'That Only a Mother' The Best of Judith Merril Judith Merril New York: Warner, 1976
254 pages
The Best of Judith Merril sees an anthologist anthologized. Consisting of nine short stories and two poems, the cover suggests that the selection was made by Merril herself; friend Virginia Kidd provides the introduction and notes.
The first story is "That Only a Mother." Judith Merril's greatest hit. By my count, it has appeared in more than three dozen anthologies. Curiously, its status is downplayed in Kidd's short introductory note:
A buried newspaper item on Army denial and post-Hiroshima rumors engendered Merril's first sf story. ("Even in those days some of us automatically read certain kinds of official U.S. releases backwards.") John Campbell bought it for Astounding — October, 1948.
In fact, the story first appeared in the magazine's June issue.
In 1948, Merril herself was like something out of science fiction. She was the only woman included in the the June issue. I've gone through dozens of previous issues without finding another female contributor. Here's how Astounding – more accurately, Astounding Science Fiction - presented Merril's story:
From start to finish, 'That Only a Mother' is an uncomfortable read. It begins with main character Margaret reaching across her bed to "where Hank should have been." Husband Hank has been absent many months. There's a war going on. Hank's not cannon fodder; he's a cog in the military industrial complex.
Margaret is pregnant. Her mother sends letters via "facsimile machine" expressing concern: "I'm thrilled, of course, but, well, one hates to mention theses things, but are you certain the doctor was right? Hank's been around all that uranium or whatever it is all these years..."
Margaret's mother's worries are understandable. The year is 1953 and malformed infants are an issue. Infanticide is common. Margaret and Hank's baby arrives early. The hospital assures that all is well, though staff won't let the mother or father see their child. Margaret and Hank name her Harriette.
Margaret's mother never visits; she makes no effort to see her grandchild. Hank isn't granted leave until ten months after the baby's birth, by which time she speaks fluently and has begun questioning her mother.
Margaret, Hank, and Harriett form a nuclear family, but not as Bronisław Malinowski imagined.
I read the other stories and poems in The Best of Judith Merril, but not one was nearly so good as this.
If you have nothing more than a half-hour to spare, 'That Only a Mother' is the story for you.
If you have a few hours, the best of Judith Merril is Shadow on the Hearth, her first novel.
It too is about a mother.
Object: A mass market paperback original. The text is followed by a two-page advert for twenty-four other Warner science fiction, including The Frankenstein Factory, The Dracula Tape, When Worlds Collide, and After Worlds Collide (each twice mentioned).
American illustrator Gray Morrow, whom I remember as a co-creator of Man-Thing, provided the cover art. Much as I admire the artist's technique, I can't help but note that it in no way reflects the contents.
Access: The Toronto Public Library, which houses the Merril Collection of Science Fiction, Speculation and Fantasy, has a copy. The book can also be found at Library and Archives Canada and in nine of our academic libraries.
I count two printings, which is not to suggest that it can be found on the cheap. A Michigan bookseller offers a copy online at US$6.00, but wants US$25.00 for postage and handling. Prices really take off after that. In the stratosphere, you'll find a US$107.50 copy requiring US$33.00 shipping.
A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder [James De Mille] New York: Harper & Bros, 1888 306 pages
Forty years ago this month, I sat on a beige fibreglass seat to begin my first course in Canadian literature. An evening class, it took place twice-weekly on the third-floor of Concordia's Norris Building. I was a young man back then, and had just enough energy after eight-hour shifts at Sam the Record Man.
The professor, John R. Sorfleet, assigned four novels:
James de Mille - A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder (1888)
Charles G.D. Roberts - The Heart of the Ancient Wood (1900)
Thomas H. Raddall - The Nymph and the Lamp (1950)
Brian Moore - The Luck of Ginger Coffey (1960)
These were covered in chronological order. I liked each more than the last. The Luck of Ginger Coffey is the only title I would've wholeheartedly recommended, which is not to suggest that I didn't find something of interest in the others.
The earliest, A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder, intrigued because it overlapped with the lost world fantasies I'd read in adolescence. Here I cast my mind back to Edgar Rice Burroughs' Pellucidar, my parents' copy of James Hilton's Lost Horizon, and of course, Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World.
De Mille's novel begins aboard the yacht Falcon, property of lethargic Lord Featherstone. The poor man has tired of England and so invites three similarly bored gentlemen of privilege to accompany him on a winter cruise. February finds Featherstone and guests at sea somewhere east of the Medeira Islands, where they come across the titular cylinder bobbing in becalmed waters. Half-hearted attempts are made at opening the thing, until Melick, the most energetic of the quartet, appears with an axe.
As might be expected – the title is a bit of a spoiler – a strange manuscript is found within. Its author presents himself as Adam More, an Englishman who, having been carried by "a series
of incredible events to a land from which escape is as impossible
as from the grave," sent forth the container "in the hope that the ocean currents may bear it within the
reach of civilized man."
More would have every right to feel disappointed.
Featherstone and company, while civilized, are not the best civilization has to offer. In the days following the discovery, they lounge about the Falcon taking turns reading the manuscript aloud, commenting on the text, and speculating as to its veracity.
More writes that he was a mate on the Trevelyan, a ship chartered by the British Government to transport convicts to Van Dieman's Land. This in itself sounds fascinating, but he skips by it all to begin with the return voyage. Inclement weather forces the Trevelyan south into uncharted waters "within fifteen hundred miles of the South Pole,
and far within that impenetrable icy barrier which, in 1773, had arrested the progress of Captain Cook."
No one aboard the Trevelyan is particularly concerned – the sea is calm and the skies clear – and no objections are raised when More and fellow crew member Agnew take a boat to hunt seals. Fate intervenes when the weather suddenly turns. In something of a panic, the pair make for their ship, but efforts prove no match for the sea. They are at its mercy, resigned to drifting with the current, expecting slow death. And yet, they do find land, "a vast and
drear accumulation of lava blocks of every imaginable
shape, without a trace of vegetation—uninhabited, uninhabitable." A corpse lies not far from the shore:
The clothes were those of a European and a sailor;
the frame was emaciated and dried up, till it looked like
a skeleton; the face was blackened and all withered,
and the bony hands were clinched tight. It was evidently some sailor who had suffered shipwreck in these
frightful solitudes, and had drifted here to starve to
death in this appalling wilderness. It was a sight which seemed ominous of our own fate, and Agnew’s
boasted hope, which had so long upheld him, now sank
down into a despair as deep as my own. What room
was there now for hope, or how could we expect any
other fate than this?
More and Agnew provide a Christian burial and return to their boat hoping, but not expecting, to be carried to a better place. Whether they find one is a matter of opinion. The pair pass through a channel that appears to have been formed by two active volcanoes, after which they encounter humans More describes as "animated mummies." They seem nice, until they reveal themselves as cannibals. Hungry eyes are cast on Agnew. He's killed and More escapes.
A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder is not a Hollow Earth novel, though inattentive readers have described it as such. More's boat enters a sea within a massive cavern, where he encounters a monster of some sort and fires a shot to scare it off.
The boat continues to drift, emerging on a greater open sea. It's at this point – 53 pages in – that the real adventure begins.
Here More encounters the Kosekin who, despite their small stature, appear much healthier than the animated mummies who killed and consumed his friend Agnew. They're also extremely generous, ever eager to give More whatever his heart desires. He is soon introduced to Almah, a fair beauty who, like himself, is not of their kind.
Through Almah, More learns the language, customs, and culture of the Kosekin and their topsy-turvy polar world. They are a people who crave darkness and shun light. Self-sacrifice serves as the shell surrounding their core belief, so that they look to rid themselves of wealth and influence. The least is the most venerated. The local Kohen, whom More comes to know best of the Kosekin, shares a sad story:
"I was born," said he, "in the most enviable of positions. My father and mother were among the poorest
in the land. Both died when I was a child, and I never
saw them. I grew up in the open fields and public
caverns, along with the most esteemed paupers. But,
unfortunately for me, there was something wanting in
my natural disposition. I loved death, of course, and
poverty, too, very strongly; but I did not have that
eager and energetic passion which is so desirable, nor
was I watchful enough over my blessed estate of poverty. Surrounded as I was by those who were only too
ready to take advantage of my ignorance or want of
vigilance, I soon fell into evil ways, and gradually, in
spite of myself, I found wealth pouring in upon me.
Designing men succeeded in winning my consent to receive their possessions; and so I gradually fell away
from that lofty position in which I was born. I grew
richer and richer. My friends warned me, but in vain.
I was too weak to resist; in fact, I lacked moral fibre,
and had never learned how to say 'No.' So I went on,
descending lower and lower in the scale of being. I became a capitalist, an Athon, a general officer, and finally
Kohen."
Again, 'tis sad, but the Kohen's own weakness is to blame. He displays greater strength when confronting his own mortality. Like all Kosekin, the Kohen longs for the day when his life will end. His people refer to Death as the "King of Joy." Almah does her best to explain to a disbelieving More:
"Here," said she, "no one understands what it is to
fear death. They all love it and long for it; but everyone wishes above all to die for others. This is their
highest blessing. To die a natural death in bed is
avoided if possible."
The Kohen tells the story of an Athon who had led a failed attack on a creature in which all were killed save himself. For this, he was honoured:
“Is it not the same with you? Have you not told me incredible things about your people, among which there were a few that seemed natural and intelligible? Among these was your system of honoring above all men those who procure the death of the largest number. You, with your pretended fear of death, wish to meet it in battle as eagerly as we do, and your most renowned men are those who have sent most to death.”
A Strange Manuscript in a Copper Cylinder shares something with Burroughs in that adventure, prehistoric beasts, and a love interest figure. What sets it apart is the quality of writing; De Mille's is by far the superior. No doubt some readers – my twelve-year-old self would've been one – will be irked by Lord Featherstone and his three guests, who see in More's manuscript an opportunity to philosophize and expound theories on linguistics, geography, and palaeontology. Oxenden, the quietest of the group, speaks up providing the most fascinating passages in remarking on the similarities in Kosekin, Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, and Hindu beliefs.
Melick alone expresses skepticism in More's story, dismissing the manuscript as a bad romance: "This writer is tawdry; he has the worst vices of the sensational school – he shows everywhere marks of haste, gross carelessness and universal feebleness." Unflattering comparisons to DeFoe and Swift are drawn.
A Strange Manuscript in a Copper Cylinder demonstrates none of the things Melick describes. Forty years later, I have no hesitation in recommending the novel; it is richer and more rewarding than I remembered.
Wish I'd known what my thoughts were on first reading. There may be a paper written for Prof Sorfleet's class in the crawlspace beneath our living room.
Object and Access: All evidence suggests that A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder was written in the 1865 and 1866. It was first published posthumously and anonymously in the pages of Harper's Weekly (7 Jan 1888 - 12 May 1888). My copy, a first edition, features nineteen plates by American Gilbert Gaul. The copy I read as a student was #68 in the New Canadian Library (1969). I still have it today, along with the Carleton University Press Centre for Editing Early Canadian Texts edition (1986). Neither was consulted in writing this review, but only because they're in that damn crawlspace.
Used copies of are easily found online. Prices for the Harper & Bros first edition range between US$65 and US$400. Condition is a factor, but not as much as one might assume. The 1888 Chatto & Windus British first (below) tends to be a bit more dear.
Translations are few and relatively recent: Italian (Lo strano manoscritto trovato in un cilindro di rame; 2015) and Hindi (
एक तांबा सिलेंडर में पाया एक अजीब पांडुलिपि, 2019).
Destination: Universe A.E. van Vogt New York: Signet, 1958
160 pages
I began this book wondering if I hadn't been too hard on A.E. van Vogt. Science fiction was an adolescent passion, and like so many abandoned in adulthood – superhero comics being the prime example – I can be overly critical.
I didn't read van Vogt as a kid; had I known he was Canadian I would've. In middle age, his novel The House That Stood Still (1950) served as my introduction. It begins well, reading like a decent pulp thriller, but things take an abrupt turn, the writing changes, and then comes a second turn, more changes, and near complete disintegration. I agree with Fletcher Pratt, who wrote in the 17 December 1950 New York Times that "it is frequently impossible to understand precisely what is going on."
And Pratt liked the novel.
I was similarly baffled, was less impressed, and even more confused by his other 1950 "novel" Masters of Time, my second van Vogt.
A decade passed. I felt no urge to give van Vogt another try, which is not to say that I wasn't curious. Surely he couldn't be so bad a writer as all that; after all, the man was a graduate of the Palmer Institute of Authorship.
A master of time myself, I finished with three weeks to spare.
Destination: Universe proved to be one of 2022's weakest books, but was not nearly so difficult to get through as Jeann Beattie's Blaze of Noonor Mrs Savigny's A Romance of Toronto. Most of its ten stories get off to a running start, propelling the reader for at least a couple of pages. But they soon become bogged down in a problem faced by the protagonist and his various attempts to find a solution. There's a good amount of repetition, explanation, and description of some future technology or other.
'Enchanted Village' concerns the first landing on Mars – a crash, really – which leaves one lone survivor who stumbles upon an uninhabited village that attempts to reconfigures itself to his needs. The visitor is repeatedly frustrated by his inability to communicate with his new home. I found the story memorable for the unnecessary twist in the penultimate paragraph.
'A Can of Paint,' provided a welcome touch of humour. In this story, space explorer Kilgour defies Earth's laws in voyaging to Venus, thus becoming the first human to visit the planet. He emerges from his cigar-shaped spaceship into a field of long green grass, breathing in the air, "tinglingly sweet and fresh and warm." and almost immediately spies a cube – note: not "can" – containing paint. It spreads over his body, endangering his life as he races against time to find a means of removing it.
The 1953 first Signet edition.
Of the ten, the stand out story is the first, 'Far Centaurus.' Its plot centres on a five hundred year voyage to Alpha Centauri undertaken by acquaintances and friends Pelham, Blake, Renfrew, and narrator Bill. Pelham, has invented a drug, Eternity, which enables humans to live in non-degenerative hibernation for decades on end. Throughout the centuries, the four return to consciousness, but only briefly and never at the same time. Bill, the first to emerge, finds Pelham's decomposing corpse. On his second awakening, 150 years later, he finds a note from Blake expressing concern about Renfrew's mental health. Bill is awoken a third time by an alarm. Through viewers, he sees another spaceship on fire, but can do nothing to help, and so takes another hit of Eternity. Bill awakens for the fifth time as the spaceship is reaching its destination, only to discover that the planet they'd thought might be habitable had been settled centuries earlier. Travel between Earth an Alpha Centauri now takes three hours.
Renfrew loses his mind and van Vogt loses his way.
Of the ending, Colin Wilson wrote that van Vogt had "no idea of how to finish his story."
I suggest that van Vogt had no idea of how to finish any story. The main thing I've learned in reading the man is that he could have a good idea for a beginning, and might even craft a pretty good middle, but that is it. Am I wrong? I ask because I have only twelve examples to go on.
"He turned. His horny body towered above the man."
Trivia: In 2004, sixty years after it was first published in the pages of Astounding Stories, 'A Can of Paint' was adapted to the screen in a 24-minute short.
Object and Access: The third Signet printing, my copy, a gift from a friend, is a bit worse for wear. The Stanley Meltzoff cover illustration imagines a scene not found in the book.
Within the pages of my copy I found this bookmark for Canadian Children's Literature. It appears to date from 1997.
A receipt suggests that it was once purchased for $3.50 at Ottawa's Book Bazaar.
The collection was first published by Pellegrini & Cudahy in 1952 as Destination: Universe! Signet dropped the exclamation mark for this printing. There have been many other editions from many other publishers over the years, but as far as I can determine the collection is currently out of print.
Used copies are numerous and cheap.
Destination: Universe! has been translated into French (Destination univers), Italian (Destinazione universo), Romanian (Destinat̨ia univers), and Swedish (Destination universum).
Short pieces on books I've always meant to review (but haven't).
Destination: Universe A.E. van Vogt New York: Signet, 1958 160 pages
The Dustiest Bookcase series is meant to highlight books I've had forever, and have always meant to read and review, but haven't. Destination: Universe is a cheat. It was given to me just last year by someone who knew I liked vintage paperbacks. The pages are loose, the cover is more than scuffed, and still I'm happy to have it, despite my previous encounters with the author.
In the fourteen-year history of the Dusty Bookcase, I've given van Vogt two kicks at the can. I was first dawn into his orbit in by the 1952 Harlequin cover of The House That Stood Still.
(In all seriousness, WTF, Harlequin?)
I disliked The House That Stood Still so much that I included it in my book The Dusty Bookcase. Then gave van Vogt a second chance with Masters of Time, about which I remember nothing. This old review suggests I was unimpressed.
Philip K. Dick was an admirer of van Vogt. I'm not – not yet at least – though I've enjoyed bits of his writing. The beginning of The House That Stood Still reads like pretty good post-war noir pulp before becoming a muddled mess. That van Vogt had a habit of cobbling together disparate short stories for resale as novels may explain my dissatisfaction.
Destination: Universe looks promising as a collection of ten short stories first published in Astounding Science Fiction, Thrilling Wonder Stories, the Avon Fantasy Reader, and similar publications. As such, there should be no awkward couplings or ménages à trois.
"Want to take a rocket ship tour into space that lasts 500 years?"
Quest for Pajaro Edward Maxwell [pseud Ted Allan] London: Heinemann, 1957 116 pages
Before the title page, the reader encounters this:
It has the appearance of a publisher's note, but I suspect it was written by Allan. Either way, the fiction has already begun.
Quest for Pajaro is told in the first person. It's narrator, Edward Maxwell, is a son of great wealth and privilege. As a very young man, he designed and flew experimental aircraft. When came the Second World War, he joined the Royal Air Force, eventually becoming Chief of Staff to Air Vice Marshal Sir Matthew Brown Frew (right).
The war now over, Maxwell has settled into early middle age, living on the Buckinghamshire estate left by his parents. Of his personal life, he has only this to say: "I was married at the age of twenty-four, divorced a year later, and the less said about that unfortunate incident the better. At the age of thirty-seven I had still not found any woman I cared to share my life with."
Maxwell may be a bit off women , but his youthful enthusiasm for experimental aircraft has continued unabated, manifesting itself in an sleek jet he calls the "Arrow." The name will cause the Canadian reader to pause and brush away a tear.
Ted Allan was living in the UK when Quest for Pajaro was written, but I don't imagine for a minute that he wasn't following news from home about the real life Arrow, the most advanced jet aircraft of its day.
If anything, Maxwell's Arrow is even more remarkable in that it is both jet and rocket propelled. On the evening before the first test flight, which he himself is to pilot, our hero invites mathematician friend Alan Ryerman to discuss the project over dinner. A good amount of gobbledygook follows, much of it speculation as to what might happen if the Arrow cracks the "thermal barrier." Ryerman raises the intriguing possibility that his host might simply disappear. This speculation has to do with the speed Maxwell expects to achieve, combined with the speed of the Earth's rotation, the speed of our planet as it circles the sun, the speed of our solar system in the Milky Way, the speed of the galaxy itself, and... well, you get the idea.
As I say, gobbledygook. It's to Allan's credit that he keeps it brief.
The next morning's test flight begins just as hoped. Maxwell passes Mach I, then fires up the rockets. He sees a full circle rainbow, and immediately becomes confused as to whether the cloud ceiling is up or down. Then the clouds disappear, as does colour and all sense of motion. And then he blacks out.
Maxwell regains consciousness in a one-room hut belonging to a Basque goat-herd and his wife. Their only child, an exquisitely beautiful daughter named Angelita, nurses our hero back to health. Just shy of twenty-one, at birth she suffered a brain injury which has rendered her mute.
There's a something of the fairy tale about Angelita. Though incapable of speech, she's able to communicate with birds through cooing and whistling. Her only friends, they fly in and out of the hut as in a Disney movie, and are talkative companions on walks.
Maxwell tells Pedro, the goat-herd, that he needs to send a telegram, only to be told that this remote corner of the Pyrenees has no such service. He offers to take a letter to Pajaro, the closest village, from which it will eventually make its way to San Bettino, then San Sebastian, and then to whichever destination it is addressed.
Maxwell accepts, sending a letter to Ryerman detailing his location. Days pass, during which our bedridden hero and Angelika become increasingly close. Eventually, Maxwell's letter is returned marked with "the careless script of officialdom" that the recipient is deceased. The cancellation date reads "19 Mayo, 1977."
It's only then that our hero realizes he's somehow flown into the future. The Arrow took off on the morning of 15 May 1956, months before the exquisite Angelika was even born!
Bruce Petty's jacket illustration, itself exquisite, is more appropriate to a romance novel than a work of science fiction. But then, Quest for Pajaro is more a love story than a tale about a man and his plane. It's Maxwell love for Angelita – come now, you can't pretend you didn't see that coming – that drives the second half of the book. There's really something for everyone, fans of travel adventure included.
Much as I liked Quest for Pajaro, by the end I couldn't help but think it was better suited to the screen than the page. And so, it came as no surprise to discover that it had once been optioned. Thirteen days after the launch of "satellite moon" Sputnik, Queen of Hollywood gossip Louella Parsons reported:
The Calgary Herald, 17 October 1957
The film has yet to be made, of course, but I'd love to see it done today as a period piece that moves between 1956 and 1977.
I wonder whether Ted Allan's papers, held at Simon Fraser University and Library and Archives Canada, contain a script. If so, I wouldn't be surprised if it pre-dates the novel.
Quest for Pajaro enjoyed just one printing. I purchased my copy earlier this year from a Wallingford, Oxfordshire bookseller. Price: £4. Until a few weeks ago, when I began encouraging friends to add the book to their collections, copies could be purchased on the cheap. As of this writing, the least expensive with jacket is being offered by an Australian bookseller at A$40.00. Not one of the listings identifies Ted Allan as Edward Maxwell.
The fiction that Maxwell is a real person is given a bit of a twist on the dust jacket's front flap:
Ted Allan wasn't a well-known writer when Quest for Pajaro appeared in bookshops. His previous books were This Time a Better Earth (London: Heinemann, 1939), a pseudonymously-published pulp titled Love is a Long Shot (Toronto: News Stand Library, 1949), and The Scalpel, The Sword (Boston: Little, Brown, 1952), a biography of Norman Bethune, co-authored by Sydney Gordon. He was, however, managing to support his family through work for the BBC and CBC.
The Gazette (Montreal) 27 September 1975
Looking back on his career, I'm not sure Ted Allan was ever a "well-known writer," though my thirteen-year-old self knew his name through Lies My Father Told Me(1975), which I first saw in first run at Cinema Place Ville Marie. I liked the film so much that my mother presented me with son Norman Allan's novelization as an Easter gift.
Was Lies My Father Told Me the high-point of Ted Allan's career? He was nominated for a Best Original Screenplay Oscar, while the film itself received a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film. I have no argument with those who instead point to Allan's script for the John Cassevetes film Love Streams, winner of the 1984 Golden Bear.
How is it Love Streams is so forgotten?
Ten Allan was an interesting man and an accomplished writer. One correspondent suggests that Allan's life would make for a riveting biography. Sadly, the days in which the flush publishers would be interested in such a project are long past.
Still, I hold out hope that Ted Allan will better recognized by people twenty-one years in the future than he is today.
Coincidence: The Arrow was rolled out to the public on 4 October 1957 (below), the very same day Sputnik was launched.
What exciting times!
Object and Access:A bland black hardcover in dust jacket by Bruce Petty. My Lord, his work is wonderful. Here's another example:
Pray for a Brave Heart Helen MacInnes London: Collins, 1955
Library and Archives Canada and three Canadian universities hold copies of Quest for Pajaro.
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 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.
A writer, ghostwriter, écrivain public, literary historian and bibliophile, I'm the author of Character Parts: Who's Really Who in CanLit (Knopf, 2003), and A Gentleman of Pleasure: One Life of John Glassco, Poet, Translator, Memoirist and Pornographer (McGill-Queen's UP, 2011; shortlisted for the Gabrielle Roy Prize). I've edited over a dozen books, including The Heart Accepts It All: Selected Letters of John Glassco (Véhicule, 2013) and George Fetherling's The Writing Life: Journals 1975-2005 (McGill-Queen's UP, 2013). I currently serve as series editor for Ricochet Books and am a contributing editor for Canadian Notes & Queries. My most recent book is The Dusty Bookcase (Biblioasis, 2017), a collection of revised and expanded reviews first published here and elsewhere.
