Living Through Another Cuba

The Tent of the Wicked
Robert Switzer
New York: Signet, 1956
128 pages

We begin in a despot's bedroom. Six soldiers enter, one throws the light switch, and the country's president is ordered out of bed. His mistress is a sound sleeper.

This is the end of the Small Man's rule. He'd been expecting it. 

Where readers expecting it?

In June 1949, on the occasion of the author's eighth short story for Esquire, the magazine reported that publishers had been urging Robert Switzer to write a novel. Did The Tent of the Wicked meet their expectations? Was it shopped around? Whatever happened, it didn't arrive for another seven years – and then only as a mass market paperback. 

That opening scene is also the first in his story 'The Small Man,' which had appeared in Esquire's March 1955 issue. Not identical, but pretty damn close, it runs from the beginning to the first line break: 

cliquez pour agrandir

'The Small Man' is not a long story. This is the rest:

The violent final scene is much the same as another in the novel. Though the paragraphs between don't feature in any way, they do follow the Small Man's changing fortunes.

The publisher's pitch has it that The Tent of the Wicked takes place in "a Latin American country." I can do one better in identifying that country as Cuba. Its hero is Paul Rezzado, a young man who works for a travel agency in "the Capital." Much like Jonathan Richman, he falls in love with a bank teller. Her name is Angela. Their relationship is so passionate, so intense, so maddeningly enduring that Paul feels in need of a break. After pushing his employer for a temporary transfer, he leaves for two months' work in San José and doesn't return for a full three years. When he does, Paul finds Angela married to a plump businessman who is also father to her unborn child. She'd given up waiting sometime around the thirtieth month.

Just as well, really. Angela had been faithful, but not Paul. Besides, there was that old promise he'd made to return in sixty days, not eleven hundred.

Paul goes back to San José, where he befriends a married teenaged prostitute. He calls her "Doll-face," a nickname neither she nor anyone else understands. She vanishes, then reappears with a face that looks nothing like a doll's. The new police official in town had abducted her, raped her, tortured her, and disfigured her before dumping her back onto the street. Paul kills the man taking care that no one knows...  but word gets around. San José sees him as a hero and his fame begins to spread. Other men begin following his example, taking on the authorities like their hero Rezzado. Paul wants none of this, but more men join in and the government feels threatened. He becomes a hunted man until the military surrenders to public will and joins his side.

The novel's second scene takes place in the Presidential Palace where Paul, Provisionary President of the Republic, meets with General Avilia and captains of industry identified only as "the oilman," "the cattleman," "the communications man," and "the banker.":

These men could be designated by their specialities, their near-monopolies, but actually they were inter-involved, the banker owning parts of oil well and the cattleman sharing in silver mines. They did not own everything in the country but, between them, they owned a part of everything and repesented those who owned the rest.

What good can come from a meeting such as that?

The novel's climax owes nearly everything to Switzer's October 1955 Esquire story 'The Death Bringers.'

As the title suggests, there is no happy ending.

Robert Switzer's last known work is the 1961 novel I Was Going Anyway. It's the best Canadian noir novel I've read this year, if not entirely original. Switzer mined three of his old Esquire stories, the earliest being 'Death of a Prize Fighter,' which appeared all the way back in the June 1949 issue. 

'The Small Man' and 'The Death Bringers' were both published in the fifteen months leading to The Tents of the Wicked. Were they segments of a work in progress or simply reused for his debut novel?

I don't expect we'll ever know nor does it matter. The Tents of the Wicked is one hell of a book.

Trivia: In 'The Small Man' the Paul Rezzado character is named Jesus Rezzado. This Anglican caught several echoes of the New Testament in the novel itself.

The Rezzado character in 'The Death Bringers' is named Perez, which is the surname of the man Angela marries in The Tent of the Wicked. 

Object and Access: A paperback original, there have been no subsequent printings or editions. The cover illustration does not reflect a scene in the novel.

As I write eight copies are listed for sale online, ranging in price from US$4.00 to US$33.00. All booksellers are in the United States. A word of caution, the bookseller asking US$33.00, the most dear by far, charges a further US$99.50 to ship what is a slim mass market paperback that weighs less than a sparrow. 

Related posts:

Bringing It All Back Home
Robert Switzer, Esquire

Bringing It All Back Home

 

I Was Going Anyway
Robert Switzer
New York: Macmillan, 1961
121 pages

Robert Switzer flew under my radar for decades, it was only last month that I first read his name. I shelled out a bit extra for a copy of I Was Going Anyway with a dust jacket and am glad I did. The rear flap features some very interesting information about the man:

I expect there is some exaggeration in the description of the author's vagabond upbringing. The 1931 Canadian census finds Robert, age eight, living in Saskatoon with his two older siblings and their parents Franklin K. Switzer ("Dentist") and Edna Irene Switzer ("Home Maker"). While it is true that his 1949 Esquire story 'Death of a Prize Fighter' had been widely anthologized, most notably in Prize Stories of 1950: The O. Henry Awards (New York: Doubleday, 1950), it was not his Esquire debut. 

 The first appeared in the magazine three years earlier when Switzer was twenty-three:

'No End to Anything' was followed by eighteen more stories, 'Death of a Prize Fighter' included, all published in Esquire. I've yet to find a single Robert Switzer story to appear in another magazine. The run ends in April 1957 with 'A Terrible Tomorrow,' a story about the desperate search for a young missing girl and the unstable teenager accused with her abduction.

I mention these things of a reason. 

I Was Going Anyway centres on Will, a syndicated sports columnist based in Toronto, and his relationship with a woman named Dorothy, the daughter of a celebrated surgeon. They meet at a party in early winter, enjoy a bit of light flirtation, and then part. Nothing more to see here until Will sends her a Christmas gift. Dorothy responds. Next thing you know, the two have a date for New Year's Eve. They have their first kiss when the clock strikes twelve.

Will and Dorothy take things slow at first, then speed up the pace considerably, consummating their relationship during a ski weekend in the Laurentians. They return to Toronto engaged. Dorothy's widower father disapproves, but says nothing. And so, arrangements for the happy day commence. Dorothy flies off to Ottawa to consult a college girlfriend, leaving Will behind. What the bride-to-be doesn't know is that there is a woman staying in her fiancé's house.

Erie Clark had arrived a day earlier. It sort of makes sense that Will said nothing about her to Dorothy. Erie and he had never been girlfriend and boyfriend, but they used to sleep with each other. This was fifteen years ago in Montreal, when both were in their late teens. Will was struggling to find his footing in one of the dailies and Erie performed onstage at one of the city's legendary burlesque clubs. They had aspirations, but only Will's were realized. Erie, who'd planned on becoming a Hollywood star married to a wealthy man, instead ended up homeless on Will's doorstep.

He let her in.

What exactly does Erie want from Will? I don't think she herself knows. If pressed, I'd say the answer is shelter from the storm. A second guess, related to the first, would be that she just wanted the company of someone whom she'd known to be kind. Those fifteen years had been rough. Like me, critic Ron Gobin was struck by this passage, quoting it in his review for the Honolulu Star-Bulletin (23 April 1961):

This is how Erie is introduced:

These passages are gems. To my knowledge, I Was Going Anyway is the first and only time they ever appeared in print. The same can be said for most every other – but not every other. I Was Going Anyway includes dozens of sentences lifted from the author's Esquire stories. It also includes the better part of 'Death of a Prize Fighter,' reworked to include sportswriter Will as witness.

I had no reason to suspect this when reading the novel. I Was Going Anyway is seamless, so smooth, so polished that it reads as if it was written in one feverish go, beginning with the first word and ending with the last. I didn't catch on until I began reading Switzer's short stories.

A case self-plagiarism? I suppose, but I'll give him a pass. 

The June 1949 edition of Esquire reports that the short story writer had turned down repeated offers from publishers wanting a novel. Switzer would eventually write two for Signet before I Was Going Anyway. The first, The Tent of the Wicked (1956), was a paperback original. The following year he was hired to provide a novelization of Albert Lewin's screenplay for The Living Idol. 

I wonder whether any publisher approached Switzer about a short story collection? I'm guessing not. I'm also guessing that he saw I Was Going Anyway as an opportunity to rescue the best bits of his Esquire stories from the landfill.

This is pure speculation on my part, of course.

With few exceptions, reviews of I Was Going Anyway were very positive – "dulled by lapses into offensive language," sniffed the Buffalo Courier Express (30 April 1961) – but there was no second printing. There has never been a paperback edition. The worst part of Robert Switzer's story as a writer is that it ends here, a mere fifteen years after 'No End to Everything.' With the novel's publication, perhaps before, he went silent and vanished.

I Was Going Anyway is both his last book and his best work. It stands with The Long November, Hot Freeze, The Crime on Cote des Neiges, and The Damned and the Destroyed as the very best of post-war Canadian noir.

Trivia: The Buffalo Courier Express is extremely sensitive regarding language. Granted, I was born after I Was Going Anyway was published, but my twentieth-century eyes see only one word that might offend. In a late chapter, a Montreal Morality Squad cop named Maisonneuve fills a Toronto police detective in on the burlesque club run by Erie's old boss Piggy Latourelle:

This is the earliest use of the word I've encountered in a Canadian novel.

About the author: I've uncovered more about Robert Switzer, but this is already running long. I'll post more next Monday. Stay tuned, the jacket's author bio contains one whopping error of fact!

Object and Access: Such an odd-looking book. I bought it not knowing the page count, so was surprised when it arrived. I Was Going Anyway is a very slim hardcover, slimmer than many mass market paperbacks I have from the time, despite it's olive green boards. What's more, the yellowing pages aren't much better than newsprint.

As I write, five copies are listed for sale online, all from American booksellers. The cheapest is a library discard with "musty odor Due [sic] to age and/or environmental conditions, the pages of this book have darkened." Best to take a pass.

After that we have four copies. At US$3.99, the least expensive lacks a dust jacket. And don't you want that jacket? After that we have three, and only three, that do have the dust jacket, ranging in price from US$20.00 to US$34.00. As might be expected, the most dear is in the best condition.

Do not expect to find I Was Going Anyway in your local library. A WorldCat search suggests that the only copies held by Canadian libraries are found at Queen's University, Library and Archives Canada, and the University of Toronto's Thomas Fischer Rare Book Library.

Saskatoon Public Library take note.  

I Was Going Anyway was read for the 1961 Club hosted by Simon and  Karen. In doing so, I broke my New Year's resolution to read and review only women authors in 2026. Before you shame, it was also read for work. It was just too good not to share.

Other 1961 books I've reviewed over the years:

Bottoms Up - Jock Carroll

A Dum-Dum for the President - Martin Brett [Douglas Sanderson]

Return to Today - Margerie Scott

And for fun, here's one from 1861:

Edith Percival - May Agnes Fleming

Related post:

Robert Switzer, Esquire

Madge Macbeth's Great Gold Rush Hoax

The Long Day: Reminiscences of the Yukon

W.S. Dill [pseud Madge Macbeth]

Ottawa: Laurentian Press Syndicate, [c. 1926]

245 pages

I can't claim to have read every book by Madge Macbeth – her history The Lady Stanley Institute for Trained Nurses (Ottawa: Lady Stanley Institute Alumnae Association, 1959), isn't anywhere near the top of my TBR pile – but of those I've tackled The Land of Afternoon (Ottawa: Graphic, 1925) is by far my favourite. A scandalous political roman a clèf published in the midst of a federal election, she kept herself well hidden under the pseudonym "Gilbert Knox." Conservative MP Alfred Ernest Fripp did his best to hunt down the author's true identity, as did Parliamentary Librarian Martin Burrell, but it wasn't until after Macbeth's death, four decades in the future, that all was revealed.

I expect Madge Macbeth didn't feel the need to be so cautious with "W.S. Dill."

The Long Day presents itself as a reminiscence of the Yukon Gold Rush as written by a man who witnessed it all. Dill didn't exist, Macbeth didn't visit, and yet this reader, steeped in Gold Rush lore owing to a great-grandfather who served in Skagway as a customs inspector, found little by way of fabrication. The author draws frequently and liberally from those who were there. Four pages come from boxer Frank "Paddy" Slavin's 1926 autobiography The Sydney Cornstalk. Another boxer, Jack Kearns is quoted at length from a wire service piece published in the 6 July 1926 edition of the Ottawa Journal. 

Macbeth finds her richest vein in William Ogilvie's Early Days on the Yukon (Toronto: Bell & Cockburn, 1913), retelling Ogilvie's stories in a way that verges on plagiarism. Consider this passage from The Long Day:

During the winter of '96-7, disturbing news—Queen Victoria was critically ill—Pope Leo the Thirteenth lay at the point of death—War between England and Russia was imminent, and, perhaps more agitated than all of these to the camp was the prospect of a prize fight between James J. Corbett and Robert Fitzsimmons, scheduled for the spring.

Now, here's Early Days on the Yukon:

During the winter the last arrival from the outside who brought any newspapers, brought dire intelligence indeed. According to the papers, Queen Victoria was critically ill; Pope Leo XIII was at the point of death; war was imminent between England and Russia; and, more exciting to the camp, a fight for the championship of the world was coming off some time in the spring between the star pugilists, James J. Corbett and Robert FitzSimmons [sic].

Tracking Macbeth's sources is good fun, but it does distract. After a bit, I abandoned the chase and settled back to enjoy the stories she'd chosen to tell. My favourite involves Charles Carbonneau — Macbeth has his Christian name as "Jules" — a Montreal barber who reinvented himself as M le Comte Carbonneau, representative of French wine merchants Messieurs Pierre Legros, Freres et Cie. A rogue of the highest order, he woos trouser-wearing miner Belinda Mulrooney, "the richest woman in the Klondike," marries her, builds a chateau in France, and then makes off with her younger sister.

The Baltimore Sun, 17 September 1906

It's a sad and sordid tale, told in such detail that you'd think W.S. Dill had borne witness to the courtship, attended the wedding, and had had a glass or two at the celebration that followed. In taking on the persona of her creation, she adopts a voice and writing style that is nothing like her previous books.

The first readers saw of W.S. Dill — as "Willard S. Dill" — came in 'Over the Chilkoot to Eldorado,' published in the 15 September 1926 issue of Maclean's. That initial article, the first in a series of three, brought considerable response, as relayed by editor H. Nigel Moore:

I have no idea whether Moore was in on the hoax. What I can say is that The Long Day was well-received. "Mr. Dill has produced an interesting book and one that will be appreciated by those who knew the gold country in the early days," said the Kingston Whig-Standard (14 February 1927). The 15 January 1927 edition of the Montreal Gazette describes it as "most interesting and instructive," concluding "the book is well worth reading. Anyone who has ever been to the Klondike should not miss it."

I recommend it myself, even to those who have never been to the Klondike. Macbeth has an eye for entertaining tales and a talent for telling them. I finish my own review with the observation that no critic noted this: W.S. Dill doesn't once feature in his book of reminiscences.

Trivia: Madge Macbeth's own reminiscences, Boulevard Career (Toronto: Brunswick, 1957), lists The Long Day as one of her titles. The Land of Afternoon remains hidden, despite Fripp and Burrell being long dead.

Object: A strange-looking thing, isn't it? The raised images and lettering reminds me of nothing so much as old university annuals.

The Long Day was first published in 1926 by Ottawa's legendary Graphic Press. In  his essay "Graphic Press and the Bibliographer" (Papers of the Bibliographical Society of Canada XVIII), David B. Kotin describes the Laurentian Press Syndicate as an imprint, which applied fresh title pages to sheets used in the Graphic-branded edition. The last pages of my copy list other Graphic titles, including Macbeth's The Day of Afternoon and Shackles.

My copy once belonged to Dr Bertram Reid MacKay (1885-1981), who served over four decades with the Geographical Survey of Canada. 

Doctor MacKay's Carling Avenue house is said to have begun sinking, such was the weight of his immense library. Sadly, for a man who was an early advocate for the preservation Ottawa's heritage buildings, that house was eventually razed. This architectural marvel stands in its place.

Access: Nine copies of the novel are currently listed for sale by online booksellers, none of whom recognize its true author. They range in price from US$20.00 to US$69.00. All are Graphic Press editions. Of those, the one you'll want to buy — price: US$40.56 — is offered with dust jacket by an Ottawa bookseller. 

Twenty-six Canadian libraries hold copies. Yukon Public Libraries does not have a copy.

Related post:

A Very Canadian Succès de scandale

A Literary Vampire Alights upon an Impoverished Poet; or, A Newer New Grub Street in Manhattan

The Silver Poppy
Arthur Stringer
New York: Appleton, 1903
291 pages

Educated Englishman John Hartley has seen much sadness in his young life. Four or five years ago, his father, Sir Harry Hartley, was killed in the Dunstable Hunt. John next suffered through the illness and death of a fiancée, Connie Meredith, to whom he had dedicated his debut volume of verse. These tragedies rendered John directionless until celebrated portrait painter Repellier suggests that he set sail for a new life in New York.

The city isn't quite as welcoming as was hoped. Unable to sell his literary efforts, and short of funds, John takes a job in the grimy offices of the United News Bureau, where he's reduced to toiling amongst hacks and exhausted, alcoholic has-beens. And yet, John holds no ill will. Standing on the rooftop of Repellier's studio, as one of the painter's Bohemian parties draws to a close, John chances to meet Kentucky girl Cordelia Vaughan. He doesn't recognize her, though he should; Cordelia is the author of The Silver Poppy, a literary debut that is being touted not only as the novel of the season novel, but a novel for all time. A blonde beauty with a penchant for yellow and gold dresses, blouses and skirts, pictures of Cordelia are everywhere. The celebrated author expresses interest in John's writing, does a kindness in offering an exclusive interview, and two become fast friends.

Not long into their relationship, Cordelia shares her frustration in writing a second novel, The Unwise Virgins. The poet offers to read the manuscript, and finds it a failure. The Unwise Virgins has "none of the power and movement of The Silver Poppy, none of those whimsical tendernesses and quaint touches of humor and pathos that had half muffled the razor edge of her earlier satiric touch." John had never found Cordelia to have a great sense of humour, and so wonders if "she had not drained off, as it were, her vanished reservoirs of mirth; if her mental blitheness had not been lost with the too labored advent of her firstborn."

The poet is gentle in suggesting changes that might improve the novel, but the authoress has had enough of it. Her mood improves when he offers to make the changes himself. In return, the frustrated novelist suggests they share the royalties. When John refuses the offer, she insists that he send her some of his short stories. Though they've been rejected by numerous magazines, Cordelia rightly believes that her support will help in getting them published. John's stories sell, which makes it easier to leave the United News Bureau. Cordelia next offers John an apartment she'd intended for her father (he was reluctant to leave his old Kentucky home) and the poet ramps up his work on improving The Unwise Virgins.

Months pass, during which Repellier finally finds time to read The Silver Poppy. He finds it identical to a work in progress read to him by a friend not three earlier. This friend, one of "the brightest and most scholarly editorial writers on all Park Row," had been sickly. He'd sought a cure in fresh air of the hills of Kentucky, where he'd subsequently died. Repellier threatens to share his knowledge of the true author of The Silver Poppy unless Cordelia breaks things off with John.

Repellier presumes. Up to this point, Cordelia and John have been not much more than friends. True, two of their meetings featured kissing and petting, but they ended quickly and were of the oh-dear-I don't-know-what-got-into-me kind. But, after Repellier's threat, when they're next alone:

The two white arms came together and folded over him and drew him in like wings.
     Time and the world were nothing to her then; time and the world were shut out from him. It was the lingering, long-delayed capitulation of the more impetuous, profounder love she had held back from him, of the finer and softer self she had all but famished in the citadel of her grim aspirations. She no longer allured him, or cared to allure him; she had nothing to seek of him thereafter; she had only the ruins of her broken life to give him.
     And he, too — he felt those first thin needles of bliss that crept and projected themselves over the quiet waters of friendship, and he knew that a power not himself was transforming those waters of change and unrest and ebb and flow into the impenetrable solidity of love itself.

For "capitulation" read "copulation."

I've done a disservice in quoting this particular passage, though it is an example of the work's greatest flaw. A first novel, The Silver Poppy – Stringer's, not Cordelia's – so often falls victim to verbosity, but not so often that it ruins a really good story. The worst aspects of the writing life, as it was at the dawn of the last century, are exposed. The United News Bureau seeks funds from eminent men looking to guarantee a favourable obituary, and feeds off material outside of copyright:

An English novel or any less substantial publication which came to it unprotected by the arm of the law was pounced on at once, rapaciously and gleefully. It was renamed, abridged or expanded as the case might require, and in less time than it took the original author to indite his first chapter, it was on the market as a new and thrilling serial, “secured by special arrangement.”

Cordelia's novel is bought by Broadway. Though two playwrights are brought in to adapt it for the stage, only her name is credited. Sent out on lecture tour, Cordelia reads words written by a speechwriter hired by her publisher. She encourages John to submit one of his poems, 'The Need of War,' to a newspaper that is offering a great deal of money for her thoughts on armed conflict:

“But it’s not what newspapers print or care to print.”
     “It’s a beautiful thing,” she cried. “They’d jump at it.” And then she added, as an afterthought, “ If it had been written by any one with a name.”
     “That’s just it,” he explained. “ The offer hasn’t been made to me, you see.”
     “Yes, I know,” she began. “And that’s why I hesitated about suggesting the thing.”
     He seemed to be weighing the matter, and she waited for him to speak.
     “Of course it’s awfully good of you to extend the offer to me at the last moment, and all that sort of thing. But I know well enough this paper would never think of offering me any such sum for the lines.”
     She looked at him steadily.
     “They would if it appeared over my name.”
     “But I couldn’t ask you to do that—and for a mere matter of money,” he cried.
     “I would gladly, for you.”
     “But it would scarcely be fair, either to you or to me.”
     She almost hated him, she felt, when he stood so proudly behind that old-time integrity of character of his. Even as she argued, though, she secretly hoped against hope that he would hold out, that he would defeat her where she stood. Then remembering again more than one scene of inward humiliation over what he seemed to have accepted as her womanly proneness to tangle the devious skeins of ethics and expediency, a touch of the tyrant came to her once more.
     “I want you to have this money,” she pleaded. “It’s only right that you should."

Cordelia is alive! A country girl caught up in literary New York, she quickly learns to navigate, becoming all too familiar with the fabrication, hypocrisy, and deceit of its publishing houses.

Arthur Stringer: Son of the North
Victor Lauriston
Toronto: Ryerson, 1941

In his very short biography of the author, friend Victor Lauriston writes: "Newspaper identification of a prominent woman writer of that period with Stringer's 'Cordelia Vaughan' precipitated a controversy, and the book startled the author by going through five editions."

The Kentucky New Era
19 September 1903 

My own investigation confirms the validity of Lauriston's statement. Newspapers did indeed liken the character to a famous authoress of the day; frustratingly, I've yet to find one that names the lady in question. And so I put it to you, who is Cordelia Vaughhan?

Trivia I: The word "plagiarism" does not feature in the novel.

Trivia II: Five years after publication, Stringer accused George Sylvester Viereck, Edgar Allan Woolf of plagiarizing The Silver Poppy in their play The Vampire. The latter is based on Viereck's 1907 novel The House of Vampire, in which American Reginald Clarke feeds off the literary and artistic work of others.

The New York Times
31 January 1909

The working title of The  Silver Poppy was "The Yellow Vampire." The word "vampire" exists six times in the text, used by Repellier in a too subtle tale to warn John about Cordelia.

I've found no evidence that Viereck and Woolf followed through on their threat.

Object: A very attractive hardcover, typical of its time, except that it features no illustrations. The book's final six pages are given over to adverts for titles by Anna McClure Sholl, Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler, Arthur Stirling, Julien Gordon, Frank T. Bullen, J Aubrey Tyson, Elisa Armstrong Bengough, Mrs Burton Harrison, and Mrs Poultney Bigelow.

I didn't make up one of those names.

The image at the top of this post does not do justice. Those poppies really are silver! I purchased my copy, a first edition, four years ago from Attic Books, not one kilometre from the author's childhood home. Price: $10.

Access: The Silver Copy is held by the Chatham-Kent Public Library, the London Public Library, and twenty-one of our academic libraries. The novel may have had five printings, but only three copies are listed for sale online. As of this writing, at US$18, the cheapest is an Appleton first. I'm intrigued by the offer of a later A.L. Burt cheapo because it features a fontispiece. A Canadian edition as published in 1903 by William Briggs. A UK edition was published in 1904 by Methuen.

The print on demand vultures are all over this novel. My favourite cover is this one, presumably put together after misreading the title:

No dogs feature in the book

Related posts:

Richardson's End

The Most Depressing Canadian Novel of All Time?

Arthur Stringer Under the Influence
Arthur Stringer from Chatham to London

Familiarity Breeds Content

The Measure of a Man: A Tale of the Big Woods
Norman Duncan
New York: Revell, 1911

The Measure of a Man is a novel I thought I'd never read. Here's why:

You understand, I'm sure.

But looking at the book again last week – it is quite attractive – I happened upon this second note to the reader:

Oh, I do like a roman à clef. In fact, I once wrote an entire book about them. And in that book I made sport of Duncan's protests against those who saw something of Doctor Grenfell in Doctor Luke. A touchy sort,

so irritated was the novelist that he had a note appended to future editions of Dr Luke of the Labrador warning the reader against "this growing misconception." Duncan's Dr. Grenfell's Parish (1905), published the following year, features yet another note to the reader: "Dr. Grenfell is not the hero of a certain work of fiction dealing with life on the Labrador coast. Some unhappy misunderstanding has arisen on this point. The author wishes to make it plain that 'Doctor Luke' was not drawn from Dr. Grenfell."

Got that? Mission doctor Luke is in no way modelled on Duncan's friend Grenfell, a man who for four decades travelled the Labrador coast bringing medical care and the word of God to deep sea fishermen.

Duncan is more forthright when it comes to Rev Frances E. Higgins and The Measure of a Man, allowing that "some of the incidents in this story are taken directly from his experience, and many others are founded upon certain passages in his missionary career".

There really was no way around it. Not two years earlier, Duncan had published Higgins: A Man's Christian. A slim biography of the preacher, then in the fifteenth year of his mission, it begins with hungry lumberjack "Jimmie the Beast" emerging from a saloon and robbing a bulldog of its bone. Duncan recreates the scene in The Measure of a Man to introduce hero John Fairmeadow:

A worthy dog fight. Pale Peter's bulldog was concerned, being the aggrieved party to the dispute; and the other dog, the aggressor, was Billy the Beast from the Cant-hook cutting, a surly lumber-jack, who, being at the same time drunk, savage and hungry, had seized upon the bulldog's bone, in expectation of gnawing it himself. It was a fight to be remembered, too: the growls of man and beast, the dusty, yelping scramble in the street, the howls of the spectators, the blood and snapping, and the indecent issue, wherein Billy the Beast from the Cant-hook cutting sent the bulldog yelping to cover with a broken rib, and himself, staggering out of sight, with lacerated hands, gnawed at the bone as he went.
     When the joyous excitement had somewhat subsided, John Fairmeadow, now returned from the Big Rapids trail, laid off his pack.
     "Boys," said he, "I'm looking for the worst town this side of hell. Have I got there?"
     "You're what?" Gingerbread Jenkins ejaculated.
     "I'm looking," John Fairmeadow drawled, "for the worst town this side of hell. Is this it?"
     "Swamp's End, my friend," said Gingerbread Jenkins, gravely, " is your station."

And so, Fairmeadow adopts Swamp's End as the home base from which he ventures out preaching to lumber camps.

Who can fault Duncan? That story of the drunken, hungry lumberjack fighting a dog for a bone is a good one. There are plenty of others in Higgins: A Man's Christian, like when the preacher punched out a bartender and the time he took on a man who insisted on drowning out his sermon by grinding an axe:

"Keep back, boys!" an old Irishman yelled, catching up a peavy-pole. Give the Pilot a show! Keep out o' this or I'll brain ye!"
     The Sky Pilot caught the Frenchman about the waist – flung him against a door – caught him again on the rebound – put him head foremost in a barrel of water – and absent-mindedly held him there until the old Irishman asked, softly, "Say, Pilot, ye ain't goin' t' drown him, are ye?"

Here it is again in The Measure of a Man:

"Keep back, boys!" an old Irishman screamed, catching up a peavy-pole. "Give the parson a show! Keep out o' this or I'll brain ye!"
     Fairmeadow caught his big opponent about the waist – flung him against the door (the preacher was wisely no man for half measures) – caught him on the rebound – put him head fore-most in a barrel of water and absent-mindedly held him there until the old Irishman asked, softly, "Say, parson, ye ain't goin' t' drown him, are ye?"

It's not all fisticuffs, mind. I admit to being moved by the death of young consumptive prostitute Liz:

     "Am I dyin'. Pilot?" she asked.
     "Yes, my girl," he answered.
     "Dyin' – now?"
     Higgins said again that she was dying; and little Liz was dreadfully frightened then – and began to sob for her mother with all her heart.

– Higgins: A Man's Christian 

    "Am I dyin', parson?" little Liz asked.
    "Yes, my girl."
    "Dyin'?"
    " Yes, my girl."
    "Now?" little Liz exclaimed. "Dyin' – now?"
    " Mother!" little Liz moaned. "Oh, mother!"

– The Measure of a Man

Gets me every time.

It's right to criticize Duncan's recycling, as Elizabeth Miller has, but I'm prepared to give him a pass. The incidents aren't nearly so numerous as I think I've implied – and the axe-grinding incident is the only one that didn't go through a significant rewrite.

I think Duncan is correct: it must not be inferred that Higgins "bears any invidious resemblance to John Fairmeadow." The character might share Higgins' faith, brawn and fighting skills, but his backstory is markedly different. Higgins was an uneducated Ontario farm boy who one day decided that he wanted to become a preacher; Fairmeadow is a college-graduate who found salvation after descending into drink. It's not until the mid-point of The Measure of a Man that we learn anything of our hero's life before reaching Swamp's End. The tale is told in the sixteenth chapter – "Theological Training" – which finds a younger, bleary-eyed John Fairmeadow stumbling about Manhattan's Five Points in stupid thirst:

Dim, stifling lodging-houses, ill-lit cellar drinking-places, thieves' resorts, wet saloon-bars, back alleys, garbage pails, slop-shops, pawn-brokers' wickets, the shadowy arches of the Bridge, deserted stable yards, a multitude of wrecked men, dirt, rags, blasphemy, darkness: John Fairmeadow's world had been a fantastic and ghastly confusion of these things. The world was without love: it was besotted. Faces vanished: ragged forms shuffled out of sight for the last time.

Fairmeadow has been thrown out of aptly-named Solomon's Cellar – as low as you can go – and looks about to die when he is saved by Jerry McAulay's Water Street Mission.

Lasting just twelve pages, never to be mentioned again, Fairmeadow's battle with the bottle is the most memorable thing in the novel... next to Billy the Beast's fight for the bulldog's bone, anyway. Incongruity has something to do with it, I suppose – everything else takes place in the "Big Woods" – but in these pages I couldn't help but see something of the author in Fairmeadow. An alcoholic and a Christian, Duncan casts drink as the scourge of Manhattan and Swamp's End. Barroom owners prey. A hungry man who has spent all his money on drink fights for a bone that has been gnawed by a dog.

Drink killed Duncan. In October 1916, he dropped dead on the steps of a golf course clubhouse in Fredonia, New York. The writer was forty-five. His last book, the boys' adventure Billy Topsail, M.D., sees the return of Dr Luke, complete with requisite note to the reader:

Doctor Luke has often been mistaken for Doctor Wilfred Grenfell of the Deep Sea Mission. That should not be. No incident in this book is a transcript from Doctor Grenfell's long and heroic service.

Duncan had written those words seven months earlier. With the author dead and buried, and the Christmas season approaching, publisher Revell abandoned the script:

Boys' Life, December 1916

Trivia: In 1915, several chapters were gathered, bowdlerized and published under the title Christmas Eve at Swamp's End. Illustrator unknown.

Object: An attractive hardcover in brown boards, its 356 pages are enlivened further with three plates by illustrator George Harding. I purchased my copy four years ago at Attic Books in London, Ontario. Price: $5.00. I'm not entirely certain, but I think the jacket is the oldest I own.

I've seen a variant in green boards. The design will be familiar to Duncan fans.

Access: "HARD TO FIND ORIGINAL 1911 EDITION", trumpets a Michigan bookseller. Don't you believe it; as befits the work of a popular author, The Measure of a Man had a generous print-run. Decent copies –sans jacket – are listed for as little as US$8.00 online. At US$25, the one to buy is inscribed by the author.

Found in thirty-one of our universities and the Kingston-Frontenac Public Library. It can also be downloaded and read online here, but really, don't you want that inscribed copy?

The Return of the Amazon Customer Review

Okay, so they never went away – but they did from this blog. I had a grand old time a few years back tearing strips off homophobes, book burners, prudes, egotists, and those who think they know something about history and geography.

I wonder why I stopped. Too much fun? I do remember thinking that change was coming. After the Orlando Figes scandal, how could it not? No responsible retailer would allow its customers to be so grossly misled.

Sure enough, 2012 saw Amazon deleting all sorts of customer reviews. “My sister’s and best friend’s reviews were removed from my books,” sniffed self-published author M. E. Franco. “They happen to be two of my biggest fans.”

Now, there's a coincidence.

How many reviews did Amazon delete? The company was mum. Writing in the New York Times, David Streitfeld described the exercise as a "sweeping hazy purge". Neither friend nor family to M.E. Franco, I noticed nothing.

Then came 2013, a busy year in which Amazon's customer reviews cropped up in a trio of otherwise unrelated Canadian news stories.

The first concerned the resignation of Toronto District School Board director Chris Spence, who had been caught plagiarizing all sorts of things including – improbably – an Amazon customer review. Might it have been one by educator Rudy Patudy? Reporters were not so specific.

The Spence scandal was followed closely by a hysterical, media-created controversy over a print on demand publisher's sexy blonde Anne Shirley. Then came Stephen King, who just happened to give his latest the same title as a very fine 2006 graphic novel by Emily Schulz.

This in turn led to all sorts of nastiness from semi-literate folks who purchased the wrong book in error:

Good souls worked to repair the damage:

The author endured it all, recording her experience on a blog and coming out a winner with a refurbished MacBook Air for her suffering.

The current year had been much more quiet until I began receiving emails from a publisher encouraging me to ask family and friends to post reviews of my "books" on Amazon.

Before continuing, I want to make one thing clear: I have no books with this publisher. I have no book with this publisher. That said, I did play some small role in one tome's journey to print. This modest effort has resulted in messages such as these:

If you/your family and friends are unfamiliar with posting online reviews, we have included some guidelines below. Online reviews are a great way for authors and readers to interact online. Reviews are critical to both publishers and readers alike, and many consumers rely on these opinions when making purchases on Amazon. 

Lord knows this is anything but the golden age of publishing. I wish the publisher well. I wish the book well; it deserves to by widely read. But I cannot call on family and friends to plant online reviews. I cannot ask them to laud something they haven't read or encourage them to think better of a book because of some small connection to yours truly. Amazon customer reviews are unreliable and ill-informed as it is. Who wants to be part of that mess.

More anon.

Related posts:

Homophobes and Book Burners Weigh In

Amazon Customer Review: 'Reading Munroe'