Showing posts with label Orenstein. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Orenstein. Show all posts

27 March 2020

Reluctantly Revisiting Canada's Great Virus Novel



Nobody told me there'd be days like these. The Nazis in the bathroom just below the stairs are the least of my worries.

I've been spending this time of self-isolation out and about in my role as an essential worker. On days off, I wander about the woods of our secluded home gathering firewood for next fall and winter. I sometimes fear I'm turning into the Michael Caine character in The Children of Men.

The Children of Men is not be the thing to watch just now. I managed to make it through the first episode of HBO's The Plot Against America, but could take no more. Since then, it's been SCTV and old episodes of 30 Rock.

I'm in need of a good laugh these days, though I well understand the curiosity of those who've asked me to recommend Canadian novels dealing with pandemics.

The craziest by far is May Agnes Fleming's The Midnight Queen (1863), which is set in London during the Great Plague. In Tom Ardies' Pandemic (1973), part-time secret agent Charlie Sparrow combats a millionaire who looks to unleash a killer virus upon the world.


But my greatest recommendation is The Last Canadian (1974) by William C. Heine, which just happens to be the first Canadian novel I ever read. Ten years ago, I shared my thoughts about the work in a blog post, which was subsequently taken down and reworked for inclusion in The Dusty Bookcase — the book.

I'm bringing it back for the curious. Enjoy... then look for something funny.

AT LONG LAST LUNACY



The Last Canadian
William C. Heine
Markham, ON: Pocket Books, 1974
253 pages

In the opening chapter of The Last Canadian, protagonist Gene Arnprior leaves his suburban home and speeds along the Trans-Canada toward Montreal. A to B, it's not much of a scene, but the image has remained with me since I read this book at age twelve. The novel was the first in which I encountered a familiar landscape. Of the rest, I remembered nothing... nothing of the sexism, the crazed politics or the absurdity.

Penned by the editor-in-chief of the London Free Press, it begins with late night news bulletins about mysterious deaths in Colorado. Gene recognizes what others don't and takes to the air, flying his wife and two sons to a remote fishing camp near James Bay. As a virus sweeps through the Americas, killing nearly everyone, the Arnprior family live untouched for three idyllic years, before coming into contact with a carrier. As it turns out, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger... Gene lives on, but must bury his wife and children.

The Last Canadian is a favourite of survivalists everywhere. Someone calling himself Wolverine writes on the Survivalist Blog:
The immediate response reaction is instructive. Second there are the North country survival techniques. Third there are psychological factors of being a survivor in a situation where most others die. And there is more, dealing with post-disaster situations, though I won't go into that because it would spoil the book for you.
I won't be as courteous. Spoilers will follow, but first this complaint: the title is a cheat. Gene is not "The Last Canadian" – there are plenty of others – rather he considers himself such because his citizenship papers came through the day before the plague struck. Gene is an American who came north for work. He'd enjoyed his time in Canada, had made many friends and "had come to understand the Canadian parliamentary system, and agreed that it was far more flexible and effective than the rigidity of the American system of divided constitutional responsibility."

Reason before passion.

Is it then surprising that, there being no parliament, he's drawn back to the United States? Heading south, Gene resists all invitations of the Canadians he meets, whom he considers "eccentric" because they've chosen to stay put, supporting themselves through farming and whatever might be found in local shops. There's much more excitement to be found south of the border.

First, he stumbles into a Manhattan turf war – but that's hardly worth mentioning. As a carrier, Gene inadvertently kills a number of Soviet military types who have set up a base in Florida. In doing so, he becomes Enemy #1 of the USSR. They send frogmen assassins, set off bombs, plant land mines, and lob nuclear missiles in his general direction, but still Gene beetles on. When a Soviet submarine destroys his Chesapeake Bay home, killing the woman he considers his new wife, Gene seeks revenge.

Though he has no evidence, Gene comes to blame the Soviets for the plague (in fact, it's a rogue Russian scientist), and dedicates himself to infecting the USSR. He begins with a short wave radio broadcast directed at the Kremlin: "If the Russian people were half as smart as your literature says they are, they'd have tossed you out long ago. Because they haven't, I have to assume they're as stupid as you are."

You see, because they are stupid, Gene has decided that all citizens of the Soviet Union should die. He cares not one bit that the plague will spread beyond the borders of the country, killing the rest of Asia and Europe, never mind Africa.

It's all crazy, but the reader is not surprised. Though Heine spills an awful lot of primary colours in an effort to paint the man as a hero, concern has been growing for quite some time. Remember when he hit his wife, just so she'd understand the gravity of their situation? How about when he'd threatened to tie his young son to a tree and whip him until he couldn't stand – all because he'd fallen asleep while tending a fire? Then there's that little glimpse of Gene's psyche provided when his new love, Leila, tells him a horrific story of being kidnapped, beaten and raped repeatedly by a psychopath:
"You can't imagine the things he made me do. And he killed a man to get one of his girls."
Gene felt another chuckle welling up. In the few years he'd spent in Korea and Japan, he'd read about most of the sex things there were to do, and tried a few himself. He stifled it, however, recognizing her revulsion.
Yep, pretty funny stuff... and don't forget to add that boys will be boys.

Intent on killing billions, Gene makes his way up the Pacific Coast, dodging Soviet and American forces, before crossing the Bering Strait into the USSR. Hundreds of Americans and an untold number of Russians die as a result. His journey and life are finally ended by a clusterfuck of nuclear strikes – Soviet, Chinese, American and British – which obliterate the Anadyr basin.

Lest the reader agree with the Soviets that Gene had become a madman, Heine is at the ready to set things right. You see, Gene's actions were perfectly understandable; the British prime minister tells us so.

We're left with the image of radioactive clouds composed of the people and terrain of Anadyr. They drift across Canada, sprinkling poisoned dust over the land. Some settles on the graves of Gene's wife and children:
In time the rains washed the radioactive dust down among the rocks and deep into the soil.
Something of Eugene Arnprior, who had suffered much and had done more to serve mankind than he could ever have imagined, had come home to be with those he loved.
Thus ends what I believe to be the stupidest Canadian novel.

Trivia: Published in the US under the snicker-inducing title Death Wind, and later as – go figure – The Last American


Terrifying, either way.

In 1998, the novel was transformed into a Steven Seagal vehicle titled The Patriot. Here the action hero plays Dr Wesley McClaren, a small town immunologist doing battle with Montana militiamen and the lethal virus they've released. Sure sounds like Gene Arnprior could help out, but he's nowhere to be found. Maybe he's up on Parliament Hill taking in the House of Commons. Who knows. The Dominion to the north is never mentioned, nor is the Soviet Union, for that matter. Truth be told, The Patriot has as much to do with the novel as it does good cinema.

It can be seen, in its entirety, on YouTube:


 

Object: A typical mass market paperback. The cover photo is by Jock Carroll, who also served as editor of this and other paperback originals published by the Pocket Books imprint. The final pages advertise more desirable titles in the series, including:
FESTIVAL by Bryan Hay. A modern novel which reveals the rip-off of drug-crazy kids by music festival promoters.
THE QUEERS OF NEW YORK by Leo Orenstein. A novel of the homosexual underground.
THE HAPPY HAIRDRESSER by Nicholas Loupos. A rollicking revelation of what Canadian women do and say when they let their hair down.
Access: As far as I've been able to determine, The Last Canadian went through at least seven printings, making its scarcity in the used book market something of a mystery. Just two copies are currently listed online. At US$99.95 and US$133.53, both are described as being in crummy condition.

Where do these survivalists get their money?

Take heart, April is less than four days away. The President of the United States has assured us that the virus will be gone by then. Something to do with the heat, he says.

Strange days indeed. 


25 June 2012

The World's Most Unusual Detective Magazine!


© The Estate of Leo Orenstein
Check out the gams! It took me a while to realize that that blonde's about to take a leap. Or is she being pushed? Whatever's happening here, the fella sure looks happy.

International Detective Cases was "THE WORLD'S MOST UNUSUAL DETECTIVE MAGAZINE!" No question. So unusual was the world's most unusual that it seems to have vanished without so much as publishing a single issue.

The above, which comes to me courtesy of the family of the late Leo Orenstein, looks to be yet another of the artist's unused covers. Formatting and presentation suggest that like Aphrodite, Against the Grain and Curious Relations of MankindInternational Detective Cases was an aborted effort of Toronto's Fireside Publications. But here's the thing, Fireside didn't produce any original material, rather they'd re-issue, re-package, re-package... My hunch here is that publisher meant to mine the corpse of a dead American true crime monthly by the same title.

International Detective Cases, December 1937
I'm keeping the file open.

An aside: Where the title of England's "A Case for Scotland Yard" seems rather ho-hum, the Canadian entry, "The Tale of Singed Dog Island", did intrigue. I spent a happy half-hour yesterday reading newspaper accounts of this forgotten case. It began 23 November 1935 when the appropriately named John Harms, a trapper, murdered his partner. He next terrorized a neighbour by showing her the body, then made repeated attempts to break into her home. Eventually Harms gave up, yelling: "Report to police that the kid is dead. I will be waiting for them at my cabin on Singed Dog Island."*

The Leader-Post, 30 November 1935
It's clear that the papers were hoping Harms would turn out to be another Albert Johnson, the "Mad Trapper" who had led the RCMP on a 16-day manhunt four years earlier. Instead, Harms sat in his cabin and gave himself up when the Mounties arrived on 3 December. Found guilty of murder, he was hanged five months later.

No detectives needed.
* There really is a Singed Dog Island; a nine-acre piece of land just inside the Saskatchewan portion of Lake Athabaska, from the air it resembles a rotting steak. The actual murder took place at nearby Spring Point, but "The Tale of Spring Point" doesn't sound nearly so interesting.

11 June 2012

Monday Morning with Aphrodite


© The Estate of Leo Orenstein
What better way to begin the work week than with Aphrodite? Sadly, it seems that this particular edition of Paul Louÿs' erotic novel of Alexandria was never issued.

All signs indicate that the image above, which comes courtesy of artist Leo Orenstein's family, was commissioned by Toronto's Fireside Publications. Had it been published, this Aphrodite would have competed in the Canadian market with American editions flooding in from the south. Since 1933, the novel had been part of the Modern Library – this is the cover being used in the early 'fifties, when Fireside was in operation:


At $1.25, Modern Library's tasteful hardcover might have challenged Fireside's cheap, pulpy 50¢ paperback, but the real competition would've come from Avon. No one exploited Aphrodite quite like Avon:

1946
1950
1951
1955
Avon was having such a good time that in 1957, Berkley got in on the action with this, the first of their two editions:


But just who is that on the Avon and Berkley covers? It can't be the Goddess of Love, she only appears in the novel as a statue.

No, it must be the beautiful courtesan Chrysis, the main female character. It seems that only Leo Orenstein knew the book well enough to depict her as Louÿs describes: a blonde.

09 May 2012

A Leo Orenstein Triptych

© The Estate of Leo Orenstein
Three more uncommon Leo Orenstein covers courtesy of the artist's family. I find J.-K. Huysmans' Against the Grain the most interesting if only because it was the novel that most influenced John Glassco's fiction. He first encountered the Decadent masterpiece in 1935, courtesy of a copy loaned by H. Burton Bydwell, the “fat little lecher” of Memoirs of Montparnasse.

After reading the novel for the first time, Glassco turned to his journal, describing the work as one of the finest things he’d ever read: "it even gave me a bit of a set-back – just a slight jolt – to see how thoroughly, conclusively, & beautifully the spirit of Perversity has found expression."

I'm certain that Orenstein's Against the Grain cover was done at some point in the 'fifties. Who commissioned the work I can't say. If it was published – I can find no evidence – the fifty cent price point would have been steep for the time.

© The Estate of Leo Orenstein
The remaining Orenstein covers are less mysterious... in a way. Bowdler, the foremost collector of early Canadian paperbacks, identifies both as publications of Toronto's short-lived Randall Publishing Company. How short-lived? Well, it would appear that they issued only two titles: Stuart Martin's Seven Men's Sins (1950; first published in 1929 by Harper & Brothers as Only Seven Were Hanged) and The Queen's Hall Murder by Adam Broome (pseud. Godfrey Warden James).

© The Estate of Leo Orenstein
How many copies of The Queen's Hall Murder are out there... and did they ever find that missing apostrophe? Bowdler has never seen a copy and neither have I.

A curious thing about Seven Men's Sins is that Randall lived long enough to reissue the novel with a garish cover by pulp regular Harold Bennett.


Less Dalíesque, but the influence is still apparent.

Related posts:

22 April 2012

The Curious and Unknown Leo Orenstein


© The Estate of Leo Orenstein

Leo Orenstein is worthy of much overdue attention for his work as one of this country's early television directors and producers. I hope that a bookish fellow like myself will be forgiven for focussing on his even earlier work as an illustrator.

Curious Relations of Mankind is one of two recently discovered cover designs that come to me courtesy of the late Mr Orenstein's family. Curious, indeed. It would appear that the book it was meant to grace was never published. WorldCat gives us no hits, Abebooks is silent... and yet the identity  of the intended publisher is clear. Those familiar with the eariest days of Canadian paperbacks will recognize the three-sided Fireside Publicatons style in the price.

But what was Curious Relations of Mankind? And who was Doctor J.G. Wood? I step out on a limb in suggesting that the good doctor was Reverend J.G. Wood. I'll even be so bold as to suggest that Curious Relations of Mankind was the clergyman's The Civilized Races of Men retitled and bowdlerized.


It would not have been the only time Fireside gave an fresh title to an old book. Here's their edition of Jules Verne's From the Earth to the Moon:


Now, to be fair, From the Earth to the Moon is naught but a translation of the true title: De la Terre à la Lune. Yes, it's the most common, but we've also seen the novel published as A Trip to the Moon in Ninety-seven Hours, A Voyage to the Moon, The Moon VoyageBalbicane and Co.,  and The Baltimore Gun Club. The problem I have with Rocket Flight to the Moon is that the novel features no rockets – the adventurers are sent to the moon in a projectile shot from a massive cannon.

Of the two discovered Orensteins, I prefer this mock-up for The Queers of New York (Pocket Books, 1972), his lone novel.


© The Estate of Leo Orenstein
One is left to assume that Those Queers of New York was a working title, just as the cover itself was something that was not quite ready. The Queers of New York is a better title, I think.


A favourite Canadian cover of that lost decade, my only complaint is that Leo Orenstein's name is so very small.

Related posts:

21 June 2011

Figuring Out the Queers of New York



The Queers of New York
Leo Orenstein
Richmond Hill, ON: Pocket, 1972

The late Leo Orenstein was a producer, a director, an educator, an illustrator, a playwright and, with The Queers of New York, a novelist. That there aren't other novels in his bibliography comes as a bit of a surprise. As a young man, he played a part with the country's early paperback publishers. Orenstein's art for Fireside Publishing's Baron Munchausen is a personal favourite. "ILLUSTRATED BY GUSTAVE DORÉ"... except, of course, for the cover.


The Queers of New York is the product of a much different time. Its appearance owes a great deal to Pocket Books' belated effort to establish a line of Canadian mass market paperback originals. Orenstein's novel, one of the first, would soon be joined by titles like The Happy Hairdresser, Daddy's Darling Daughter and The Last Canadian, which I maintain is the stupidest novel yet produced in this country.


A much better book, The Queers of New York begins with a "panty-pink Cadillac convertible" being chased through Manhattan. At the wheel is our hero and narrator, charismatic go-getter Paul Norman. A Jewish gag writer for Punch Line – read: Laugh In Paul is doing his darndest to reinvent himself. In the past, he's sunk money into mining and a suicidal daredevil this time it's film production. Paul has gambled on an option for Fruitfly, "a play about homosexuals", which he's trying to mould into something that will sell in Hollywood. The thing is, he knows nothing about his subject, and the play's author, GT Baker, rightly rejects all his ideas. The gag writer thinks he's on to something when he learns that a blackmail ring has been secretly filming the city's wealthiest gays. Adding the blackmail element, along with actual blackmail footage, will make Fruitfly "something every producer in the business would be breaking their neck to get."

What seems too easy a solution becomes complicated when Paul's contact is run down by the crooks while walking away from the panty-pink Caddy. And so, the chase. Paul is also punched, kicked, drugged, kidnapped, shot at, and has a lead pipe thrown in his general direction. It's pretty exciting stuff, relayed with a good amount of humour he is a comedy writer, after all but the pacing is all off.

Blame lies with GT, who encourages Paul to learn a thing or two about homosexuality. His education begins with a visit to Dr Stanhauser, a professor of Anthropology at "the Forensic Clinic of Columbia University". Paul begins with a question:
"Are there any figures on what percentage of the population is homosexual?"
"I think Kinsey provides the most reliable figures so far, on that. At least judging from my work here at the clinic, I have no reason to doubt them. The picture that shapes up in these studies shows that 4% are exclusively homosexual, and another 33% have been involved in at least one enjoyable homosexual experience in their lives."
"Thirty-seven percent altogether? That's more than one out of three!"
"Yes, and that's to the point of orgasm. Mind you, I think Kinsey was a bit too wide on the 33% because he takes it from adolescents on; but altogether its generally assumed that 37% of the male population has at one time in their lives become involved with a male homosexual."
And on it goes, page after page. The whole thing reads a lot like an interview with a sexologist, circa 1970. Who knows, maybe it was. After the meeting, Paul feels it necessary to detail the life story of every second or third "queer" he encounters. Consider them case studies.



Ultimately, what might have been a fun and funny little novel suffers from want of a good editor. Pocket's Canadian branch plant was hardly known for its high standards; one need look no further than the first pages for evidence. No, not the novel itself, but the two-page "GLOSSARY OF YIDDISH WORDS AND PHRASES USED IN THIS BOOK". Not a bad idea, if Paul's own definitions didn't already pepper the narration. Here's our hero in the midst of an otherwise tense break-and-enter:
With all my "potzkehing" around, (potzkehing means fooling around and making a mess of things), I began to worry about Jinx. Could she hear me down here?
Nearly four decades have passed since publication, but I'm betting that in 1972 "Rosh Hashonah", "kosher", "schmuck" and "shmoose" were familiar to the "Goyim" (a word that also features). An equally useless "GAY GLOSSARY" follows the novel. Here, the reader is filled in on obscurities like "heterosexual", "homosexual", "bisexual", "straight", "gay", "queer", "faggot", "fruit", "pansy", "lesbian", "S&M", "narcissism", "buns" and "hooker".

I doubt Orenstein had anything to do with the glossary; there are differences in spelling between it and the novel proper. What's more, Paul's own definitions and those of the OED, for that matter do not match. "Pediaphilia" is "anal enjoyment in sex homosexual or heterosexual" we're told on the last page of the book.

The Queers of New York received only one printing. There was no chance for a correction.


Object: A mass market paperback with a cover illustration provided by Orenstein himself. As bowdler of Fly-by-night noted last year, cover copy tells us nothing at all about the book, presenting instead "an absurdly detailed biography of the author." A loan from bowdler, The Queers of New York is the first book reviewed here that isn't part of my collection.

Access: Held by Library and Archives Canada and just thirteen universities – even the Toronto Public Library fails. Scarce and highly collectable; any decent copy offered for under $40 is a bargain. Of the three copies are currently listed online I recommend purchasing the most expensive. Yes, it's US$75, but the thing is signed.

My thanks to bowdler for the loan, and for the images used in this post.


Related posts:

16 October 2010

The Talented Mr. Orenstein



Something for Saturday. Over at Fly-by-night, dedicated researcher Bowdler uncovers two illustrations by the late director Leo Orenstein, author of The Queers of New York. Good fun!

09 August 2010

The Naked, the Queer and the Starlost




A sharp-eyed friend sends this photo of The Queers of New York, spotted a few days ago in a Toronto used bookstore. Can't say I'm tempted – not at $50 – though I do appreciate the effort. Leo Orenstein's 1972 novel is, I believe, the most sought after Pocket Canadian Paperback Original. Easy to understand why. Who couldn't use a book that features both gay and Yiddish glossaries? For now, I'm happy just to see the cover, which Orenstein himself provided. Not bad.

When I first learned of this novel back in February, I made a bit too much of the fact that Orenstein directed Chekhov, Ibsen and Shaw – pretty much every director working in the early days of CBC television did much the same. The only film the man directed was Have Figure, Will Travel, a low-budget travelogue about three young women who sail a luxury yacht from staid Canada to nudist colonies in the United States.


Orenstein was far more active as a producer than a director, putting together one-off television dramas by names like Ted Allan, Hugh Garner and Arthur Hailey. For the most part, these appear to have been well-received, though this 25 May 1966 Globe and Mail review by Dennis Braithwaite is worthy of note:
I don't see how we can put all the blame on Barry Morse for what happened on Show of the Week Monday night. Morse is an actor and therefore by definition a ham: give any actor his head, free him from all directorial restraints, say to him. "Do as you like, have a ball." give him a plot so sketchy and inane that it can't possibly by hurt, turn him loose on the set with a make-up box and a drawing account on the wardrobe department, close your eyes and ears to the results, and well, if you saw It's Murder, Cherie, you know what will happen. Leo Orenstein produced this show; I want that information prominently displayed.
Could it really have been as bad as all that? Does anyone remember? I ask because it wasn't long after this review that Orenstein stopped working as a producer for the CBC. In fact, this man who had been there right from the medium's earliest days seems to have left television entirely. He returned only briefly, directing two episodes of The Starlost, CTV's 1973 science fiction series. Here's the beginning of the first, "Lazarus from the Mist":




By Canadian standards it was a pretty big deal, though no one seems to have noticed. After the devastating 1966 Braithwaite review, Orenstein's name didn't appear again in our newspaper of record until he died in February of last year. He was eighty-nine.

An aside: An "audacious television concept" says star and pitch man Keir Dullea. Those with who bask in nostalgia and young folks wondering what all the fuss was about may find the Starlost promo to be of interest.



The screen captures of Have Figure, Will Travel come from Canuxploitation, which has an excellent write-up on the film.

Related posts:

18 February 2010

Carroll's Canadian Originals



Those adverts at the back of The Last Canadian have had me scouring local thrift shops for Leo Orenstein's The Queers of New York. How could I not? The very idea that a respected director of Anton Chekhov, Henrik Ibsen and George Bernard Shaw, not to mention Harlan Ellison (The Starlost), wrote a "novel of the homosexual underworld" intrigues. What's more, according to one online bookseller, it features a "gay glossary", a "Yiddish glossary" and "camp pictorial wraps (painted by the author)".

While I can't confirm the bookseller's description, I don't doubt the accuracy. Covers for Pocket's Canadian originals look like they were done on the cheap, so we might expect that the firm appreciated writers who could supply an image. In terms of quality, they're to be all over the map. Series editor Jock Carroll's photo of a faux Marilyn Monroe isn't so bad, but what are we to make of the flower-carrying girl exiting an outhouse?

That is a girl, right?


Daddy's Darling Daughter
William Thomas
1974
"A shocking novel of today's children and their life-style."


Down the Road
Jock Carroll
1974
"Uninhibited talks with Marilyn Monroe and other famous sex symbols. Photos."


Backroom Boys and Girls
John Philip Maclean
1973
"A novel that raises basic questions about Canadian politicians – and sex."


Love Affair
Earl L. Knickerbocker
1974
"The bitter-sweet romance of two young schoolteachers."


Right Now Would Be a Good Time to Cut My Throat
Paul Fulford
1972
"A bawdy sailor adrift in Toronto publishing circles."