Exhuming McCarthy

The Investigator: A Narrative in Dialogue
Reuben Ship
London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1956
119 pages

Joseph McCarthy was not long for this world when The Investigator was published. Politically and physically, he was all but dead. The American demagogue had been at his most powerful just two years earlier when The Investigator hit Washington. A shell fired from across the northern border, its blast was felt in Congress, the Senate, and was heard, repeatedly, in the Eisenhower White House.

The Investigator began life as a radio play written by Reuben Ship, a Montrealer who'd first achieved acclaim at McGill for his production of Henry IV. He'd gone on to write and produce anti-fascist plays for the YM-YWHA Little Theatre and Montreal's New Theatre Group before chasing opportunity south of the border. This worked for a time. Ship's chief gig was the radio serial The Life Of Riley, but then the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service came calling. Two fellow members of the Radio Writer's Guild suspected Ship of being a Communist. In September 1951, he was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee. He pled the fifth four times, then accused the Committee of jailing people who wanted peace. 

In January 1953, Ship was deported. This would've happened months earlier had he not suffering from chronic osteomyelitis. The writer's journey back to Canada began with his removal in handcuffs from a California hospital. He was transported by plane and train to a Michigan prison hospital ward, where he spent the better part of a day. The following evening, Ship was placed in a police wagon, driven across the Ambassador Bridge, and dumped on a Windsor street.

Do not be distracted by the drama leading to The Investigator; the work deserves the greater attention as one of the most impactful lampoons in American history.

Broadcast on CBC Radio on 30 May 1954, it begins with the titular character about to catch a flight. A man named Garson, speaking on behalf of "the Committee," is pushing for the cancellation of a scheduled hearing. The Investigator will have none of it:

"The committee can't stop me. The Party can't stop me. Nothing can't stop me."

But then the plane carrying the Investigator explodes in mid-flight. Confused, but angry as always, he is met by Inspector Martin of the Immigration Service:

Martin, a kindly soul, seeks to reassure:

"The fog will lift soon. You won't have any trouble seeing in a moment."
   "How did I get here? Where are the other passengers? How many survivors were there?"
   "There no survivors, sir."
   "You mean I'm the only one?"asked the investigator incredulously.
   "There were no survivors."
   "What are you talking about?" the Investigator asked angrily. "are you crazy? I'm here... I'm alive aren't I?"

The fog lifts only when the Investigator comes to recognize that his time on our mortal coil has ended. Once this occurs, he's escorted to the vicinity of the Main Gate. There he is met by the Gatekeeper, who  informs the Inspector that he must be investigated by the Permanent Investigating Committee on Permanent Entry before he can be admitted. Should the Investigator's application for admittance fail, he will be deported "Down There."

The Investigator balks:

As he awaits the hearing, the Investigator is visited by the Committee: Titus Oates, Tomás de Torquemada, Cotton Mather, and George Jeffreys, 1st Baron Jeffreys, better known as "The Hanging Judge." The four souls assure the newcomer that his application will be accepted, then address the purpose of their visit. They seek to replace the Gatekeeper with the Inquisitor. Says Oates:

"We feel that in you we have a man who can bring to the committee's work the latest inquisitional techniques."
   "In our day, it is true, we were without peers, Torquemada explained. "since that time we understand much progress has been made. Compared to you, sir, we are mere novices, and we bow to your superior knowledge and experience."

The Gatekeeper is soon deposed, largely due to the skills of his replacement. Once the Investigator is in charge, he suspends new applications and opens investigations into souls who've been granted permanent entry; the Committee accuses them of "disloyalty, actual or potential."

Socrates, Thomas Jefferson, John Milton, and John Stuart Mill are confronted with their writings, and are condemned as subversive.* A watchmaker is caught up in it all for no other reason than his name:

All are deported, sent from "Up Here" to "Down There."

These deportations and others have unexpected consequences. Down There, Martin Luther and John Stuart Mill are making speeches about the Rights of the Damned, John Milton and Thomas Jefferson are demanding a Congress, and Oliver Cromwell and Tom Paine have organized a Lost Souls Militia.

The Voice, ruler of Down There is livid. He orders Titus Oates to bring the Investigator to meet him – outside the Main Gate, of course – then launches into his complaints:

[T]hat madman, Socrates, keeps asking me if I know what virtue is. Me!" The Voice was full of outrage. "And that lunatic Karl Marx..."
   "Which Karl Marx?" the investigator asked hopefully.
   "How should I know? There are hundreds of them – all over the place!"

We're now thirteen pages away from the ending and I dare not spoil it.

The book begins with an author's introduction, 'A short history of a long-playing record,' reminding that The Inspector began life as a 1954 CBC radio broadcast. Heard by Americans living close to the northern border, its reputation quickly spread. Somehow, tapes began circulating, after which came bootleg LPs. It took England's Oriole Records to figure out the rights issues.

Starring John Draine, James Doohan, and Barry Morse, amongst others, it can be listened to here online thanks to the Internet Archive. A masterpiece, even at the distance of seven decades its impact is immediate and impressive. 

And it's surprising how smoothly the script became a book. I delighted in each and every page.

Interestingly, The Investigator has never been published in the United States. It hasn't been published in Canada either, though Ship's script is one of eleven included in All the Bright Company: Radio Drama Produced by Andrew Allan (Kingston & Toronto: Quarry/CBC Enterprises, 1987).

Joseph McCarthy died on 2 May 1957, likely of cirrhosis of the liver. He was 48 years old. Where he is today, Up Here, Down There or nowhere at all is anyone's guess.

* In the radio play, Canadian rebel William Lyon Mackenzie is one of those whose words are used against him. Neither he nor his writing appears in the book.

Access and Object: A compact hardcover in black boards with simple gold type on the spine, the jacket and nine illustrations are by the brilliant Ronald Searle. My copy was once part of the Scarborough Township Public Library's collection.

The Scarborough Township Public Library Bookmobile, c.1956.

Access: As far as I can tell, the book enjoyed just one printing. Every one of the thirty copies currently listed for sale online is a bargain. At £5.00, a near Fine copy offered by a bookseller in Poole is the least expensive. The most expensive comes from a Bath bookseller who offers a Near Fine edition coupled with a very well preserved copy of the advance proof. Price: £67.00.

It is by far the best buy I've stumbled upon this year.

Ted Mann's Pulp Fiction

Crimes; or: I'm Sorry Sir, But We Do Not Sell Handguns to

   Junkies
Vicar Vicars [Ted Mann]
Vancouver: Pulp, 1973
62 pages

Ted Mann died earlier this month. He wrote and produced Deadwood, the greatest series in the history of television. I know it to be the best because it's my very favourite even though I don't like westerns. Hatfields & McCoys and Homeland followed. Millennium and NYPD Blue preceded. Before television Mann wrote for National Lampoon. I remember him most from the magazine's Canadian Corner. Had it not been for the Bombardier Guide to Canadian Authors, co-written with Sean Kelly and Brian Shein, my life might've taken a different path.

Crimes is a slim book and there's not a whole lot to say about it. It's rambling, contradictory, at times incoherent, and often utterly tasteless. In short, it's just what one might expect from an uncommonly clever twenty-year-old (as Mann was at the time).

Or is it what one might expect from a clergyman of uncertain age?

The setup is simple. Vicars, a vicar whose Christian name may or may not be Victor, has long devoted himself to a study of criminal life and has drawn some conclusions!

Mann plays the vicar in photos scattered within.

Garfield Holdover Truscott III is the earliest case study. A son of New York's privileged class, of "a long line of respectable non-criminals," as a child he would taunt prep school fellows that his family's money was older. Until the age of sixteen, when he shot up for the first time, Garfield lived a charmed life. Three years later, he was thrown out of the family home after passing out on a dinner plate and vomiting on his pois vertes.

When Vicars meets Garfield – street name "the Gar" – he is feeding his addiction by stealing bicycles.

The Gar provides inside info on many crimes, including a murder committed by "Stork," the inbred son of another wealthy East Coast family who murdered his wife, a "bone addict," for sleeping with another man. Remarkably, improbably, no amount of money and influence could save him from the slammer.

The Gar's fall and the Stork's murder cover the earliest pages. What follows is even more confusing, venturing of into the fantastic. Grave robbing and reanimation will figure. Vicars gives fair warning:

The rest of the book I wrote before I was a vicar and, although I have made some slight alterations it is generally intact. At the time my ambition was to be a famous writer, hence the somewhat affected style.

Is Crimes the "book" Vicars envisioned? A letter published in its pages suggests not. At the very least, it could not have been something the Vicar planned. Written by Deacon Durkin to Pulp Press, it reads in full: 

It is with sadness I must report to you the death of my friend andcolleague of many years, Vicar Vickers [sic]. As I was clearing out the Vicar's desk I came upon a number of fragments which he may have intended for publication. Having discussed the matter with his housekeeper, I decided that this was indeed the case. So I forward them on to you to use at your discretion. The Vicar often told me I should try my hand at writing and I have taken the liberty of adding and amending certain passages in the work with an eye to cohesiveness. The majority of the work is the Vicar's, however, and I sincerely hope he gains some of the same and wealth he so richly deserved when he was alive, now that he is dead.

The final four pages take the form of three unattributed newspaper stories, the first being:

ALCOHOLIC DWARF SAYS "I USE PEOPLE'S SYMPATHY TO GET MONEY TO BUY LIQUOR"

I will not be sharing the second headline because it might mean having to change the Dusty Bookcase settings to "Sensitive Content."

The last is prescient:

NAZI WAR CRIMINALS ON CANADA'S WEST COAST

Why are these included? Were they research material? Could it be that they were written by the Vicar himself? I suppose we'll never know. 

Given his passing, it seems only right to end with with Vicar Vicars' own words:

I still want to be the best I can be, but any understanding of the best has changed considerably. It is enough for me now to walk close to God, and perhaps someday, though I blush to say it, to achieve beatification. Remember, dear reader, you are always being tested. 

Ted Mann (right)

24 October 1952, Vancouver, BC

4 September 2025, Los Angeles, CA

RIP

Trivia: Ted Mann's Hollywood Reporter obit, short on detail while at the same time the most detailed, covers the entirety of his youth in one sentence: "Born on Oct. 24, 1952, Mann worked for a magazine in Canada before becoming a writer and editor at National Lampoon."

I'm guessing that early magazine was CLIK, which is credited with providing the fourteen photos used on the cover and interior. Coincidentally, in 1994, the year I first moved to Vancouver – Ted Mann's hometown! – I was a contributor to the short-lived CD-ROM magazine CLIK!

Remember CD-ROM magazines? For eight months they were really something.

I've not been able to find trace of CLIK or CLIK! online. I have at least one copy of the latter somewhere in storage. Because it wasn't compatible with Macs it's still in its shrink wrap. 

More trivia: Though Crimes takes place in New York City, Vancouverites will recognize their city's iconic Dominion Trust Building in this photo.

Object: A slim digest-size paperback, Crimes is the eighth in the publisher's Pulp Content series, sandwiched between Mark Young's Brother Ignatius of Mary (#7) and Minimanual of the Urban Guerrilla by Carlos Marighella (#9). The final page pushes Pulp Content title #3:

Rick Torch was in fact poet and anthologist Barry McKinnon (1944-2023), whose 1981 collection of verse The The was shortlisted for a Governor General's Award.

Access: My copy was purchased two years ago from a from a UK bookseller in Winterton, Lincolnshire. Price: $£6.50. As I write, six copies are listed for sale online. Curiously the vast majority are being flogged by English and American booksellers. At £6.99, the least expensive is on offer from the very same man in Winterton, and features the very same compliments stamp. As far as I'm concerned, this is the one to buy.

The most expensive, US$29.75, is listed by a Vancouver, Washington bookseller who dares charge a further US$26.99 to ship a light as air 5x7¼x⅛ book that is easily slipped into a small manila envelope.

Vancouver, Washington is not to be confused with Vancouver, British Columbia. Trust me, I've been to both.

Related posts:
B is for the Bombardiar Guide to Canadian Authors
Z is for Zink, Lubor J.
The Dustiest Bookcase: E is for Eaton

Thomas P. Kelley's Elusive Gorilla's Daughter

The Gorilla's Daughter
Thomas P. Kelley
Toronto: News Stand Library, 1950

160 pages 

Note: The Gorilla's Daughter is the most sought-after Canadian paperback. It is also the most notorious, though I would argue this has everything to do with the cover. Because copies are so scarce, and access so limited, I'll be relaying the story of the gorilla's daughter from beginning to end. There will be spoilers. Criticism will be kept to a minimum.

Blonde and beautiful Diana Lynn, nineteen-year-old daughter of archeologist and big game hunter Professor Theodore Lynn, is abducted by Bontu, a five-hundred-pound male gorilla, whist on safari in Equatorial Africa. She'd heard stories of native women who had been carried off by "the hairy men of the trees," but had dismissed them as products of "the wild imagination of the village natives, the witch doctors and the porters." Now, she knew different. Or was she having a nightmare?

But, no, it isn't a bad dream; rather a living nightmare.

Fortunately, the wild imagination of Thomas P. Kelley spares the reader the worst, instead skipping ahead a year to the point Diana gives birth to the "hideous offspring of their union!"

Do you think this impossible? I did, but was soon set straight:

"Oh, you fool. You blind fool. Do you not know history as you should? Can't you realize that the ancient Druids of England mated humans with animals? Don't you realize that the ancient Roman Emperor Caligula, chose a beautiful and snow-white mare for his mistress?"

Blade Runner being my favourite film, and Taffy's Snake Pit Bar being a favourite hangout, this particular example stood out: 

"If you know anything about Egyptian history, you will realize that the great Queen Hetshepsut, always employed an asp – yes, a slimy reptile, a snake – for her moments of love. History can't deny that."

Can't it? In my defence, I minored in Canadian history. For what its worth, I have read Marian Engel's Bear, and do not recall a pregnancy.

Bear
Marian Engel
Toronto: Seal, 1977

Returning to The Gorilla's Daughter, as the title suggests, the "OFFSPRING of MAID and MONSTER" is female, possessing a "shapely form like that of her mother," but with the face of her father. Diana names her Tara... "Tara, the gorilla's daughter!"

Fourteen years pass, during which mother and daughter cement the closest of bonds. Though Tara is unable to communicate verbally, except in the language of the gorillas, she is taught to write and proves herself every bit as intelligent as her English educated mother. Tara grows strong while her mother grows weak. No longer blonde or beautiful, Bontu's abuse has taken a great toll and her body is giving out.

Escape attempts are long in the past; Bontu was always quick to recapture and punish her. Diana will come to accept that she can never return to London society:

In Tara's fifteenth year, there occurs an event that changes everything. Bontu has been relocating his tribe ever eastward so as to avoid encroaching white trophy hunters. When one evening a safari comes uncomfortably close to Bontu's tribe, Diana sees an opportunity. She moves in on the camp late at night, has Tara kill a sentry, then awakens a member of the party. It is at this point that she learns that her dear father spent his remaining years searching for her, before dropping dead of a heart attack. Her fiancé, was similarly dedicated, until scandal arose. A blackmail attempt by bespectacled, ugly, fat Lancashire scullery maid led to his suicide.

The only positive thing Diana takes away from the meeting is a rifle, which she then uses to kill Bontu.

Ill health claims her shortly thereafter.

Tara inherits the rifle and remains with the tribe, which is taken over by a gorilla named Targash. He's neither better nor worse than her father. For three years, Tara stays out of his way until the day Targash kills Taka, the semi-lame gorilla who is her crush. The tribe leader had wanted her for his mate, but the grieving gorilla's daughter stabs Targash to death, thus becoming "Tara, Queen of the tribe of Tara!"

Two more years pass, during which the white men continue to encroach. Tara is running out of territory in which to relocate when Patak, the eldest member of the tribe, tells her of a land of gurgling streams and abundant fruit surrounded by a ring of mountains where the white hunters do not venture.

Here the narrative shifts abruptly to focus on handsome Bob Wickson. The son of American steel baron Andrew J. Wickson, he's "one of those fortunate young men who has too much money" and not much to do. Looking for adventure, he heads for Cape Town where he encounters an old drunk who tells him a story of Atlantis which has the survivors of that mythological sunken continent settling in the heart of Africa where they built a city of untold wealth encircled by "The Forbidden Mountains."

He has a map to sell.

Bob buys it for £2500 – roughly £138,000 today – telling himself that there's one chance in a hundred that the drunk is telling the truth.

I thought this wildly optimistic.

The gamble pays off quickly and the Forbidden Mountains are found in the very next paragraph. As they approach, there is unrest amongst Bob's native guides and porters. It's left to his chief gun-bearer to enlighten:

"The men are afraid, they do not want to go any further. We are approaching the land of the evil spirits, Bwana. Our ancestors have told it is a terrible place of death and destruction, where huge beasts ten times larger than the biggest elephant, fly through the air and devour everything they see!"
   To say that young Bob Wickson was annoyed, would be putting it mildly. 

Bob instructs his men to wait and continues alone. Coincidentally, this is very same instruction given by Tara to her tribe upon reaching the mountains that very same day. Once inside the ring, she finds a paradise as described by Patak... and then she spots Bob from her perch upon a tree:

Tara shoots the panther, saving Bob's life, and jumps to the ground.

Hey, she has a nice personality.

Tara finds Bob intriguing and attractive, despite his short narrow nose. She falls in love, and asks him to be her mate. Bob accepts the proposal, though his motivation is unclear. I suggest it has something to do with a recognizing that Tara will protect and keep him alive.

Soon enough, the pair are captured by the short-legged, long-armed, white-haired descendants of Atlantis, and it is only though Tara's strength that they are able to escape. In fleeing, Bob sprains his ankle and is carried to safety in the gorilla's daughter's arms. She will later save him from another panther and from being sacrificed at the Temple of the Flaming God.

For Tara, the Forbidden Mountains has everything she has desired, Bob most of all. And so, she leads her tribe in the slaughter of the Atlanteans, crushing skulls, and tearing off limbs:

The tribe of Tara made no discrimination as to sex – wives meeting the same fate as their husbands – while infants and children were raised upwards by shaggy paws which dashed their heads against the massive and towering pillars. Screams and shrieks arose, then frantic cries for mercy. But the beasts  of Tara could not understand the words, and mercy was a thing unknown to them.

Curiously, Bob expresses no reaction to the carnage. What's even more strange is that he uses the occasion of the victory to break his engagement to Tara:

"Well, Tara, the truth is that you are not a human. To be sure, you have the most glorious human body that ever trod the earth. But – but your face is that of a beast. Oh, don't you see – you're a freak, a grotesque freak – part human, part beast. If we were ever to go to my country, people would shudder at the sight of you!"

Tara is, of course, only able to write her response: "But your promise. You promised that you would be my mate and that we would have four children!"

She says nothing more, rather collapses on the alter upon which Bob was to have been sacrificed.

Eight days later, Bob's ankle has all but healed. He manages to climb the range and return to his camp, only to find that his guides and porters are gone. The fortunate young man with too much money has two hundred miles to traverse without arms, support or supplies. As the terrible truth sets in, Tara reappears to guides and protect him on a trek that would otherwise result in certain death.

They walk in silence for nearly a week, until they near a friendly native village. Tara turns but Bob can't bear to let her go:

Half-beast or not, he realized that in this strange creature he has found nothing but goodness – loyalty, unselfishness and honesty. Yes, perhaps she was some queer quirk of nature, but there was something in her that was fine, FINE!

He encircles Tara in his arms and holds her body to his, a motion that in her tribe signifies acceptance of a mate. Their embrace is broken by a charging lion. Tara whips out her knife and is killed saving her mate.

FIN 

I lie.

There's more to The Gorilla's Daughter. The novella continues a further three pages in which it is revealed that the narrator learned the story from Bob during a long night spent smoking ciggies atop the Great Pyramid of Giza. There's also a subplot concerning a failed campaign by Mrs C. Anthony Van Carlson of the Boston Carlsons to marry daughter Gloria into the Wickson family. 

This is not their story, it is the story of Tara, the gorilla's daughter.

Bonus: The Gorilla's Daughter ends on page 127, falling far short of the standard News Stand Library title. Padding is provided by a thirty-page science fiction story titled 'Awaken the Dead!' by Halls Wells.

Set in 1947, it concerns a wealthy Wall Street investor who, at age ninety-two, is doing his darnest to stave off death. To this end, he has himself refrigerated so that he might be thawed out when there are cures for his ailments.

Halls Wells that ends well, except for Harley D. Haworth.

About the cover: Is the woman meant to be Diana or Tara? Either way, the illustrator errs in that both are blonde. In fact, Tara is described as having platinum blonde hair.

Object and Access: A typical NSL mass market paperback.  The rear cover copy does indeed consist of excerpts, the lone difference being "blonde." Kelley uses "blond" throughout the novel. I prefer the former.

Library and Archives Canada, McMaster University, and the University of Calgary have copies, but that's it.

My three decade pursuit of The Gorilla's Daughter has failed to yield so much as a sighting. I have bowdler of Fly-by-Night to thank for sending me scans and photocopies.

As of this writing, no copies are listed for sale online.

Related post:

Exclamation Marks Abound!

James Moffatt Wins the Race

The Marathon Murder
James Moffatt
London: New English Library, 1972
124 pages

On January 12, 1972, Canadian writer James Moffatt appeared on BBC 2's Late Night Line-Up.  The public broadcaster had a habit of wiping tape back then – most famously David Bowie's January 3, 1973 Top of the Pops performance of 'The Jean Genie' – but footage survives. At the time, Moffatt was the biggest paperback writer living in Britain. Skinhead was his greatest success.

The Encyclopedia of Pulp Fiction Writers describes Skinhead as a "million-copy seller." I don't doubt it. Every Brit I know around my age has read Skinhead.

Skinhead was published in 1970. By the time of his Late Night Line-Up appearance, Moffatt had followed it with Suedehead (1971) and Boot Boys (1972); Skinhead Escapades (1972), Skinhead Girls (1972), Top Gear Skin (1973), Trouble for Skinhead (1973), and many more followed, all published under "Richard Allen."

Moffatt once claimed that as a child he'd earned third prize in a Toronto Star short story competition. In one interview he spoke of studying law at Queen's, but in another he said it was chemistry. Moffatt talked about writing for pulps in New York, living in Hollywood, and being the publisher and editor of a bowling magazine.

Was any of this repeated on Late Night Line-Up? Segments of the 12 January1972 broadcast were used in the 1996 BBC2 documentary 'Skinhead Farewell,' but not enough to get a real handle on all that went down that night.

Because the episode itself hasn't been posted online, I rely on the publisher's note:

Added to this is Moffat's four-page author's note, in which he claims that The Marathon Murder began as a sort of spur of the moment thing with host Will Wyatt throwing out an an idea. "I had precisely five seconds in which to think of a title and write the first few sentences ON CAMERA!" writes Moffatt. 

Here are those first few sentences:

Munich was but two weeks away. This left Harry Nolan with two weeks solid training to get himself in shape. He had not been too keen of late to keep himself in shape because he had problems.

It's not much of a start. This gruff Canadian, a self-described veteran of hard-boiled American pulps, writes: "Munich was but two weeks away" and "He had not been too keen of late to keep himself in shape." Reading these words, I'm almost surprised that Moffatt used "two weeks" and not "a fortnight."

Anyway, here's my fix:

Munich was two weeks away. This left Harry Nolan fourteen days to get in shape, but he had problems.

It may be that Moffatt was going after word count; his thirty-seven to my nineteen. New English Library describes The Marathon Murder as a novel, but at 38,000 words it is more accurately a novella. The low number surprises in that, when divided by seven, it amounts to fewer than 5400 words per day. Two months earlier, in a Daily Telegraph Magazine profile, Moffatt claimed ten thousand words as his daily output. He repeated that very same figure on the Late Night Line-Up appearance.

The writer at his desk.
Late Night Line-Up, 12 January 1972

The Marathon Murder was written when the Olympic ideal of amateurism still held. Hero Harry Nolan, who ranks amongst the very best long distance runners on the planet, is an English office worker. His wife, Emily, has left him for another man. He worries that this will... um, affect his performance. 

Terry Grayson is the other hero. A BBC journalist with no background in sport, for whatever reason he's been assigned to cover the marathon. Where Harry pines for Emily, Terry is stuck on some bird named Gloria. He just can't get over her, yet happily accepts leggy Sandra into his bed: "He had no illusions regarding their relationship. It was fleeting like fame. A fast, furious, fornicating union that had no basis in fact." Terry is surprised when Sandra follows him to Munich.

The Marathon Murder was written seven months before the start of the 1972 Olympic Games. It imagines violence, but in no way anticipates the actual horrors. At time of publication, Moffatt's likening the Olympic Village to a hastily constructed kibbutz would not have been chilling.

At some point in his Late Night Round-Up appearance Moffatt stands next to a New English Library spinner-rack."These are some of the 250 books I've written these past twenty years," he says. "During the last year I've written eight, nine books, due to the fact I haven't been too well." The words hint at his future. A drinker, Moffatt's addiction got the better of him. His final book, Mod Rule, appeared in 1980, after which he went silent. He died thirteen years later at the age of seventy-one.

James Moffatt (right) in the Daily Telegraph Magazine, 19 November 197

The Marathon Murder is no speedy read. A tough slog, it took me two weeks to reach the end.

I was outpaced by the author.

Trivia: Harry Nolan is a fan of James Bond and Silas Manners, the latter being a British spy who features in Moffatt's The Sleeping Bomb (1970) and Justice for a Dead Spy (1971).

Object and Access: A cheap mass market paperback, typical of its time, the last four pages are given over to other New English Library titles, including Skinhead, Suedehead, and Boot Boys. 

I purchased my copy last October for £5.00 from a Lincolnshire bookseller. As of this writing, all of two copies are listed for sale online. 

WorldCat suggests that no library, Canadian or otherwise, holds a copy.

Related posts:

Walking in on Virginia Box and Baird Rodd

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Double Fantasy

One Day's Courtship and The Heralds of Fame
Robert Barr
New York: Stokes, 1896
219 pages

Novellas both, "One Day's Courtship" and "The Herald's of Fame" were first gathered for book publication with a third tale, "From Whose Bourne." That the resulting volume was titled From Whose Bourne, etc. says much, I think.

"From Whose Bourne" is one of the earliest attempts at marrying the supernatural with what was then the emerging mystery genre. In the story, the spirit of a murdered man, William Brenton, follows the investigation of his widow, Alice, who is accused of having committed the crime.

From Whose Bourne, etc.
Robert Barr
London: Chatto & Windus, 1893

"One Day's Courtship" and "The Heralds of Fame" are lighter fare and aren't nearly so groundbreaking. Both are woven from tired worn threads we continue to today in today's romantic comedies. Each relies heavily on coincidence and unfortunate misunderstandings. Neither is recommended, though both may appeal to those interested in nineteenth-century depictions of artistic and literary life. Lovers of rom coms will find more satisfaction with Netflix.

"One Day's Courtship" concerns landscape painter John Trenton, who returns to Shawinigan Falls – "Shawenegan Falls" in all editions – with the intent of capturing its beauty on canvas. He was first made aware of the natural wonder through a letter sent by an admirer and lesser talent.

Shawinigan Falls, 1904

As it will turn out – I spoil things a bit here – that letter came from a young woman named Eva Sommerton. A very pretty, very wealthy American, Miss Sommerton has hired a canoe and crew to take her to the falls. Owing to a comical mix-up, John Trenton has hired that very same canoe and crew. Each thinks the other the interloper! What's more, neither knows the identity of the other!

You can imagine to possibilities.

"The Herald's of Fame" is lighter still, though I enjoyed it more. It's hero, Kenan Buel, is a young Englishman with two published novels under his belt. Neither did all that well, so it comes as some surprise when American publisher L.F. Brant expresses interest in his third. Brant reads the proofs when visiting Buel's London publisher and pays £20 for the American rights. Because he'd entered negotiations with the expectation of paying £100, Brant gives the author the difference.

It's all too wonderful. Buel now has more money than he's ever had, and so accepts his American publisher's invitation to visit New York. At the dock, the novelist enters W.H. Smith and Sons, where he spies a young woman looking over the "New Books" shelf. She hesitates over Buel's latest before settling on a title written by our hero's idol, the great novelist J Lawless Hodden. Owing to a comical mix-up, that young woman – a very pretty, very wealthy American named Caroline Jessop – finds herself with a copy of Buel's new novel.

Buel himself ends up sharing his ship's cabin with none other than J Lawless Hodden. The latter proves a mean, cheap, and deceitful bastard, and pretends that he paid for a private cabin. Miss Jessop, who just happens to be in the neighbouring suite, overhears the conflict and clasps her hands together in glee at the drama of it all. Of a sudden, Hodden, whose work she'd admired, is out; Buel is her new favourite. And so begins the flirtation.

I found this exchange between Miss Jessop and Mr Buel clever:

“I only wish I could write. Then I would let you know what I think of you.”

     “Oh, don’t publish a book about us. I wouldn’t like to see war between the two countries.”

     Miss Jessop laughed merrily for so belligerent a person.

     “War?” she cried. “I hope yet to see an American army camped in London.”

     “If that is your desire, you can see it any day in summer. You will find them tenting out at the Metropole and all the expensive hotels. I bivouacked with an invader there some weeks ago, and he was enduring the rigours of camp life with great fortitude, mitigating his trials with unlimited champagne.’’

     “Why, Mr. Buel,” cried the girl admiringly, “you’re beginning to talk just like an American yourself.”

     “Oh, now, you are trying to make me conceited.”

     Miss Jessop sighed, and shook her head.

     “I had nearly forgotten,” she said, “that I despised you. I remember now why I began to walk with you. It was not to talk frivolously, but to show you the depth of my contempt!      Since yesterday you have gone down in my estimation from 190 to 56.”

     “Fahrenheit?”

     “No, that was a Wall Street quotation. Your stock has ‘slumped,’ as we say on the Street.”

     “Now you are talking Latin, or worse, for I can understand a little Latin.”

I was never nearly so good at flirting, but imagine my readers are.

For that reason, I cannot recommend.

You heartbreakers have nothing to learn.

Object: A very attractive book with frontispiece by Edmund Frederick (above). Following the two novellas, the publisher tacks on five pages of adverts. The earliest are the most interesting, but only because of the series title:

The twentieth century, then several years in the future, didn't treat any of the titles well. Robert Barr's In the Midst of Alarms, a semi-comic novel of the Fenian Raids, saw no editions in the twentieth century. The same is true for his short story collection The Face and the Mask, despite high praise from Arthur Conan Doyle. The other books are unfamiliar – even the Ouida – but I'd buy I Married a Wife for the title alone. The author's name is a bonus.

My copy was purchased earlier this year from a bookseller in Florida. Price: US$9.95.

Access: Copies of One Day's Courtship and The Heralds of Fame can be found at Library and Archives Canada, the Canadian Museum of History, Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec, and thirty-three of our academic libraries. 

No copies are listed for sale online.

My edition can be read through this link thanks to the good folks at the Thomas Fisher Library and the Internet Archive.

Related post:

Getting to the Fenian Raids

Reading Gérard Bessette on His Hundredth

Not for Every Eye [Le libraire]
Gérard Bessette [trans. Glen Shortliffe] 
Toronto: Macmillan, 1962
98 pages

Yesterday marked the centenary of Gérard Bessette's birth. I spent an hour or so reading this translation of his most celebrated work. A novella – not a novel, as Macmillan claims – it isn't very long.

Bessette's title, Le libraire (The Bookseller), refers to narrator and protagonist Hervé Jodoin. It takes the form of a journal written on Sundays, when the bars are closed. The first entry involves Jodoin's arrival in the fictional Quebec town of Saint Joachim, where he has accepted a job in a bookstore. In truth, it's as much a bookstore as, say, Indigo; the better part of the establishment has been given over to toys, stationary, and religious articles. The book department is in the rear, allowing Jodoin to pass a good portion of the day in a quiet snooze.

Killing time is Jodoin's main occupation. He quickly settles into a routine – "book shop, beer parlour, room; room, book shop, beer parlour." At the end of each workday, he heads for Chez Treffelé, a working class bar where he drinks alone at a table located conveniently near the lavatory. After that – meaning, after the bar closes – Jodoin makes for his rooming house bed.

A crack appears in what Jodoin describes as "the monotony of my life" when the store's proprietor, Léon Chicoine, determines that his new bookseller is a believer in liberty and is a proponent of free thought. Chicoine unlocks a door to what Jodoin had thought was a closet, revealing the "sanctum sanctorum," a small, windowless room lined with books found in the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, and listed by Abbé Bethléem and Père Georges Sagehomme.*

Chicoine demands Jodoin's discretion, and asks him to sell the volumes (at inflated prices) to "serious purchasers." Our hero agrees, and starts off for Chez Treffelé "caressing the innocent notion that perhaps after all I was not yet completely useless, that perhaps my life might have a meaning."

Sadly, Jodoin's new customers fail to give meaning to his life:

They sidle up to me with a conspiratorial air and murmur into my ear the name of some author or book, all this in the same tone of someone asking for a condom or a suppository in a drug store. Others are more evasive still; they shower me with meaningful glances and ask me to recommend "something a little out of the ordinary" or "something with a kick to it."

Jodoin quickly comes to resent the extra work involved in retrieving volumes from the sanctum sanctorum, recognizing most aren't at all interested in liberty and freedom of thought: "If these jokers are looking for an aphrodisiac, they can find more effective ones."

The crack widens and drama begins with a pimply-faced boy he recognizes as a student of the Saint Roch School, "located a couple of miles from the town in open country, in the middle of a vast domain belonging to  a community of clerics who combine the dairy industry with the rearing of young men." The student asks for a volume by Voltaire, and whether "through curiosity or a kind of fellow-feeling produced by nostalgia for my own school days," Jodoin retrieves a copy from the sanctum sanctorum.

Le libraire was first published in Paris because Bessette was unable to find a Quebec publisher. This was in 1960, mere months before the Quiet Revolution began. Within two years, the novel had found a Quebec publisher, and had been translated and published in English.

I received this copy of Not for Every Eye as a gift on my twenty-third birthday. I read it the very same summer. A university student at the time, I used its story, and the story of its publication, in writing papers on the Quiet Revolution.

Much of the revolution took place when I was asleep in a crib.

I have people like Gérard Bessette to thank that it did.

* Researching this piece, I was amused to discover that Georges Sagehomme's Répertoire alphabétique de plus de 7000 auteurs avec leurs ouvrages au nombre de 32000 (romans et pièces de théâtre) qualifiés quant à leur valeur morale (1931), was revised nine times; the last – published twenty-nine years after his death – is Répertoire alphabétique de 16700 auteurs 70000 romans et pièces de théâtre cotés au point de vue moral.

Trivia: There is an actual St-Joachim, Quebec, located roughly thirty kilometres downriver from Quebec City, but it bears no resemblance to the town depicted in Bessette's novel.

More trivia: Adapted by M. Charles Cohen for CBC Television (1963) and CBC Radio (1967). The former starred Jack Creley, Larry Mann, and Barbara Hamilton.

Object: A slim volume consisting of white boards with purple type, as an objet Not for Every Eye is my favourite Macmillan of Canada book. Credit goes to Leslie Smart. Arnaud Maggs designed the jacket.

Bibliophiles will appreciate the adverts for other Macmillan titles on the back cover. I own three, but have read only one.

Access: The translation may be neglected, but it is not rare. Very Good copies are offered online for as little as ten dollars. I've seen some evidence of a softcover edition that may have been a rebind. It would seem that in 1977 the novella was absorbed into Macmillan's moribund Laurentian Library, though I've yet to encounter a copy. I have, however, seen the 1984 edition, issued by Exile (right). It is still available for purchase.

A second English translation, which I've not read, was published in 1999 by Guernica Editions. Its translator, Steven Urquhart has written a very interesting essay about the need and process:

Retranslating a Quebec Classic

The Urquhart translation is also still in print.

Remarkably, there is a Czech translation, Skandal V Knihkpectvi (Scandal in the Bookstore; Prague: Odeon, 1974). Collectors may be interested in a copy inscribed to Bessette by translator Ea Masnerova on offer from an Oregon bookseller.

Copies of Le libraire are plentiful. The cheapest copy I've seen offered online is going for one Yankee dollar. Few copies of the first edition, published in Paris by Jilliard, are in evidence.

Grant Allen's Breezy Read

An Army Doctor's Romance
Grant Allen
London: Raphall Tuck & Sons, [1893]
113 pages

The publisher lowers expectations with a note presenting this novella as part of its Breezy Library, "an attempt to dissociate a shilling from a shocker." Rafael Tuck & Sons would like the reader to know that this is no Shilling Shocker, rather it is a "Shilling Soother." The unpleasant elements of other Grant Allen tales – adultery (A Splendid Sin), fraud (Miss Cayley's Adventures), arson (The Devil's Die), rail disasters (What's Bred in the Bone), suicide (Under Sealed Orders), assassination (For Maimie's Sake), poisoning (A Terrible Inheritance), and cannibalism (The Cruise of the Albatross) – will not feature. No man will be butted off a cliff by a savage moorland ram (Michael's Crag).

I don't believe I've read so slight a story as An Army Doctor's Romance since childhood. We open on "fresh English rosebud" Muriel Grosvenor, the object of affection of two men serving in the Royal West Badenochs. Oliver Cameron, the first we meet, is a handsome doctor of modest means. His rival, Captain Wilfred Burgess, is just as handsome, and has the advantage of being enormously wealthy. Of the two, Muriel's mother prefers the latter, but the heart wants what the heart wants. During an English garden party on an idyllic English summer's day, the army doctor professes his love and proposes marriage. Muriel in turn declares her love, but stops short of accepting the proposal for the reason that she promised her mother she would not. Her promise to Oliver Cameron is that she will accept no other proposals.

Thwarted by scheming widow Mrs Talbot, who threw Muriel and the doctor together, Capt Burgess has no opportunity to make his own play for Muriel's hand, and so has to resort to a proposal sent by Royal Mail. Mrs Grosvenor pressures her daughter into accepting by post. After the response has been sent, Muriel writes a quick follow-up, breaking off the engagement and "blaming herself not a little for her moral cowardice." But she misses the postman! To make matters worse, Dr Cameron, Capt Burgess, and the rest of the Royal West Badenochs have shipped out to deal with the Matabeles in Matabeleland!

Curiously, surprisingly, in something touted as a "Shilling Soother," there is unpleasantness in the form of a Matabele attack on the Badenochs. Cameron is captured and Burgess is injured horribly. Each thinks the other has been killed. The doctor is released by the enemy and eventually makes his way back to England. Meanwhile, the captain is nursed back to health by Miriam, the beautiful daughter of a famous missionary. Burgess falls in love... but what to do about his engagement to Muriel? The situation is resolved with ease, and everyone goes off happily.

Breezy indeed, An Army Doctor's Romance passed before my eyes without once causing me to pause and give thought. Following Eden Phillpotts'  Summer Clouds and Other Stories (1893), it was the third volume in the Breezy Library. Only three more followed.

I'm not surprised.

Trivia I: By far the least imaginative of the fourteen Allen novels and novellas I've read to date, I was surprised to discover that An Army Doctor's Romance was well-received by contemporary reviewers.

The Publishers' Circular (Christmas 1893)

The most puzzling was a review in The Speaker (25 November 1893), which describes the plot as "distinctly ingenious."

Trivia II: In reading this novel – written for the money, surely – I came to believe that Allen was having some fun with the Breezy Library name because the words "breeze" and "breezy" appear four times in the text. However, research revealed that the words appear no less than nineteen times in the The Devil's Die (1890), my favourite Allen novel.

Object and Access: An attractive, somewhat unusual volume, the image and writing on the flexible chromolithographic cover are raised. The character depicted is Dr Oliver Cameron. His actions are a mystery to me. The interior features seven more images. All are by military artist Harry Payne.

Six of our university libraries hold copies, but not Library and Archives Canada. I've found five copies listed for sale online US$70 to US$250. I won my copy for US$16.99 in an online auction. As is often the case with things Allen, I was the only bidder.

The novella can be read online through this link thanks to the University of Alberta and the Internet Archive.

I don't recommend it.