There's a New Sugar-Puss on Dorchester Street

Whenever I'm asked to talk about Ricochet Books, I make a point of mentioning Al Palmer's Sugar-Puss on Dorchester Street. The title never fails to raise a smile, and often bemusement. Montrealers of a certain age – mine, for example – remember Dorchester as a boulevard, not a street. My daughter has known it only as boulevard René-Lévesque, as it was rechristened in November 1987, two years after the former premier's November 1985 death.

In November 1949, when the novel first appeared, Dorchester was a centre of Montreal's nightlife. Five years later, scores of building were razed under moralizing mayor Jean Drapeau. The street became an eight-lane boulevard with no curb appeal. I'm not sure this  Montrealer has walked so much as four or five blocks along its barren sidewalks.

The corner of René-Lévesque and Beaver Hill, November 2022

The heroine of Sugar-Puss on Dorchester Street is Gisele Lepine, an eighteen-year-old farm girl "fresh as the cool clean air of her Laurentian village." She was first depicted by D. Rickard on the cover of the first edition.

Draw your eyes away from Gisele, if you can, and you'll see on the right a sign for The Breakers, which was modeled on Slitkin & Slotkin, a Dorchester bar and grill located between Drummond and Mountain.

When first published, Sugar-Puss on Dorchester Street was being sold as 'The Best Selling Novel of Montreal,' though it had yet to move a copy.

I expect it did better than the average average New Stand Library title because three months later it published an edition intended for the American market. For this cover, NSL turned to Sid Dyke, who would later do work for Harlequin. The title was unchanged, though the cover image relies on the reader to put it together. 

This scene, with Gisele and her newspaperman lover Jimmy Holden, does not feature in the novel. I should add that at no point is the Laurentian country girl shown to be a smoker.

What's most fascinating in the publisher's short-lived excursion into the American market was the decision to use dust jackets. They covered entirely different illustrations, some of which had been made exclusively for export to the United States. Such was the case with Sugar-Puss on Dorchester Street.

This jacket illustration hid Dyke's Sugar-Puss:

Sadly, the illustrator is unknown. A clue as to who it might be is found in the bright lights of the big city. The Breakers is back – it doesn't feature in the Dyke illustration – but look to the left and you'll see The Gayety. When Sugar-Puss on Dorchester Street was published, it was the club in which Lili St. Cyr performed.

The Gayety is never mentioned in the novel, so how did the nightclub make it into this illustration? Was the artist a Montrealer, or just one of the thousands who visited Canada's sin city? What to make of the fact that the Gayety was on St Catherine not Dorchester?

This summer, as stock in the Ricochet's Sugar-Puss on Dorchester Street was reaching an end and reprint was imminent, I suggested replacing the cover. We'd been using a version of the original altered by J.W. Stewart.

Why not one of the two others? 

We settled on the dust jacket. Brian Morgan did some cleaning and punched up "ON DORCHESTER STREET."

This is all to say that Ricochet's new Sugar-Puss on Dorchester Street has just been released.

Consider it the 75th anniversary edition. 

Related post:

'THE NEONS GO UP IN MONTREAL' 

Last Words of a Raconteur

Yellow-Wolf & Other Tales of the Saint Lawrence [Divers]
Philippe-Joseph Aubert de Gaspé [trans Jane Brierley]
Montreal: Véhicule, 1990

159 pages

Philippe-Joseph Aubert de Gaspé follows Arthur Hailey, William C. Heine, Tom Alderman, Richard Rohmer, Bruce Powe, and Joy Carroll as the seventh Canadian novelist I ever read. Three things set him apart, the first being that he was Canadien, in the nineteenth-century definition of the word. The second is that he was from the nineteenth century. The third is that he is a different class of writer. The Last Canadian has nothing on Les Anciens Canadiens.

Set in and around the conquest of New France, Les Anciens Canadiens (1863) was a critical and commercial success in the years preceding Confederation. It is by turns a historical novel, a supernatural novel, a religious novel, a gothic novel, a horror novel, a war novel, a memoir, and a romance. It was also the first Canadien novel to be translated twice into English; by Georgians M. Pennée (1864) and Charles G.D. Roberts (1898). In 1996, it was translated a third time by Jane Brierley. Her Canadians of Old is the only complete translation.

Since my teenage years, when I first read the Roberts, I've been struck by the focus on Les Anciens Canadiens to the exclusion of Aubert de Gaspé's other writings. It wasn't until 1988, 122 years after the first French-language edition that there was an English translation of his Mémoires. That translation, A Man of Sentiment, was also by Jane Brierley.

Yellow-Wolf & Other Tales of the Saint Lawrence, was the second Brierley Aubert de Gaspé translation. In a sense, she was at the end, or rather after the end as the author died decades before Divers first appeared in bookstores. It presents four pieces composed late in life, discovered amongst family papers. Writes the 1893 editor in his avant-propos: "Je prie le lecteur bienveillant de prendre en considération que ce sont les derniers écrits d'un octogénaire, qui est décédé avant d'avoir eu l'avantage de pouvoir les repasser."

The note isn't entirely honest in that two of the four had appeared previously in 1866 numbers of Le Foyer Canadien. Brierley takes a small liberty in rearranging the order. And why not? It's not as if Aubert de Gaspé had a say in Divers, or whether it would be published in the first place.

So we begin with 'Yellow-Wolf, 'Le Loup-Jaune' in Divers. The longest of the four, it takes the form of a tale told the author as a very young man by a elderly Malecite chieftain. The supernatural figures, as does brutal reality in the form of torture he suffered in Iroquois captivity. In 'Woman of the Foxes' ('Femme de la tribu des Renards') the victim this time is a young Iroquois slave girl who is acquired by a forefather of the author's dear friend Antoine -Gaspard Couillard. 'Big Louis and the Legend of Indian Lorette' ('Le Village indien de la Jeune-Lorette'), the finest of all four, relates to an exchange between the author and Big Louis, a Huron known for his intelligence and repartee. The latter shares the story of the great serpent, which very nearly brought an end to his people, all the while recognizing that he is sharing the tale with a man whose own people, religion, and drink has brought even greater devastation.

The final piece, 'General Wolfe's Statue' ('La statue de général Wolfe') is something of a detective story in which the author shares his findings and theories as to the origin of a less-than-life-size wooden tribute that once stood at the corner of du Palais and Saint-Jean in Quebec City. Murder figures! The translator continues the research in her endnotes.

The statue in its current location at the Morrin Centre, Quebec City. 

Jane Brierley was awarded the 1990 Governor General's Award for English-language Translation for this book, but she brought so much more. She adds an  introduction and meticulous annotations. Each of the four pieces is preceded by a "translator's advice to the reader," providing context.

The tales themselves comprise just 84 pages, but Yellow-Wolf & Other Tales of the Saint Lawrence is not a fast read. There is the richness of style, there is the weight of history and all that, and there is artifice to be recognized. Canadians of Old is most certainly the place to begin with Aubert de Gaspé... after that, A Man of Sentiment. But how wonderful that this exists! 

Object: A trade size paperback, Yellow-Wolf & Other Tales of the Saint Lawrence is one of the the most attractive books in Véhicule's fifty-one year history. Credit goes to the translator who worked with J.W. Stewart on its design. The interior features thirteen illustrations, a map, and a photograph. The striking cover painting is a self-portrait by Huron chief Zacharie Vincent (1815-1886).

Access: Used copies listed online range between $9.76 and $131.12. I recommend the one going for $9.76. Better yet, pristine, unused copies can be purchased directly from the publisher at $14.95 through this link.

The original French, Divers, was first published in 1893 by Beauchemin. A Gatineau bookseller is offering a library discard of the first edition at $41.60. It has been rebound in just about the ugliest boards imaginable, but still seems a bargain.

Divers can be read online here courtesy of the University of Toronto and Internet Archive.

Related posts:

Gothique Canadien

Remembering la Corriveau

Old Folks
Reluctantly Revisiting Canada's Great Virus Novel

Canadian Notes & Queries at 114, Véhicule Press at 50, and a Few Favourite Forthcoming Things

A few days into the year and already a new issue of Canadian Notes & Queries. This one – number 114! – features writing by:

Noelle Allen

Tamara Faith Berger

Brian Bethune

Mark Bourrie

Randy Boyagoda

Kate Cayley

Steacy Easton

Alex Good

Brett Josef Grubisic

Canista Lubrin

Ian McGillis

Emily Mernin

John Metcalf

Vanessa Stauffer

As always, the cover is by Seth.

I contribute 'Véhicule Press at Fifty,' an interview with publishers Simon Dardick and Nancy Marrelli. Together we discuss the history and future of the press through ten key titles, beginning with the very first: Bob McGee's Three Sonnets & Fast Drawings. 

Subscribers also receive the latest issue – number 5! –of The Bibliophile. Just look at the goodness it offers:

So, why not subscribe!

Here's the link.

The Best Reads of 2023: Publishers Take Note

The season brings a flurry of activity, which explains why I haven't posted one review this month. Still, I did manage to tackle twenty-four neglected Canadian books in 2023, which isn't so small a number. James De Mille's A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder (1888) was the oldest. Were I judging books by covers it would've been considered the finest. James Moffatt's The Marathon Murder (1972) was the youngest and ugliest. But then, what can one expect of a book that went from proposal to printing press in under seven days.

De Mille's dystopian nightmare is available from McGill-Queen's University Press as the third volume in the Centre for Editing Early Canadian Texts series.  

I first read the novel back when it was a McClelland & Stewart New Canadian Library mainstay. New Canadian Library is no more; it was killed by Penguin Random House Canada. McClelland & Stewart – "The Canadian Publisher" – has been reduced to an imprint owned by Bertelsmann SE & Co. KGaA, but that hasn't prevented the German conglomerate from trying to make a buck – two bucks to be precise – selling it as an ebook.

Dystopia.

Three other books covered here this year are also in print, but from American publishers:

The Weak-Eyed Bat - Margaret Millar
New York: Doubleday, 1942
New York: Syndicate, 2017

The Cannibal Heart - Margaret Millar
New York: Random House, 1949
New York: Syndicate, 2017

The Heart of Hyacinth - Onoto Watanna [Winnifred Eaton]
New York: Harper, 1903
Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2000

I'm wrong,  The Heart of Hyacinth is by far the best-looking book read this year; it was also the very best novel I read this year.

Note to Canadian publishers: Winnifred Eaton's novels are all in the public domain. 

What follows is the annual list of the three books most deserving of revival: 

Pagan Love
John Murray Gibbon
Toronto: McClelland &

   Stewart, 1922

A novel penned by a man who spent his working life writing copy for the CPR,  Pagan Love provides a cynical look at public relations and the self-help industry. Add to these its century-old take on gender bending and you have a work unlike any other.

Dove Cottage
Jan Hilliard [Hilda Kay

   Grant]
London: Abelard-Schulman,

   1958 

The fourth of the author's six novels, this once centres on a man, his wife, and his mother-in-law, whose lives are elevated by way of an inheritance. Black humour abounds!

The Prairie Wife
Arthur Stringer
London: Hodder & Stoughton, [n.d.]

The first novel in Stringer's Prairie Trilogy. Dick Harrison describes it as the author's "most enduring work," despite the fact that it hasn't seen print in over seven decades. I'd put off reading The Prairie Wife because I have a thing against stories set on "the farm." What a mistake! An unexpected delight!

Last December's list of three featured Grant Allen's Philistea (1884), Stephen Leacock's Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy (1915), and Horace Brown's Whispering City (1947). 

Ten months later, Whispering City returned to print as the eighteenth Ricochet Books title. Yours truly provided the introduction. It can be ordered through the usual online booksellers, but why not from the publisher itself? Here's the link.

As for the New Year... well, I'm back to making resolutions:

• More French books (and not only in translation).
• More non-fiction (and not only the work of crazies). 

That's it.

Keep kicking against the pricks!

Bonne année!

Related posts:

The Very Best Reads of 2022: Ladies First
The Very Best Reads of the Second Plague Year (2021)
The Very Best Reads of a Plague Year (2020)
The Very Best Reads of a Very Strange Year (2019)
Best Books of 2018 (none of which are from 2018)
The Year's Best Books in Review - A.D. 2017
The Year's Best Books in Review - A.D. 2016
The Year's Best Books in Review - A.D. 2015
The Christmas Offering of Books - 1914 and 2014
A Last Minute Gift Slogan, "Give Books" (2013)
Grumbles About Gumble & Praise for Stark House (2012)
The Highest Compliments of the Season (2011)
A 75-Year-Old Virgin and Others I Acquired (2010)
Books are Best (2009)

James De Mille's Antarctic Death Cult
James Moffatt Wins the Race

Margaret Millar's Muskoka Murder Mystery
A Woman Cheated
By Any Other Name: Onoto Watanna's Hyacinth

Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Self-Improvement
A Cunning Cousin in a Country Cottage
Go West, Young Woman
Spoiled by a Publisher
Quebec City Noir
Whispering City: Horace Brown's Second Encore
Lunar Attractions; or, The Leacock I Like

Whispering City: Horace Brown's Second Encore

Arriving in bookstores as I write, the eighteenth Ricochet Books title. Whispering City is based on the Quebec City film noir of the same name. First published in 1947, it is one of the most sought after post-war Canadian paperbacks. A lone copy of that only other edition is listed online at $305.90.

The new Ricochet edition will set you back $15.95.

I provide a new intro.

Copies can be purchased through the usual online booksellers and at the Véhicule Press website.

Related posts:

Quebec City Noir

Horace Brown: Saturday Matinee

The Legs of Mary Roberts

The Legs of Mary Roberts

Much of this past weekend was spent rereading Horace Brown's 1947 Whispering City; this in preparing its return to print as the next Ricochet Book. Whispering City is unlike the series' seventeen previous titles in that it is a novelization of a film. The heroine of both versions, young Mary Roberts, works the crime beat at fictional Quebec City newspaper L'Information. Brown himself was a reporter for the all-too-real Ottawa Citizen. I dare say he knew something of how a woman in Mary's position might've been treated:

She got up, not very tall, and walked on good legs to a door marked “M. Durant, Redacteur.” Her grey tweed suit set off her trim figure. Her very carriage seemed to radiate vitality and poise. Two or three pairs of eyes raised to follow her wistfully, then bent back to their tasks. The owners of those eyes had learnt that Mary Roberts was not interested.

The film is perhaps not so realistic. Mary's fellow reporters display no interest in her legs or trim figure. Professionals each and every one, their focus is on copy and the rush to put the paper to bed.

Brown's references to Mary's lower limbs amuse because the film makes nothing of them. This scene, which takes place in Quebec's Palais de Justice, provides a brief, distant, modest glimpse:

Brown's description:

Mary shrugged her shoulders prettily, and tapped briskly along the marble floor, while masculine heads turned to watch her twinkling legs.

Trust me, no one turns to watch.

Key to the plot is a performance of 'Quebec Concerto' by suspected wife-killer Michel Lacoste.

(In reality, the concerto was composed by André Mathieu, who was himself a tragic figure.)

After hearing a rehearsal, Mary returns to “M. Durant, Redacteur.”

“The Concerto is good, yes.” Mary Roberts sat on the edge of the editor’s desk, one shapely leg swinging in fast time with her thoughts. “So’s the story onto which I think I’ve stumbled.”

The scene plays out differently onscreen. Mary doesn't sit on the edge of Durant's desk. She never swings a twinkling leg.

In the film, Durant reaches into a desk drawer to hand the reporter a pistol. Brown's Mary cut her teeth at a New York tabloid; she already carries a gun:

The editor shook his head after her in some bewilderment. So much feminine charm running around on such nice legs should not be so efficient and possessed of that pistol in the handbag.

The pistol features in a key scene. Though smart as a whip, Mary has made a mistake. Chasing the story, she ends up scaling Montmorency Falls with the suspected wife-killer:

Her shapely thighs bared, as she climbed to the ledge where he was waiting. She looked down at her legs ruefully. “Just as I thought,” she said. “My nylons are gone. Guess I should have been wearing slacks for a climb like this. I’ll have to fix my garter.”

The displaced garter is used as an excuse to transfer the pistol from handbag to coat pocket. Mary's shapely thighs are not bared in the film; its ninety-eight minute run time features not so much as a knee.

Horace Brown's final mention of Mary's gams comes in the final pages as she struggles with the story's villain:

Her slim legs kicked futilely at him, became entangled in the evening gown that was to have been her happiness and now would be her shroud. His hand was pulsing hard against her breasts.

The film features no kicking. Not one breast is pulsed.

I'm keen on Whispering City as a film, but not on its ending; Horace Brown's is much better.

A muddy copy of the celluloid Whispering City can be seen – gratis – through the Internet Archive. As of this writing, only one copy Horace Brown's novelization is listed for sale online. Price: $316.50.

Whispering City returns to print in October. Price: $15.95.

Update: Whispering City has made the Globe & Mail list of sixty-two books to read this fall.

Related posts:

Quebec City Noir

Horace Brown: Saturday Matinee

The Body on Mount Royal: The Audiobook

Summertime and the listenin' is easy. What better time to enjoy David Montrose's The Body on Mount Royal, the very first Ricochet audiobook. Newly released, it features the complete text, along with Kevin Burton Smith's forward. Reader Tim Machin gives voice to hero and narrator Russell Teed. 

The moment I heard Tim's voice I knew we had our man.

You can find it at Audible, Audiobooks Now, Kobo, and other audiobook sources.

The book itself is available at the very best bookstores. It can be ordered online through the usual vendors, but I suggest going through this link to the publisher's website.

 

Related posts:

The Unpleasant End of Russell Teed

A List of Montreal's Post-War Pulps: Second Shot

A Second Body on Mount Royal

The Poetic David Montrose

Véhicule Press: Ten for Fifty

Véhicule Press celebrated its fiftieth anniversary this past weekend. One of eight people invited to speak at the celebration, I kept kept my comments short, but only because Mark Abley, who co-hosted the evening with Nyla Matuk, threatened hook and hammer if I went over my allotted time. I left the stage unscathed by channelling Big Star... as opposed to, say, Emerson, Lake and Palmer.

Fifty years is a remarkable achievement, particularly in this country. The press has survived while others, large and small have ceased or been absorbed by foreign multinationals. I'm proud to have played a small role in its history.

For you bibliophiles, I've have put together a list of ten old favourite Véhicule Press books from my collection:

Yellow-Wolf and Other Tales of the Saint Lawrence [Divers]

Philippe-Joseph Aubert de Gaspé [trans Jane Brierly]

1990

Jane Briery translated the complete published oeuvres of Philippe-Joseph Aubert de Gaspé, beginning with Les Anciens Canadiens (Canadians of Old), one of this country's most translated works. The last, Yellow-Wolf and Other Tales of the Saint Lawrence, received a Governor General's Award for Translation. 

Veiled Countries/Lives

Marie-Claire Blais [trans Michael Harris]

1984

Marie-Claire Blais is my favourite Québécoise writer. To think that we've both been published by the same press!

Comprising Pays voilés (1963) and Existences (1967), this volume is the only translation of her poems. 

The Crow's Vow

Susan Briscoe

2010

The poet's only book. How I looked forward to her next.

It was not to be.

A wonderful friend and a beautiful soul.

Neons in the Night

Lucien Francoeur [trans Susanne de Lotbinière-Harwood]

1980

The oldest Véhicule Press book in my collection. Francoeur inscribed it to "Joe," describing a 1981 John Abbott College class as "wild and crazy." I was a John Abbott student at the time, but do not remember his visit. If memory serves, I purchased my copy at Aeroplane, a basement-level book and record store on Sherbrooke Street in NDG. 

The Heat Accepts It All: Selected Letters of John Glassco

John Glassco

2013

A Gentleman of Pleasure, my biography of Glassco, was the culmination of seven years' work. The Heart Accepts It All was edited in its wake. Credit goes to Carmine Starnino for proposing this book. For a time, I thought of it as my farewell to things Glassco, but I now realize I was just taking a breather.

Dr. Delicious: Memoirs of a Life in CanLit

Robert Lecker

2006

Best to leave the description of this book to the author:

The idea of being Dr. Delicious instead of plain old Professor Lecker made me think about the kind of writing I would have done if I was really the tasty version of myself. Professor Lecker would be reluctant to tell stories about his own life. He would resist the temptation to make his life in Canadian literature personal. He would not gossip. He would write scholarly articles and books that no one would read. But Dr. Delicious would lead a completely different life. He would delight in his classroom experiences. He would take liberties with his life story. He would talk about the ups and downs of being a Canadian publisher. He could bring in music, painting, hypochondria, malt whisky, deranged students, government grants, questionable authors, bank debt, termite infestations, a teaching stint in Brazil, lawsuits, the pleasures of hot-sauce. He would write about his passions, his failures, how the whole business of CanLit drove him crazy, lost him sleep, drove him on.

Stepping Out: The Golden Age of Montreal Night Clubs

Nancy Marrelli

2004

Hello Montreal! Stepping Out covers thirty years – 1925 to 1955 – during which Montreal's night clubs presented the finest jazz musicians, crooners, and burlesque acts in North America. Oh, the photos!

Remember the scene in The Great Gatsby when Nick suggests Gatsby lie low in Montreal? This is the city he had in mind.

The Crime on Cote des Neiges

David Montrose [Charles Ross Graham]

2010

A second sentimental favourite, The Crime on Cote des Neiges was the first title in the Ricochet series. Sixteen have followed. I'm most proud of the John Buell reissues – The Pyx and Four Days – but this stands as one of this country's three best private dick novels

Remarkably, after all these years, Montrose/Graham remains a mystery. For all my efforts, I've yet to find a single person who so much as remembers meeting the man.

Wardlife:

The Apprenticeship of a Young Writer as a Hospital Clerk

Andrew Steinmetz

1999

Another book by a friend. I first met Andrew in the summer of '85 at Station Ten, which I maintain was the smokiest of all Montreal night clubs. My eyes still sting. Andrew was then a member of Weather Permitting. We two were young pups, each imagining that we might one day produce a book. Andrew was the first to realize the dream. As much a fan of his writing as I was of Weather Permitting. 

Lasting Impressions:

A Short History of English Publishing in Quebec

Bruce Whiteman

1998

Short and bitter sweet, Bruce Whiteman's history of English publishing is an invaluable resource. Véhicule Press figures. How could it not?

It's only in writing this that I realize Lasting Impressions was published a quarter-century before last weekend's half-century celebration.

Here's to the next fifty!

Related posts:

Gothique Canadien

A Penthouse Killing in Montreal

Four Days in Darkest Quebec
This Just In...