Lunar Attractions; or, The Leacock I Like

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

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

 No pun intended.

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

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

Made me laugh.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

New York: Dodd, Mead, 1956

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Should I have expected more for a dollar?

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

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

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

Related post:

Am I the Only One Laughing with Leacock?

Professor Leacock Sets the Stage

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. 

Related posts:

Silent, but Deadly

Figuring Out the Queers of New York
The Hairdresser as Straight Man
The Sea Lord Unsheathes His Sword
The Critical Age: Thoughts on a Film I'll Never See
Falling Hard for May Agnes Fleming

The Dustiest Bookcase: F is for Fulford

The Dustiest Bookcase:

Short pieces on books I've always meant to review (but haven't).

They're in storage as we build our new home.

Patience, please.

Right Now Would Be a Good Time to Cut My Throat

Paul Fulford

Richmond Hill, ON: Pocket, [1972]

pages

The debut novel by Paul Fulford – commonly, "Paul A. Fulford" – about whom I know next to nothing. True, the book's author bio consumes the back cover, but can it be trusted?

Fulford is described as a magazine editor without identifying the publication. He's said to have written magazine articles, but I've yet to find one. Brochures? Speeches? Haven't most of us written these at one time or another?

Fulford is a subject of further research, which is not to say it hasn't begun. I've managed to track down a copy of Should a Scotsman Take Off His Kilt When He Meets a Lady?, published in 1969 by Young & McCarthy.

It was the publisher's only book.

I've also found seven letters Fulford wrote to the Globe & Mail, the earliest (26 March 1965) concerning a crosswalk accident that involved Toronto's Chief of Police. Others focus on problems with parking at the Canadian National Exhibition, Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin's 1971 Ottawa visit, the Oak Island Mystery, and humorist and columnist Richard Needham (whom Fulford criticizes as unfunny and lazy). The last, published in 6 January 1973, deals with dogs:

Never mind.

Given Fulford's association with Pocket Books, an American mass market branch plant, this letter published on 6 August 1971, is by far the most interesting:

As far as I've been able to determine, Fulford wrote just one paid piece for the Globe & Mail, "Can Penguins Show How To Solve the Generation Gap" (16 March 1971), an op-ed in which he's described as "a supply teacher at Forest Hill Junior High."

It's every bit as funny as Needham.

Barman, labourer, teacher, farmhand, I don't doubt that Fulford had been them all. Initially, I was dismissive about the claim that written of movie scripts, "Unproduced," I'd thought, until I came across a "Paul Fulford" as one of four screenwriters credited in the 1971 Canadian prison drama "I'm Going to Get You... Elliott Boy" (aka Caged Men Plus One Woman).

"Featuring today's bright young stars Ross Stephenson and Maureen McGill," according to the trailer, "this story was torn from today's headlines and actually filmed inside the walls of a modern and active penitentiary." "It seems a rip-off of John Herbert's 1967 play Fortune and Men's Eyes, which happened to have been released as a feature film in the very same month.

I wonder what happened to bright young stars Ross Stephenson and Maureen McGill, just as I wonder what became of Paul A. Fulford. As far as I can tell, he published only one more book, Who's Got the Bastard Pope [sic] (Markham, ON: PaperJacks, 1978). Surprisingly uncommon, I've been looking for it for years, but this small image spotted online is the closest I've got:

As for Fulford being married to a writer named Dorothy Parker... Well, you can't make that stuff up.

Still Reading Richard Rohmer. Is Alice Munro?

More than a month into the New Year and I'm still at it. So are my pals Chris Kelly and Stanley Whyte.

The books themselves have been a breeze; the last, Exxoneration, was really just a novella made to look like a novel through maps, technical drawings, clip art and appendices.

More padding than Craig Russell.

The real challenge has come in hunting down the darn things.

Time was Rohmer could be found in every bookstore and library in the land. Ultimatum, his 1973 debut novel, topped Canadian bestseller lists for nearly six months in hardcover, and did even better in paperback. Such was its success that the Americans noticed, publishing this edition:

The scene isn't in the novel. Never mind, the adventures of a no nonsense President piloting Air Force One around the arctic and ordering an invasion of Canada could not have failed to excite. New York publishers were much less interested in Exxoneration, the 1974 sequel, in which the invasion party retreats, leaving two hundred burning Yankee corpses on the tarmac outside arrivals at Toronto International Airport. There has never been an American edition.

North of the border, it seemed Richard Rohmer could do no wrong. Each fall a new novel, each novel a bestseller. His success was limited to Canada, and his success puzzled. In the 2 October 1976 Globe & Mail, no less a mind than the great Stephen Lewis searched for an explanation:

Perhaps it's all the hype and determined salesmanship of McClelland and Stewart. Perhaps, more likely, it's that Rohmer neatly touches Canadian themes in a country starving for Canadian themes. Perhaps the very superficiality engages interest without emotion, so that there's no investment of the mind and spirit, and the reading is easy. Or perhaps we're just a not very discriminating public…

Perhaps it's all four, but I think the second is key. My pre-teen self was starved for Canadian fiction, and the wire racks of Kane's Super Drug Mart in Kirkland, Quebec, provided what the Lakeshore School Board did not. Rohmer's talent lay in an uncanny ability to tap into his fellow citizens' fantasies and fears. Separation, about the threatened succession of Quebec, was published the month before the surprise victory of the Parti Québécois in the 1976 provincial election.

Separation proved to be the end of the Rohmer's rapid-fire round. When he returned with his fifth novel, four years later, the momentum was gone. Balls! was another bestseller, sure, but nothing like the others; most of the publicity focussed on the ribald title. Its 1980 publication marked the beginning of a long slow decline.

Just five Rohmer novels are in print today, three of which are bound up in an omnibus edition. How different are the days when we were not only reading Rohmer but passing him around. My copy of Ultimatum had once been given as a gift by Eric Kierans.

Our local library doesn't have one of Rohmer's thirty-one books, nor does its much larger sister in Stratford. The copy of Exodus/UK pictured at the top of this post had to be brought in from Huron County through an interlibrary loan. Starting in on it late last night I noticed this:

Time was we all read Richard Rohmer.

Related post:

Resolved to Reading Richard Rohmer

The Hairdresser as Straight Man

The Happy Hairdresser

Nicholas Loupos

Richmond Hill, ON: Pocket, 1973

175 pages

This review now appears, revised and rewritten, in my new book:

The Dusty Bookcase:

A Journey Through Canada's

Forgotten, Neglected, and Suppressed Writing

Available at the very best bookstores and through

Biblioasis, Amazon, Chapters/Indigo, and McNally-Robinson.

The Globe & Mail, 1 December 1973

Related post:

Figuring Out the Queers of New York

A Not So Nice Place to Visit

The Sin Sniper

Hugh Garner

Richmond Hill, ON: Pocket Books, 1970

From the back cover:

So what's he doing writing a cheap paperback original?

The answer is going full circle and then some – past Storm Below, his 1949 hardcover debut, to Waste No Tears(1950), Cabbagetown (1950) and Present Reckoning (1951). Paperback originals all, the latter three brought more money than would've been garnered – sorry – through higher literary endeavours. It's true that Storm Below did the author well, but not in an immediate sense. A man needs to eat... and drink.

Garner's seventh novel, The Sin Sniper landed just months after his sixth, A Nice Place to Visit (1970). It enjoyed a higher print run, more editions, and as Stone Cold Dead, would eventually be adapted for the screen in a film starring Richard Crenna, Paul Williams and Linda Sorensen.



Robert Fulford, who had a certain respect for Garner, was none too impressed. Writing in the Ottawa Citizen (5 November 1971), he dismissed The Sin Sniper as "close to being dreadful", adding "one was left with a nothing but baffling sense of being told to go left on Sumach, or right on Dundas, or left on Parliament."

I see what he means. This is the novel's opening paragraph:

Detective Inspector Walter McDurmont of the Metropolitan Toronto Police homicide squad jockeyed his three-year-old Galaxie along Dundas Street East in the morning rush-hour traffic. He crossed the Don River over the Dundas Street bridge, swung left down River Street, made a right turn at Shuter, and stopped when confronted with the raised stop-sign of the school crossing guard at Sumach Street, near Park Public School.

Lest you get lost, the book features a map that looks to have been ripped from a city directory.

Garner's setting is Toronto's Moss Park neighbourhood. The premise is found in the title: a sniper is murdering prostitutes. First to die is Claudia Grissom, whose snow-covered body is found early one morning near the corner of Shuter and Jarvis. Bernice Carnival is shot the next day (Dundas Street, one block from the Dainty Dot, just the other side of Church).

Those looking for a good mystery will be disappointed. There's little detective work here; McDurmont banks pretty much everything on catching the sniper in the act. While he comes to focus the investigation on three suspects, one of whom proves to be the sniper, nothing is provided that might justify the decision.

What saves The Sin Sniper is that the characters driving and walking through the streets of Toronto, turning left and veering right, are real people moving between real places. I'm not suggesting that this is a roman à clef, but I'm certain that Garner, a self-confessed alcoholic, drew heavily on the folks he met in drinking establishments, just as I'm certain that the drinking establishments in the novel would be recognizable to Torontonians of a certain age.

A Torotontonian of a certain age himself, Robert Fulford would know much better than I just how true the novel is to the people and places of Moss Park. I enjoyed the tour as much as the encounters. Fulford concludes his dismissal of The Sin Sniper by writing that the only mystery about the book is that it was published. To me, the answer is obvious: Money. Pocket Books recognized this, as did Paperjacks with their reissue, as did the investors in Stone Cold Dead.

Meanwhile, we're still awaiting the screen adaptation of Storm Below.

Money.

Trivia: Set in 1965, the climax of the novel takes place the same day as the Mersey Mops (read: The Beatles) play Maple Leaf Gardens. Garner moves the concert from the summer to the winter.

Outside the Beatles' 19 August 1965 concert, Maple Leaf Gardens, Toronto.

More trivia: Stone Cold Dead was written and directed by George Mendeluk, who would the next year take on Charles Templeton's The Kidnapping of the President.

Object: I bought my copy for $3.95 this past February 23rd, the day after what would have been Garner's hundredth birthday. A first edition, it features this misleading notice:

Access: Well represented in our university libraries. Decent copies of the first edition are plentiful and begin at $6.00. The 1978 movie tie-in, as Stone Cold Dead, is less common but just as cheap.

The King of the Canadian Pulps Bowdlerized

The Fabulous Kelley
Thomas P. Kelley, Jr.
Richmond Hill, ON: Pocket, 1968

The Fabulous Kelley
Thomas P. Kelley, Jr.
Toronto: General, 1974

Thomas P. Kelley crowned himself "King of the Canadian Pulp Writers", so there should be no surprise that he considered his father a monarch amongst medicine men.

Who knows, maybe he was

From 1886 until his death forty-five years later, Kelley, père – a charismatic farm boy from Newboro, Ontario – operated the traveling Shamrock Concert Company. If Kelley, fis, is to be believed, their shows attracted crowds numbering 12,000 and more, bringing in many millions of dollars.

The Fabulous Kelley is typical of the author's non-fiction writing in that it contains nothing in the way of endnotes, references or bibliography. It's also atypical, standing out as the most polished of his many titles. Credit could go to the editors at Pocket Books, whom one might expect were more strict than those of previous publishers Harlequin, Arrow Publishing and News Stand Library, but I'm sentimental enough to believe that Kelley made an extra special effort here.

This is the story of a beloved father told by his son. Thomas P. Kelley, Sr., was indeed an extraordinary and unusual man. He was also a charlatan. In the 208 pages of the Pocket edition junior remains blind to this fact, all the while providing damning evidence. His greatest and only defence is that Dad never wavered in maintaining that he was superior to all others. Here papa medicine man is confronted by a disgruntled Oklahoma undertaker:

   "We had a medicine man pass through here about three years ago. He came with a horse and wagon and peddled some worthless fluid he advertised as 'Snake Oil'. He called himself Professor Logan."
   "I've heard of him,"was the other's answer. "Logan is a fraud, a cheap pitchman working solo. He's not a medicine man."
   "Oh, then there's a difference?" and there was a tinge of sarcasm in the other's quietly spoken words. "How interesting. Pray tell me, just how much difference is there between a pitch man and a medicine man?"
   Doc Kelley, one hand on the doorknob, turned and shot a glance at those pallid features and asked: "The woman who answered the door is your wife?"
   "She is."
   "Have you seen a photo of the famous beauty , Lily Langtry?"
   "I have."
   "There is that much difference..."

This exchange, my favourite, is not found in General Publishing's 1974 reprint. In fact, the latter publisher cut over 30,000 words, something approaching half of the original text. Here we have an odd instance in which a hardcover edition bowdlerizes a paperback original. What makes this even more unusual is the fact that the 1984 edition of The Fabulous Kelley marks the first and only time in which Thomas P. Kelley, Jr. was published in anything other format than paperback.

I've taken some swipes at Kelley in the past, but won't here. Sure, there's a good amount of exaggeration and embellishment in The Fabulous Kelley, but this is easily stripped away to reveal an all too rare glimpse of the medicine show by a man who grew up in its world. General's edition, which is much more common than any other, does a great disservice in ridding itself of things that are verifiable.

Thomas P. Kelley, Sr.

14 April 1865 - 31 April 1931

This is not to say that there isn't superfluous stuff – the junior Kelley does tend to run on, but here I'm happy to let him go. What follows is Thomas P. Kelley's comment on his father's death from a heart attack on 31 July 1931 in the Ontario town of Uxbridge:

So died Thomas P. Kelley, the King of the Medicine Men. Yes, and the medicine-show period died with him. The entertainment that had brought joy to millions throughout North America for more than a hundred years perished with its King.

So ends the General's bowdlerized edition. The Pocket Books edition continues:

Passed into oblivion, its distant glories forgotten, like the flame of a candle blown out with his final breath, Now it was all over; at long last modern times had triumphed and the medicine show days were no more. But it was a triumph which could only be gained by the death of the man with the golden tongue. A death that marked the end of an era.
   And even today the dwindling few old-time medicine show performers continue to tell: "Nature made only one Doc Kelley then threw away the mold." 

- FIN -

Objects: The Pocket Books first edition is an unexceptional mass market paperback, but looks much more attractive than any of the other editions. Credit should go to Peter Max, though I'm betting he had nothing to do with the design.

The oh-so-bland General Publishing edition features a lazy 400-word Introduction by Gordon Sinclair. Yep, he's had a quick look through the book, and is ready to repeat a few tidbits. Consider them spoilers.

General dropped all fifteen Bob White cartoons found in the Pocket first.

Curiously, General also got rid of nearly all photographs of the Pocket edition, replacing them with others that are neither better nor worse.

Access: Bowdlerized or not, The Fabulous Kelley is next to impossible to find in our public libraries and is a rare thing at our universities. The Pocket Books paperback is both uncommon and cheap – the few copies available online can be had for five dollars or less. The General Publishing hardcover is not only much more easy to find, but much more cheap. Good copies can be had online for as little as a dollar. The last edition, published by Paperjacks in 1975, uses General's shorter text (Gordon Sinclair's snoozy Intro included). It's easy to find and cheap... but really, it's the Pocket mass market you'll want.

Teamwork

Face-Off
Scott Young and George Robertson
Toronto: Macmillan, [1971]

It's playoff time in the NHL and who cares? Canada, the nation referred to in the league's name, hasn't had a team in contention since April. The last ice I saw was in February. It's two weeks to the summer solstice, for goodness sake.

Face-Off dates from just about the time things started going south. Pun intended. This is not a literary endeavour, but a bit of hack work described awkwardly as "a novel based on an idea created by John F. Bassett".

That would be the John F. Bassett who was the son of John W.H., father of Carling, and owner of the justly forgotten Memphis Southmen, Birmingham Bulls and Tampa Bay Bandits. His idea – not at all bad – was to turn Love Story into something that would appeal not only to readers of Erich Segal, but Rolling Stone and The Hockey News. The novel would be followed by a feature film and, ultimately and improbably, a delicious chocolate bar.

George Robertson, screenwriter of the unjustly forgotten Quentin Durgens, M.P.,  was recruited, as was sportswriter Scott Young. The casting of the latter name was particularly inspired; Young had not only penned a few kids' hockey adventures, but was the father of Neil.

The hero here is Billy Duke, a defenceman touted as "the third in a line of Golden Boys" that includes Bobbys Hull and Orr. The hottest of prospects, Billy is about to be drafted when he meets beautiful, talented folk-rock chanteuse Sherri Lee Nelson, a hippy chick who has "a trim, lean figure with everything in about the right amounts distributed in the right places."

A warning to parents: This is no Boy at the Leafs' Camp or Scrubs on Skates. Billy makes mention of his penis on the first page, and the second... and will talk about laying your sister in the third. Though the sex peters out – again, pun intended – this is not a novel for children. Pretty Sherri, an unstable pot-head, will turn to LSD, mescaline and loads of other stuff as things turn sour.

I thought I'd have a field day with Face-Off; everything about it seemed on the surface so silly – "Happy flip-side and all that jazz... Pull up a joint and make the scene", Sherri's manager invites – and yet I came to care for Billy and Sherri and was shaken when the ending, which is set up to be very Disneyesque, turns out to be anything but.

Reading Face-Off has made me want to see the film... and reading about that film makes me want to see it all the more. A commercial failure, it was criticized for focusing too much on hockey; just about half the run time is taken up by footage of games. Like the novel, it skates between fact and fiction; Derek Sanderson, Bobby Orr, Brad Park and Jacques Plante all figure as characters.

Nine – just – when Face-Off was released, I was only dimly aware of its existence. Still, even as a young pup I recognized that it served as the inspiration for SCTV's Power Play, "the Great Canadian Hockey Film", starring William Shatner Dave Thomas, Al Waxman Rick Maranis, Helen Shaver Catherine O'Hara and Hockey Hall of Famer Darryl Sittler John Candy as hot prospect Billy Stemhovilichski.

The parody features in the DVD reissue of Face-Off.

Such good sports.

Object and Access: A slim hardcover in dark blue boards with shiny red type, the Macmillan first edition, with its 6000 print run, supposedly sold out by November 1971. That same month, Pocket Books let loose 50,000 mass market paperbacks, though you'd never know it from online booksellers. Three copies of the Pocket edition are listed at between US$5 and US$21 (condition not a factor). The Macmillan edition is more common online with all sorts of acceptable copies going or about ten bucks.

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 Voyage, Balbicane 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:

A Leo Orenstein Tripych

Figuring Out the Queers of New York

The Talented Mr. Orenstein