The Weird Covers of Wes Beattie

Two weeks into 2025 and I'm only now starting in on my first novel of the New Year... and so late in the day!

I've wanted to read The Weird World of Wes Beattie for some time, but forays through the used bookstores of Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia brought frustration. Exhausted from the chase, I resorted to online booksellers, which explains how it is I ended up with a copy of the Harper & Row first American edition purchased from a bookseller in New South Wales.

It took longer than expected to arrive. 

I like to "follow the flag" – The Weird World of Wes Beattie was published in 1963 by Macmillan in Canada – but the expense could not be justified. A rare book, the Canadian first edition was a split run with the American Harper & Row. Publisher names aside, it is pretty much identical, the only other exception being the price. Harper & Row's front flap lists the price as US$3.95, while the Macmillan is not so base as to mention cost. For the record, the Canadian price was $4.95. 

From what I've read so far, it was a bargain either way.

Both the Macmillan and Harper & Row editions share the same James Kirby jacket illustration (above). Does it not suggest whimsy?

I ask because the Faber & Faber's first British edition strikes a very different tone:

The illustration used in the 13 October 1963 Star Weekly condensed version looks like something from a storyboard of Silence of the Lambs:

In 1966, Corgi published a mass market edition with prominent quote from the Scotsman review:

It's a challenge to make out, and so I quote:

A novel of suspense with all the ingredients of a Hitchcock thriller... A new talent in detective writing... if Harris can keep this up, Gardner has a formidable rival.

Sadly, tragically, in 1966 Harris was in no position to "keep this up;" he'd died in 1964, not twelve months after The Weird World of Wes Beattie arrived in bookstores.

The Corgi cover suggests something sophisticated along the lines of Ocean's Eleven. To this reader, it appears incongruous, but then I'm only a few chapters into the novel. The Canadian Popular Library edition, published the same year, is gritty as all get out:

Nothing whimsical here.

SOON BE A MAJOR MOVIE? 

How soon is now?

Two translations followed in the heels of the novel's first publication, the earliest being Un monde farfelu, which came out in 1964 from Gallimard as part of its Séries noire. 

This was followed by a Spanish translation titled El fantástico mundo de Wes (Barcelona: Malina, 1965). It's cover illustration with tortured soul is the bleakest by far.

 
The Weird World of Wes Beattie is in print today thanks to the good folks at New York publishers Felony and Mayhem. The covers they've used to date are more in line with  James Kirby's original, though I have a bone to pick with the claim that it is "The First Truly CANADIAN Mystery."

Is The Weird World of Wes Beattie whimsical, sinister, sophisticated... bleak?

I'll let you know next Monday.

Four Days in Darkest Quebec

Four Days

John Buell

New York: Farrar, Straus & Cudahy, 1962

Jacket copy gives far too much away, recounting in detail the first half of this novel, and revealing the fate of its 12-year-old protagonist. I won't be making the same mistakes.

This is a work to be celebrated, studied and, more than anything, read, because that protagonist – a nameless orphan – might just be the best realized child in our literature. We first see him cycling around Westmount, collecting money on his newspaper deliveries. The tips help, but the job's real value comes through information on vacation plans that he passes on to older brother Milt, a petty thief. The pair live a hand-to-mouth existence, which Milt believes he'll change with a plan that will lead to the big leagues. We're now at page 27, roughly a tenth of the way through the book; I know better than to give away more of the plot.

So, let's return to the dust jacket: "In his second book John Buell more than fulfills the promise of his extraordinary first novel, The Pyx." Very true. Four Days is the better book, though this wasn't reflected in sales.

It was published in England by Macmillan, and was translated into French as Quatre Jours (Paris: Stock, 1963), a "roman américain [sic]". A German language edition was appeared under the mysterious title Lauter Wölfe (Munich: List, 1964). These were followed by paperback editions from Pan (1965), Popular Library (1968) and HarperCollins Canada (1991). "SOON TO BE A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE", trumpets the Popular Library edition. Well, it was optioned in 1962, but the designations "SOON" and "MAJOR" were a tad optimistic. When finally released in 1999, Four Days, the "MOTION PICTURE", used the cinema only as a rest stop on the highway to DVD.

Liberties were taken. Milt is transformed from brother to father and is given a girlfriend named Feather. London, Ontario's Lolita Davidvich earns second billing as Chrystal, a character that doesn't even feature in the book. This scene, with Kevin Zegers playing our unnamed protagonist, will appear utterly foreign to anyone who has read the novel:

Following The Pyx by three years, Four Days was a sophomore effort. On its strength alone, Edmund Wilson positioned Buell as one of Canada's foremost writers. Eleven years passed before novel number three appeared. By then, Wilson was dead. Where were John Buell's champions? Where are they today?

Object and Access: A very attractive hardcover with jacket by Enrico Arno. I bought my inscribed first edition in 1985 for two Canadian quarters. Twenty-six years later, Very Good copies – unsigned – can be had for as little as US$11.00. Though not plentiful, paperbacks begin at less than a loonie. Our libraries are oh-so-predictable: the universities come through, while the others – save the ever reliable (though threatened) Toronto Public Library – fail miserably. Whether in English or French translation, Four Days is not to be found in the Bibliothèques de Montréal. For shame.