Gustafson's Good or Bad Novel

Ralph Barker Gustafson

16 August 1909 - 29 May 1995

In recent months, I've come to realize the importance of nineteen-aught-nine to the poetry of Anglo-Quebec. A.M. Klein was born that year, as were Ralph Gustafson and John Glassco. Three very different poets and, I dare say, three very different men.

Today belongs to Gustafson. I'm sometimes hesitant when acknowledging anniversaries here – it may be argued that the poet didn't always receive the recognition he deserved, but his writing wasn't exactly suppressed or ignored. That said, there is one work, No Music in the Nightingale, that could be considered forgotten. Much of what I know of this unpublished novel comes from Jack, A Life in Letters, James King's 1999 biography of Jack McClelland. Its history is curious, one where publication, which at first seems certain, becomes less likely with each new draft. We're told that in 1953 the publisher approached Gustafson, then under contract with Viking in New York, hoping to win Canadian rights. Three years later, the manuscript arrived at McClelland and Stewart's offices, generating an 'enthusiastic letter' with detailed comments from fiction editor Conway Turton.

Then... silence.

Three more years passed, during which M&S published Gustafson's well-received collection of verse, Rivers Among Rocks. The poet wrote McClelland asking him to reconsider the novel. This time, however, the reception was muted. 'We have read it here and are reserving judgement', he wrote. 'It's either very, very good or very, very bad. I'm damned if I know which.' These words, to Little, Brown editor Alan D. Williams, were part of an ill-fated effort to find an American co-publisher. What happened to the early contract with Viking, King doesn't say.

Gustafson tried again in 1965, sending a McClelland a revised version of the novel. This time, John Robert Colombo weighed in with a reader's report that featured a fatal line: 'As a poet he is a consummate craftsman – but as a novelist: ugh!' In response, Gustafson wrote McClelland: 'I was deflated by the readers' reports and haven't got up enough courage to read through the novel again – I know I should, in fairness to you, and I know it needs one revision. I suppose, on the whole, after the reader's "ugh," you better ship the thing home to me, alas.'

The unpublished novel is held at the Queen's University Archives.

Gay and Withdrawn

Gay Canadian Rogues: Swindlers, Gold-diggers and

Spies

Frank Rasky

Toronto: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1958

Bought for a buck twenty years ago, Gay Canadian Rogues has stayed with me from Montreal to Vancouver to Toronto, then back to Vancouver and, finally, the picturesque town of St Marys. Cover and title have ensured its survival during those nasty culls that invariably accompany moves.

It's a fast read, not much more than a collection of disjointed chapters, each dealing, more or less, with the sorts of folk described in the subtitle. They're not particularly gay, in any sense of the word, nor are they necessarily Canadian. A few fail to meet any definition of the word 'rogue' – and it is here that the author may have dug himself into a bit of a hole. In 1000 Questions About Canada, John Robert Colombo writes that Gay Canadian Rogues was withdrawn by Thomas Nelson & Sons 'within weeks of publication':

The publishers were responding to the threat of legal action. The author of the book, journalist Frank Rasky, had devoted one chapter to Igor Gouzenko, the Soviet defector. Gouzenko did not object to the innocent use of the word 'gay' in the title – it had yet to take on other connotations – but he did object to being lumped in with rogues, swindlers, and gold-diggers. Once withdrawn from publication, the book was never reprinted.

Hmm... Not to quibble, but Rasky devoted two chapters to Gouzenko, and the book was reprinted... by Harlequin... that very same year... with a cover that owed everything to the original.

Assuming Colombo is correct about the withdrawal of the first edition, I'll add that it really is a shame; particularly since the Gouzenko chapters – 'Gouzenko, and Whisky, and Wild, Wild Spys' and 'Gouzenko's Escape from the Red Atom Spies' – rank with 'Dog Detectives of the R.C.M.P.' as the weakest. There's much better payoff in reading about Cassie Chadwick or the author's account of the time he infiltrated a farcical gang of Vancouver juvenile delinquents. Readers of Canadian literature are directed to Rasky's writing on Red Ryan, the criminal cause célèbrewho inspired Morley Callaghan's More Joy in Heaven. The author tells us that Ryan had been signed to write Crime Does Not Pay, a biography that was left unfinished when he was gunned down by members of the Sarnia Police Department. I wonder where that manuscript is today.

Object and Access: Well-bound, printed on heavy stock, it's saddled with a dust jacket this is thin and fragile. The book isn't common, but it's not expensive either. Four of the eleven copies currently listed online include letters from the author to various members of the media and can be had for under C$40. At the high end we find one Toronto bookseller offering the book – sans letter – for C$75. Condition is not a factor. A Calgary merchant goes even farther in attempting to flog a copy – again, sans letter, and with 'heavy wear on dust jacket' – for C$100. But then, this same bookstore is asking C$2,500 for a 1995 bargain book about cats. No joke.

Drapeau, Destruction and a Blue Plaque Candidate

I do not like you Jean Drapeau,

And well I know the reason why;

Your concentration on the cash

(That peasant passion)

Shows always in the lipless grin

Under the little merciless moustache,

Revealing what ideas swim within

The circle of your skull

To make our city — in the modern fashion —

Not beautiful

But only big, and rich, and dull.

— John Glassco, Montreal, 1973

A sequel, of sorts, to yesterday's post. On my recent trip to Montreal I took several photos of things Glassco. The poet had a complicated relationship with the city of his birth. At eighteen, he saw it as a place of provincialism. Glassco famously fled for Paris, where he enjoyed and endured Montparnassian adventures and was very nearly felled by tuberculosis. Yet, this same Montreal – the Royal Victoria Hospital, to be precise – held the knowledge and ability that saved his life. After his recovery, Glassco again escaped the city, settled in the Eastern Townships, and lived for decades as a semi-recluse. It was only in his last two decades that he truly returned. Many of his final years were spent on an unpublished novel, Guilt and Mourning, set in a fantastic Montreal that has been spared the destruction of the 20th century.

Above is the westernmost entrance to the Guy-Concordia Metro, located at the northwest corner of St-Mathieu and de Maisonneuve. In 1909, it was the site of a grand house in which the poet was born. This stretch of de Maisonneuve was then known as St-Luc – hence, 'Jean de Saint-Luc', the pseudonym he claimed to have used for Contes en crinoline, his non-existent first book. St-Luc was made part of de Maisonneuve in the 1950s (following modifications to the intersection at Guy).

Simpson Street's Chelsea Place, looking towards Sherbrooke. A large gathering of Neo-Georgian homes with pleasant courtyard, it rests on the foundation and grounds of Edward Rawlings' mansion. Rawlings, the founder of the Guarantee Company of North America, was Glassco's grandfather. The poet often claimed the mansion as his birthplace – not true, though he did live there for several years as a boy. In 1925, it was sold and razed; the gardens were plowed over and its peach orchard was destroyed. All that remains is a lone chestnut tree (to the left of the passing PT Cruiser).

3663 Jeanne-Mance (right door, two uppermost floors), Glassco's final Montreal address. He shared this flat with his second wife, Marion McCormick, for nearly ten years. On 29 January 1981, the poet died in a small room on the top storey.