'm not talking about the cover. I'm sure it was ugly.

Butt-ugly?

I've never seen a copy.

* September 1979, if you must know.

Related posts:

About Those Ugly NCL Covers

About Those Awful PaperJacks Covers

News Stand Library Cover Cavalcade

The Stylish, Sophisticated Théâtre Canadien

Brian Moore's Canada for Americans – and isn't that Leonard Cohen?

Canada
Brian Moore and the Editors of LIFE
New York: Time, 1963

The LIFE World Library was once found in every third suburban rec room and on one of ten coffee tables. That's what I remember, anyway. Now you can't give them away.

There were thirty-two volumes in all, but Canada is the only one I own. I paid $1.50 – entirely too much – at a Toronto Goodwill fourteen years ago, and have been moving it about the country ever since. Until yesterday, it was one of only two Brian Moore titles I hadn't read; today Murder in Majorca stands alone.

Canada is an odd duck. It's Moore's only non-fiction book and his only collaboration. Just who are those "Editors of LIFE"? One was Oliver E. Allen, who would one day garner praise for New York, New York: A History of the World's Most Exhilarating City and The Tiger: The Rise and Fall of Tammany Hall.

Knowing that the Library was sold throughout the anglosphere, and was translated into French, German, Dutch and Spanish, I was surprised to see the extent to which Canada is tailored toward American readers. The Introduction is written by Livingston T. Merchant, former U.S. Ambassador to Canada (1956-58). "For most of us in the United States, Canada is not really a foreign country", writes the diplomat. "And failure to grasp the simple fact accounts for much of the difficulty which growingly attends our relationship." So it is that in Ambassador Merchant's opinion, the book provides a "needed service".

This all sounds dry, but isn't because Moore is a real pro. For evidence, look no further than his chapter on Canadian history: Lief Erikson to Lester Pearson in under 4500 words and he still finds space for the Fenian Raids.

Each volume in the series had a history chapter; it's in the others that Moore really shines. His writing on Quebec, not yet three years into the Quiet Revolution, is as much about how the province is (or was) as how it will be (or is). A chapter on post-war immigration draws on his own experiences and includes this horribly accurate description: "The cities split at their extremities, disgorging long, untidy entrails of new concrete factories, shopping centers and suburban office blocks."

(cliquez pour agrandir)

No chapter is more surprising than "Clubmen and the Other Club", which begins:

There is no such person as Stewart Henderson McMaster, yet he is easily invented. Almost certainly his name will have a Scottish ring. He is English on his mother's side, and his wife, the granddaughter of an Anglican bishop, is also of English descent. He is director of two or more of Canada's dominant business corporations, a university governor, an executive member of the Canadian Manufacturers' Association and the Canadian Chamber of Commerce. He sits on the board of more than a dozen charitable institutions.

Moore's "Other Club", composed of members of the intellectual class, is personified by clergyman's son "Gordon Bruce Howard",  a Rhodes scholar who sipped sherry at Oxford with "the brightest minds from all over the British Commonwealth". Although Moore doesn't say, Gordie Howard is just the sort of who would have visited Montreal's Hostellerie, where drink flowed freely and sweaters were bulky.

Canada includes three images of the café. This shot appears to capture a twenty-something Leonard Cohen.

(cliquez pour agrandir)

That's him on the far right, right?

Being a LIFE book, there are photos aplenty. My favourite is this oddly unsettling image of Mme Edmond-Louis Simard and family of Bagotville.

(cliquez pour agrandir)

More than a half-century later, this photograph of hydro workers in Kitimat looks like something from the future.

I'd never seen this photograph of Hugh MacLennan, whom Moore describes as "the only serious novelist of the 1940s".

And here's Morley Callaghan, "for many years a neglected oddity in his native city."

Meanwhile, Harold Town and Tom Onley adopt the painter's pose.

A chicken in every pot and a Moore in every home. Not quite, but it is nice to think that they were once so common. I wonder how many were read. Or did people just look at the pictures?

Did they even do that?

Trivia: Moore wasn't the only name recruited by LIFE. Hammond Innes provided a volume on Scandinavia. Elizabeth Bishop got paid US$10,000 (over US$75,000 today) for her volume on Brazil.

Object: A 160-page hardcover, featuring 104 photographs, six paintings, four illustrations and three maps (four with the endpapers). Loads of copies are available online; pay no more than one dollar. Goodhearted souls who volunteer at library book sales may snag a copy en route to being pulped.

Easily found in academic libraries; less so in public libraries.

Checking Out an Attractive 56-Year-Old Montrealer

The Montrealer. vol. 32, no. 5 (May 1958)

I don't remember much of The Montrealer. I was in elementary school when it folded and accept no responsibility for its demise. For a year or two our family subscribed to its successor, Montreal Calendar Magazine. That periodical lived into my university years, but I don't remember much of it either. Never bought copy. You can blame me for that one.

Did I miss out in not reading Montreal Calendar Magazine? I have no idea. A quick go around of old friends finds that not one ever so much as picked up a copy. No one can tell me the first thing about it.

I know I missed out on something with The Montrealer – just look at the names on that masthead: James Minifie, Sam Tata, Hugh MacLennan, Constance Beresford-Howe, Robert Ayre and 27-year-old Mordecai Richler.

Ethel Wilson contributed, as did Joyce Marshall. The Montrealer was the first to publish "Dance of the Happy Shades" and four other stories that would years later feature in Alice Munro's debut collection of the same name.In this issue Richler is the supplier of fiction with "The Balloon", a short story that has never been republished.

The kid returns 23 pages later to weigh in on the brand spanking new New Canadian Library. We've also got  forgotten humorist Norman Ward, Leslie Roberts' unheeded warnings about American imperialism, James Minifie's observations on bumbling Prime Minister Diefenbaker and an uncollected essay by Hugh MacLennan.

Then there are advertisements – lots of advertisements – each a reflection of a Montreal that is no more.

It's all too easy to wax nostalgic about a time in which one never lived. It takes no keen eye to observe that the the city's linguistic minority is all but absent in the magazine's 66 pages. The uncredited "Guide to Better Shopping in Montreal" features just one business with a French name:

May is the month par excellence not only for experiencing Paris, but for re-imagining it, and for the latter pursuit Café Chez-Pierre suggests itself as an ideal locale.

We're in a better place now.

Trivia: I found this copy of The Montrealer, the first I've ever bought, in late March at Brockville's From Here to Infinity. If the mailing label is to be believed – and why not? – it first belonged to Alice Lighthall, eldest daughter of novelist, poet, historian, philosopher and anthologist W.D. Lighthall (Mayor of Westmount, 1900-1903).