Canadian Notes & Queries in Springtime

Behold, Canadian Notes & Queries #104 has arrived! Here it is on the hood of our aging Jeep Liberty.

I look forward to each and every issue, but am particularly keen on this one because it features "No Country for Old Books," my essay on Canada Reads. I think it's important, not so much for my opinions, but for exposing what our "literary Survivor" has hidden from CBC listeners. The show's letter to publishers, sent this past fall, is revelatory – and is printed in full. CNQ made the essay available online last month:

No Country for Old Books

But wouldn't you rather subscribe?

Of course you would. You can do so through this link.

I've also been looking forward to Ian Coutts' article on James Moffatt, the boozy middle-aged Canadian expat behind the bestselling skinhead novels of 'seventies Great Britain.

And then there's Michel Basilières' piece on the great Émile Nelligan in translation.

As he often does, Seth surprises; this time with a spread on The Children's Book about Pulp and Paper and other "little marvels of design and illustration" by Jacques Gagnier and Leonard L. Knott.

Also featured is a new short story by Cynthia Flood!

Other contributors include:

Myra Bloom

Andreae Callanan

Paige Cooper

Jason Dickson

André Forget

Stephen Fowler

Alex Good

Brett Josef Grubisic

Cynthia Holz

Ben Ledoucer

Dancy Mason

David Mason

Marko Sijan

Fiona Smyth

Pablo Strauss

Souvankham Thammavougea

Joshua Whitehead

and

Bruce Whiteman

My Dusty Bookcase column for this issue looks at The Arch-Satirist by Frances de Wolfe Fenwick. Regular readers of this blog may remember mention of this book in a previous post and on Facebook (yeah, I'm on Facebook). "How is it that a 1910 Montreal novel that begins with the ramblings of a drunken, drug-addicted teenage poet disappoints?" I asked my Facebook "friends."

Those who think I've been unfair to Miss Fenwick may wish to consider this from the July 1910 issue of Canadian Magazine:

Related posts:

Canada Reads: No Country for Old Books

Miss Fenwick's Good Old Hockey Match

A Novel Every Bit as Good as Its Title

The Fiftieth Anniversary Issue of Canadian Notes & Queries arrived in my mailbox this week. I should've received it last month. I blame Deepak Chopra – not the Ageless Body Timeless Mind Deepak Chopra, this one.

Being the Fiftieth Anniversary Issue, much of the focus is on books from 1968:

Les Manuscrits de Pauline Archange - Marie-Claire Blais

Sarah Bastard's Notebook - Marian Engel

I Am Mary Dunne - Brian Moore

The Shattered Plinths - Irving Layton

John Metcalf writes on the short story "Images" from Dance of the Happy Shades, Alice Munro's debut. Not to be outdone, I chose to review A Lover More Condoling, the first novel by then-Take 30 co-host Adrienne Clarkson. Despite her fame, it enjoyed one lone printing, and never appeared in paperback. As I note in my review, the novel isn't so much as mentioned in Heart Matters, Clarkson's 2006 memoir.

Might A Lover More Condoling be a forgotten treasure? Not wanting to spoil things, I'll say only that it has the most memorable sex scene I've read since Donna Steinberg's I Lost it All in Montreal.

Other contributors include:

Randy Boyagoda

Andreae Callanan

Scott Chantler

Paige Cooper

Trevor Corkum

Kayla Czaga

Rachel Décoste

Daniel Donaldson

Antony Easton

Jesse Eckerlin

André Forget

Stephen Fowler

Alex Good

James Grainger

Benjamin Hertwig

Doyali Islam

Tasneem Jamal

Anita Lehey

Sibyl Lamb

Tracey Lindberg

Rabindranath Maharaj

Rohan Maitzen

David Mason

Patricia Robertson

Mary H. Aurbach Rykov

Seth

JC Sutcliffe

Vit Wagner

Bruce Whiteman

Martha Wilson

The fifty-first year sees CNQ striking out in a new direction. "We decided a radical expansion of our reviewer estate was necessary given ever-shrinking critical space the nation's newspapers, online journals, and periodicals," writes editor Emily Donaldson.

And so, we have the very first CNQ book review supplement, with contributions by:

Michael Barrett

Michel Basilières

Stephen Beattie

Jeremiah Bertram

Jeff Bursey

Kerry Clare

Allison Gillmor

Monique Giroux

Alex Good

Brett Joseph Grubisic

Stephen Henighan

Amanda Jernigan

Tess Liem

Domenica Martinello

Dilia Narduzzi

Ruprapriya Rathmore

Mark Sampson

Sarah Tolmie

Jonathan Valelly

Derek Webster

Jared Young

If you haven't already, now seems just the time to become a subscriber... easily done through this link.

The Canada Post carrier who delivered this magazine to our rural mailbox chose not to fold it.

She is not paid enough.

Related posts:

The Year of Grade School Readers, Cute Kittens

and Dead Anglos Hanging in the Streets of Montreal

Mrs Lowry's West Coast Murder Mystery

"Malcolm Lowry has an entry in The Canadian Encyclopedia, so why not wife Margerie?" This is the question I pose in reviewing Margerie Bonner's 1946 novel The Shapes That Creep for the new Summer edition of Canadian Notes & Queries. As I point out, Bonner lived in Canada just as long as her husband, and published three novels during the couple's Canadian years. The Shapes That Creep, the first, is set in motion by the discovery of a murdered recluse in a community modelled on Deep Cove, British Columbia.

My review of The Shapes That Creep – with argument for Bonner's inclusion in the Encyclopedia – is the subject of my Dusty Bookcase column. Over at the What's Old feature, I recommend reissues of two Canadian classics, Hugh MacLennan's Two Solitudes and The Black Donnellys by Thomas P. Kelley; along with Jimmie Dale, Alias the Gray Seal, a new Gray Seal adventure written by fan Michael Howard.

This being the Genre Issue, Deborah Dundas writes on her relationship with romance novels, Rui Umezawa looks at Enter the Dragon, and Robert J. Wiersema considers Stephen King's It as a work of empathy. Gemma Files, Sandra Kasturi, David Nickle, Andrew Pyper, and Robert Rowe dare revisit their first monsters.

Seth provides a cover that can double as a Halloween mask.

All is overseen by guest editor James Grainger, who also contributes an excellent piece on the disturbing 1972 horror/comedy Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things. Other contributors include:

Myra Bloom

Daniel Donaldson

Justin Donnait

André Forget

Chris Gilmore

Alex Good

Camila Grudova

Sandra Kasturiit

Sibyl Lamb

Annick MacAskill

David Mason

Patricia Robertson

Keven Spenst

Jay Stephens

JC Sutcliffe

Drew Hayden Taylor

and

Bruce Whiteman

As always, things wrap up with Stephen Fowler. This issue he exhumes the Civil Defence Health Service's Casualty Simulation (Ottawa: Department of National Health and Welfare, 1955).

The horror! The horror!

Related post:

Late of the Bowery

Not to Be Confused with Bust Planet

The new issue of Canadian Notes & Queries has arrived, bringing with it my long promised review of W.E.D. Ross's Lust Planet (1962), Canada's very first work of science fiction erotica. I found the novel every bit as good as expected.

Collectors of Canadian literature are advised to pick up this France' Book – oddly-named imprint of Hollywood's International Publications – while they still can. As I write, I see just one copy listed for sale online. To those requiring further enticement, I offer this: something I neglected to mention in the review is that Lust Planet features three intriguing illustrations. Intriguing because they have no connection at all with the text.

The other two are even better.

As I say, get it while you can. Better yet, subscribe to CNQ... easily done through this link at the magazine's website.

This issue's contributors include:

Madhur Anand

Jason Dickson

Jesse Eckerlin

André Forget

Cecil Foster

Stephen Fowler

Alex Good

Dominic Hardy

Ann Ireland

Penn Javdan

Samuel Johnson

Colette Maitland

Dominic Martinello

David Mason

Dakota McFadzean

Rebecca Rosenblum

Kate Sherren

JC Sutcliffe

Derek Webster

Bruce Whiteman

In addition to the cover and design, Seth reflects on CANADA official handbooks of days gone by (including this one): "I find these books fascinating, in a doctor's office kind of way. They have a sort of sublime dullness about them. A quality hard to put into words. Pleasing. Comforting. Sleep-inducing."

Editor Emily Donaldson not only put the whole thing together, she contributed a review of  David Chariandy's Brother.

This issue marks the second time I've shared pages with John Metcalf. Friends will recognize how much this means to me. Coincidentally, it was through John that I first learned of W.E.D. Ross.

Related post:

Winning With the erotic W.E.D. Ross
The Greater Canada of 1962
When Poets Ruled; Or, Never Mind the Novelists

CNQ at 100

It doesn't seem right to describe the new issue of Canadian Notes & Queries as special – every issue is special – but this one, the one hundredth issue, marks a remarkable milestone. That it did so in its fiftieth year is both a reflection of an often precarious past and its stability this past decade under publisher Dan Wells.

I came on board with my first Dusty Bookcase column in issue 81 (Spring 2010). My subject back then was The Miracle Man, the very first book I'd ever read by Frank L. Packard. This time around, the column takes the form of an investigative update on thriller writer and passer of forged cheques Kenneth Orvis (a/k/a Kenneth LeMieux). His is not exactly a household name, though regular readers may remember my reviews of his debut, Hickory House (1956), and Cry Hallelujah! (1970), his greatest flop.

I've also contributed an essay, "For All Its Faults," which has been described by historian Christopher Moore as an evisceration of the killing of the New Canadian Library. In this unpleasant task I was supported by Daniel Donaldson's razor sharp editorial cartoon.

On a related note – two, actually – my daughter Astrid provides an editorial cartoon to "Hints and Allegations," a chapter from Elaine Dewar's GG-nominated The Handover, the shameful story of how it was our country's greatest publisher was given away to a foreign multinational.

Also featured is Andreae Callanan's "The Xenotext's Woman Problem," winner of this year's CanLit Crit Essay Contest. Nick Mount writes on CanLit's beginnings, Anna Porter shares memories of McClelland & Stewart as it was in the 'seventies, and Jim Polk looks at fifty years of the House of Anansi. In "Will Anyone Care?" Mark Sampson lays bare his obsession to preserving his work. The issue is rounded out by contributions from Seth, Pierre Nepveu (translated by Donald Winkler), Robert Wringham, Mary H. Auerbach Rykov, Mark Bourrie, Kamal Al-Solaylee, Jason Dickson, David Huebert, David Mason, J.C. Sutcliffe, Rohan Maitzen, André Forget, Alex Good, Bruce Whiteman, Stephen Fowler.

More information can be found here at the CNQ website. And this link will take you to the subscription page, which will bring you issues 101, 102, and 103.

Every one special.

A Forgotten Film of a Hidden Novel

The Spring Issue of Canadian Notes & Queries arrived in the mail yesterday, pushing aside all other reading. Sorry, Kenneth Orvis. As the cover says, this one focusses on film. Matthew Hays has an article on Claude Jutra, the man and the scandal. Natalie Atkinson writes about A Cool Sound From Hell, 1959 film noir set in Toronto. Anthony Easton covers Vixen!, Russ Meyer's Canadian sexploitation film. Chase Joint looks at the animation of Jess Mac, while Rob Benvie's 'Make It Dangerous' explores Canadian film's punk sensibility.

My contribution is a look at Intent to Kill, a feature film from '58, based on the suppressed Brian Moore novel of the same title. If this sounds at all familiar, it may be because I've written before about both the novel (here) and the film (here, here, and here). They are endlessly fascinating.

Other contributors include:

Tamara Faith Berger

Jeff Bersey

Paige Cooper

Jason Dickson

Matthew Forsythe

Stephen Fowler

Alex Good

Rohan Maitzen

David Mason

James Pollock

Seth

JC Sutcliffe

Bruce Whiteman

Catriona Wright

Alissa York!

We all worked under the watchful eyes of Emily Donaldson.

Subscriptions to CNQ – the perfect Father's Day gift – can be purchased through this link.

Next issue will be the magazine's 100th. You don't want dad to miss that, do you?

A Small Town's Biggest Novelist

The newest issue of Canadian Notes & Queries arrived last week, containing all sorts of goodness wrapped in a cover by Seth. My contribution concerns Helen Duncan, the best selling novelist of St Marys, Ontario, our adopted hometown. I'm confident in claiming that Mrs Duncan enjoyed more sales than all others, if only because she also holds the distinction of being the only St Marys novelist to have landed a publishing contract. Her books were issued by Simon & Pierre, were reviewed in Books in Canada and, decades later, can be found in academic libraries as far from this town as Australia's Flinders University.

Mrs Duncan managed to get three novels into print, but the only one I discuss in any length is her 1982 debut, The Treehouse. It's a bildungsroman, a roman à clef, and heavily autobiographical. The family at the novel's centre is modelled on Duncan's family. The house in which they live – that of the title – is modelled on the second of her three childhood homes. It still stands today at the corner of Jones and Peel.

I spoil nothing in revealing that the fictional family later moves into this Queen Anne on Church Street South:

As the title suggests, houses play significant roles in this novel; one might argue that they are better drawn than the characters they shelter. The most interesting is that belonging to the needy widow down the street. The model for this house also stands, at the corner of Jones and King, and is for sale as I write.

A perfect gift for the obsessive Helen Duncan fan.

This issue's "What's Old" features two selections from Regina's Spafford Books, and three of my own: Three Novels of the Early 1960s by Ross Macdonald (New York: Library of America, 2016), Collected Millar: The Master at Her Zenith (New York: Syndicate, 2016) and The Complete Poems of George Whalley (Montreal: McGill-Queen's UP, 2016).

Also featured are contributions by:

Marianne Apostolides

Max Beerbohm

Leone Brander

Jim Christy

Jason Dickson

Deborah Dundas

Andre Forget

Stephen Fowler

Pascal Girard

Emily Keeler

Richard Kemick

David Mason

Dilia Narduzzi

Sarah Neville

Suzannah Showler

Bardia Sinaee

Bruce Whiteman

Did I mention that there's a new story by K.D. Miller? Well, there is!

Suscriptions to CNQ – always a bargain – can be purchased here through the magazine's website.

Related post:

Local Poet!

Canadian Notes & Queries en couleur

The new Canadian Notes & Queries arrived in the post a couple of days ago. The first colour issue – after forty-eight years in glorious black, white and grey – 'tis truly a thing of beauty.

My contribution, this season's Dusty Bookcase on paper, was inspired by the centenary of Ted Allan's birth this past January. The Gazette did not recognize, but I did. Of all the Allan titles in my collection, the focus of the column was the one that had remained unread: Don't You Know Anybody Else? It's a slim volume of short stories, published in the wake of Allan's fraudulent Stephen Leacock Medal win. Disturbing, though perhaps not so much as his original Love is a Long Shot, Don't You Know Anybody Else? it is one of those books sold as something it is not. 

In the same issue, I've contributed to a new feature: "What's Old: Notable CanLit reissues & offerings from the country's antiquarian booksellers". Still more retro goodness is to be found in Stephen Fowler's exhumation of Let's All Hate Toronto, a "narration, illustration and exhortation" by Jack McLaren.

Wish I could join in, but I can't... our daughter was born there. God Bless Women's College Hospital, I say!

Other contributors include:

Mark Callanan

Peter Dubé

Alison Gilmour

Amanda Jernigan

Shaena Lambert

Colette Maitland

David Mason

Shane Neilson

Diane Obomsawin

Laura Ritland

Patricia Robertson

Anakana Schofield

Seth

Patricia Smart

J.C. Sutciffe

Bruce Whiteman

Finally, it would be a great mistake to not mention Jason Dickson's interview with bookseller and poet Nelson Ball. I've drawn on Nelson's extensive knowledge of obscure CanLit so very many times in writing the Dusty Bookcase; what's more, he has provided me with many of the books covered here over the years. Just last week, Nelson sent me these two by Kenneth Orvis, the subject of a future CNQ Dusty Bookcase.

How's that for a tease?

Subscriptions to Canadian Notes & Queries can be purchased through this link.

Related post:

Pulp Noir à Montréal

Of War, Peace and Montreal's Writers' Chapel

It seems 2016 has barely begun and yet the year's first issue of Canadian Notes & Queries has already landed. The ninety-fourth, it's the first under the editorship of Emily Donaldson.

My fellow contributors will understand, I hope, when I write that my favourite piece is "My Heart is Broken", a talk delivered by John Metcalf at the unveiling of a memorial plaque to Mavis Gallant at Montreal's Writer's Chapel this past autumn. Ian McGillis provides a companion piece on the venue, its history and the group behind the whole thing.*

Others featured in the issue include:

André Alexis

Heather Birrell

Michael Cho

Jason Dickson

Beth Follett

Douglas Glover

David Godkin

Anita Lahey

David Mason

Michael Prior

Seth

Bruce Whiteman

In my own contribution – another Dusty Bookcase on paper – I make the case for There Are Victories (New York: Covici Friede, 1933), an ambitious, unconventional and next to unobtainable novel by Charles Yale Harrison. Sharp students of Canadian literature will make a link with his Generals Die in Bed (New York: Morrow, 1930), Harrison's first work of fiction, inspired by his experiences in the Great War.

There Are Victories is not a war novel, though I've seen it described as such. The conflict figures only in that a third of the way in the protagonist, Montrealer Ruth Courtney, marries a man who disappears for a time to fight in Europe. He returns damaged, violent, prone to rape, and drawn more than ever to prostitutes. Ruth escapes to Manhattan, where she finds comfort in the arms of another man. He's better only in comparison.

As I write in the piece, There Are Victories is the sort glorious failure that is worthy of attention.

May you be so blessed as to come across a copy.

* Full disclosure: I'm a member of that self-same group.

Related posts:

Canada's Great War Novelists: Charles Yale Harrison

Freedom to Read Week: Generals Die in Bed (I)

Freedom to Read Week: Generals Die in Bed (II)

À rebours

It's been some time since I've written much about John Glassco, whose life consumed seven or so years of mine. A Gentleman of Pleasure, my biography of the man, was published by McGill-Queen's in 2011. Last year saw The Heart Accepts It All, a selection of his letters I edited for Véhicule Press. I've since been working on other projects, but Glassco is forever in the background. The last few months have brought reviews of the biography from Robert Edison Sandiford (The Antigonish Review) and the letters from Bruce Whiteman (Canadian Notes & Queries). The former is available online. Here's an excerpt:

Busby’s biography is as much forensic exercise as literary reclamation. He is only interested in the facts of Glassco’s life and work that can be corroborated. The level of cross-checking he had to do must have been drink-inducing. But it pays off with a book that gives a lively and accurate account of a Canadian writer who was at one point one of the country’s most significant translators and who remains iconic because of his famous fictionalized memoir.

Speaking of fiction, this past Hallowe'en morn my eyes were drawn to this Margaret Cannon review on the Globe & Mail website:

Glassco died young? As I creep up in age, seventy-one no longer seems so ancient. But still.

I've always meant to read Murder in Montparnasse, if only to see whether Glassco, Taylor, Callaghan, McAlmon and other fixtures of that time and place feature in its pages. I had no idea that the protagonist of the 1992 mystery is based on Glassco; no one else has ever made the connection.  To be honest, nothing in Ms Cannon's writing convinces me that this is so. You'll forgive me, I hope, for pointing out that she botches the title of Glassco's memoirs.

Still, I'll make a point of reading Engel's mystery.

A decade or so ago, when I began work on what would become A Gentleman of Pleasure, a fellow writer cautioned. "Do this and Glassco will always be with you," he said. "The biographer's subject haunts."

He himself had written the biography of a man whom he'd come to despise.

His experience is not mine.

I leave the second to last words to Sandiford:

Busby may be overly sympathetic at times, which is understandable given his subject, but there is something all of us – artist and not – can understand of Glassco’s very human doubts that he may be merely a “trifler, dilettante, petit-maître.”

Indeed, in all of us.

Cross-posted, with minor variations, at A Gentleman of Pleasure.