Today marks the one hundredth anniversary of Saul Bellow's birth.
Take my word for it. The Canadian Encyclopedia, The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature and the Encyclopedia of Literature in Canada have no entries. Why should they? After all, he was only born in Canada. He only began his education in Canada. He only decided to become a writer in Canada.
Saul Bellow was nine when his family left for the States.
I bought my first Laurentian Library book, Canada's First Century by Donald Creighton, in preparation for my first semester at John Abbott College.* Its pages had turned brown before leaving the campus bookstore. My second Laurentian Library purchase, volume two of Mason Wade's The French Canadians 1760-1967, developed a curled spine, yet I never read the thing.
(Volume two of Mason Wade's The French Canadians 1760-1967 is nearly six hundred pages long.)
The Laurentian Library was meant to be Macmillan's answer to McClelland & Stewart's New Canadian Library. Cousins, they shared many of the same afflictions. NCL suffered no spinal deformities, but its pages were similarly discoloured. The covers of both were susceptible to wear; as with Tsarevich Alexei, the gentlest handling might bring harm.
Begun in 1967, nine years after NCL, Macmillan's series was heavy with Macmillan authors: Hugh MacLennan, Morley Callaghan, Robertson Davies, Ethel Wilson, Mavis Gallant, W.O. Mitchell, young pup Jack Hodgins and others. It was an awkward list conceived with a weak eye on the academic market; the other concentrated on an effort to keep Macmillan titles in print and, by extension, in house. Robert Kroetsch's But We Are Exiles rubbed shoulders with Pierre Trudeau's Federalism and the French Canadians, which was followed by Erik Munsterhjelm's The Wind and the Caribou: Hunting and Trapping in Northern Canada.
The NCL offerings of the same years were the ugliest ever, but Laurentian Library's were uglier still. Future publisher Hugh Kane acknowledged as much in a 1973 memo to John Gray: "Our books are manufactured very cheaply, printed on newsprint, and do not contain introductions." Sadly, his push for a general editor, the introduction of introductions and proper production values were ignored.
Directionless, the Laurentian Library stumbled along for nearly two decades. In The Legacy of the Macmillan Company of Canada (University of Toronto Press, 2011), Ruth Panofsky counts fifty titles and pegs 1979 as the series' final year, but I know of over thirty more, including #77, The Periwinkle Assault by Charles Dennis.
I'd never heard of The Periwinkle Assault before today. The second volume of something called the Broken Sabre Quartet, it was followed by Mavis Gallant's neglected novels Green Water, Green Sky and A Fairly Good Time. The last Laurentian Library title of which I'm aware – #83 – is The Winter of the Fisher by Cameron Langford. It was published in 1985. Did The Winter of the Fisher mark the end of the series? If so, should we not acknowledge that the Laurentian Library went out on a fairly high note?
I'm not talking about the cover. I'm sure it was ugly.
Patti's debut novel, Concrete Angel, has just received a star review in Library Journal. The publication date is June 9, but the sharp-eyed may find it's already arrived in their local bookstore.
It's been nearly a year since CBC Books unveiled its crummy 100 NOVELS THAT MAKE YOU PROUD TO BE CANADIAN. Don't know about you, but I feel pretty much the same about my citizenship.
A week later, CBC Books issued a patch – CBC Books 100: Bonus 10* – featuring Anne of Green Gables, The Tin Flute and eight other recommendations "from passionate readers all over the world":
Also included was this short note: "one of the most popular suggestions was the great Nobel Prize-winning Alice Munro. We think Alice is one of the greatest Canadian writers to ever hold a pen, but this list is reserved for novels only."
And so a decades-old debate comes to an end. You lose Mary Rubio. You too, Coral Ann Howels. Lives of Girls and Women isn't a novel, it's a collection of short stories. Yes, this list is reserved for novels only… except that they then added Farley Mowat's Never Cry Wolf.
CBC Books hasn't fixed that gaffe – not yet anyway. Nothing but silence has followed the end of that note on Munro:
Celebrate Alice by checking out all our coverage of her life and legacy and stay tuned – we may have more 100 lists up our sleeves.
God, I hope not.
Now Radio-Canada, has weighed in with Les incontournables, 100 Canadian books to read once in your lifetime. (I suggest that at least once is what's meant). The best that can be said is that it's not as bad a list. Les incontournables shares all the faults of CBC Books' 100 Novels, but to lesser degrees. Where the former includes fourteen English-language titles, the latter has six in French. Those figures alone signal that neither list is to be taken seriously. Both share an even greater flaw in that they rely so heavily on recent works. Most of the titles found on the 2014 CBC Books list were published between 2000 and 2013. Yes, most…
Take a moment to let that sink in.
The new Radio-Canada list includes 41 titles published between 2000 and 2014 – including Jean-François Lépine's Sur la ligne de feu, which was released all of seven months ago. To borrow from Jean-Louis Lessard's comments on Les incontournables, il faut laisser le temps faire son oeuvre.
Has it all been worth it? Yes and no. CBC Books' 100 Novels was meant to "start a dialogue", but the only comments I heard were from friends who expressed surprise at how few they'd read. Les incontournables, on the other hand, seems to have inspired M Lessard to produce Liste des œuvres québécoises importants. His criteria: the quality of the work, cultural or social impact, the representativeness of the time and influence. It's about as perfect and well-considered as any book list I've ever seen; anyone looking to read the essential works of French-speaking Quebec will find no better.
An observation and query to close this rant: Where Les incontournables includes titles that are out of print, all of CBC Books' 100 Novels – including the Bonus 10 – are in print. Surely this isn't a coincidence. And what are we to make of the fact that nearly every one is currently published by a foreign-owned house?
McClelland & Stewart is owned by Bertelsmann. The CBC is in decline. Suddenly, I'm not feeling so proud.
* Curiously, the list itself was rebranded as "CBC Books 100: Novels that make you proud to be Canadian".
An ode to the city, a tribute to Her Late Majesty, but more than anything a pitch to tourists, Victoria the Beautiful (self-published, 1917) is one of only two poems I've been able to find by city resident Levi Houghton (d. 1918). The other, My Trip Through the Rockies (self-published, 1917), is interesting for its use of the words "mount" and "mountain" – forty-four appearances in 83 lines.
Here he rhymes "Nature's splendour" with "say I'll mend her".
Enjoy!
VICTORIA THE BEAUTIFUL
Canada's vast and myriad acres, —
Central prairies wheat's domain, —
Ancient cities of th' Atlantic, —
All have share in praise's strain.
But of thou,—Dominion's fairest.
Brightest, sceniest, beauteous spot.
Those who chant of other places.
These are they who know thee not.
VICTORIA!
Honoured name on British tongue, —
She who dignified the Throne,
Left a name, 'twill last as long,
Long as thou dost bear her own!
City thou, — Dominion's Queen.
Regal true in Nature's splendour;
None like thee can e'er be seen, —
None can say I'll mend her.
VICTORIA!
O, this City, all that's fair:
Thy boulevards beyond compare,
Trees of every shade and hue, —
Chestnut, maple, lilac, yew.
Rustic scenes and shady bowers.
City of roses, city of flowers!
Hollies green, some variegated, —
Glorious England here translated!
VICTORIA!
England's beauty known so wide;
(Surely thou art England's sister-twin,)
Truly thou art dignified,
Fair without and fair within!
Old Ocean laps thy numerous Bays,
Bright Sol bedecks thy Parks,
With emerald green thy winding ways.
Call forth extolled remarks!
VICTORIA!
Rocky headlands, sandy beaches;
Mounts aspire to meet the sun;
Nature loving thou dost teach us,
Whilst we round with motors run.
Gnarled old oaks and Douglas pine,
Gardens grand delights our fill,
But who can yet compare design
With the broom on Beacon Hill!
VICTORIA!
O'er the Straits of Juan de Fuca,
Olympic stately mountains see, —
Delighting visiting onlooker,
And he hails the sight with glee!
Cousin Sam's in thousands coming
Year by year to see thy glory,
And he ne'er forgets his roaming, —
Tells abroad thy wondrous story!
VICTORIA!
For 'round thee he's been a-hunting
Cougar, bear, and deer and moose,
Likewise also gone a-fishing.
All his business cares cut loose.
Oak Bay Links, and those of Colwood,
Reached he these by street-car ride;
Boating, bathing, tennis, billiard,
All these pleasures, — more beside!
VICTORIA!
Mild's the clime, and summer not too hot;
'Tis minus Zero of the prairie;
Come and visit this blest spot,
Come yourself and bring dear Mary.
Come in Winter, come in Spring,
Come in Summer, Autumn too,
And when you come this song you'll sing:
"Victoria the whole year through!"
VICTORIA!
My selection, Margaret Millar's An Air That Kills, won't come as much of a surprise to regular readers. You know how I'm always going on about her writing. If not An Air That Kills it would've been Vanish in an Instant or Wall of Eyes or The Iron Gates or Beast in View or… But no, with action alternating between Toronto and cottage country, An Air That Kills makes most sense. Summer approaches. Besides, I think it's her best novel.
The Partisan list, numbering thirteen, has some old favourites; I see others deserving reconsideration. I'll be reading them all over the next few months – including the four I don't know at all.
How come no one told me about Jonathan Goldstein's novel?
Anyway, here's the list. I'm presenting it in order of publication for no other reason than it places my selection first, but you'd do better to read the actual Partisan piece.
An Air That Kills – Margaret Millar
Recommended by Brian Busby
From a Seaside Town – Norman Levine
Recommended by Nathan Whitlock Pandora – Sylvia Fraser
Recommended by Mark Sampson Dancing Nightly in the Tavern – Mark Anthony Jarman
Recommended by Elisabeth de Mariaffi Onyx John – Trevor Ferguson
Recommended by Andrew Hood The Republic of Love – Carol Shields
Recommended by Joel Yanofsky Wigger – Lawrence Braithwaite
Recommended by Derek McCormack Paradise, Piece by Piece – Molly Peacock
Recommended by Guillaume Morissette Lenny Bruce is Dead – Jonathan Goldstein
Recommended by Ian McGillis
A Tourist’s Guide to Glengarry – Ian McGillis
Recommended by Andrew Steinmetz HA! – Gordon Sheppard
Recommended by Dimitri Nasrallah
The Darren Effect – Libby Creelman
Recommended by Saleema Nawaz Lighthouse Island – Paulette Jiles
Recommended by Michael Winter
Verse for May Day by "Gay Page", Florence Nightingale Horner Sherk. Like last year's, this is drawn from The Workshops and Other Poems, her lone volume, published in 1919 by the Fort William Times-Journal.
A complex woman was Mrs Sherk. In Victoria's time, when women rarely advanced beyond the position of teacher, she became principal of Fort William's Ogden School. In 1907, she reinvented herself as a journalist, became one of the earliest members of Canadian Women's Press Club, and yet was a fervent anti-suffragist.
I'd not heard of Florence Nightingale Horner Sherk until two years ago when I rescued her book, a library discard, just as it was about to be tossed, stripped and pulped. It has since provided hours of enjoyment.
Well, an hour, anyway. It's a very slim book.
The poetess pairs her May Day poem, "May Day", with a photograph titled "The Promise of May".
I could not let National Poetry Month pass without presenting verse by James Gay, Poet Laureate of Canada (self-proclaimed) and Master of All Poets (self-proclaimed, I guess). One of his longer poems, this concerns the tragic death of George Brown.
Not much attention is paid Brown these days, but he once held great sway as unofficial leader of the federal Liberal Party and editor of the Toronto Globe. Such was his stature that three of the Four Jameses wrote verse about the man. James MacRae, who lived and died in a house not a five minute walk from mine, believed Liberals to be in league with Satan.
It would be inappropriate to quote his verse here.
The Ingersoll James – James McIntyre – wasn't so partisan. His 1884 poem 'Departed Statesman" features these lines:
George Brown, thou man of renown,
Confederation you did crown;
You now are all free from the strife
The wrangle and jangle of political life.
Though I've seen it described as such, Brown's death was not a political assassination. What happened was this: On 25 March 1880, George Bennett, a drunk and disgruntled former employee, walked into the Globe offices demanding a certificate recognizing past service. Brown, who did not know his visitor, suggested he see the foreman. Bennett pulled out a gun. One presumes he meant to shoot his former employer in the chest or head, but Brown pushed down his assailant's arm. The bullet entered the editor's right thigh.
Look up, way up, to the dramatic illustration at the top of this post. Between Bennet's feet you'll see that artist Henri Julien has titled his work "Attempted assassination of George Brown, Toronto". The engraving was published in the 10 April 1880 edition of the Canadian Illustrated News, a little over two weeks after the incident. At the time, Brown was reported to be recovering nicely.
He wasn't. Gangrene set in. One hundred and thirty-five years ago this week he was struggling for life.
Sadly, Brown ended up another victim of those long-drawn-out nineteenth-century assassinations. American readers will remember that President James Garfield hung on for nearly twelve weeks after he was shot.
Brown managed only eight.
I've made you wait enough.
Here it is, our Poet Laureate's tribute:
ON THE HONOURABLE G. BROWN
Poor George Brown is gone at last,
O'er his wound could not surpass;
His politics we don't mind a bit,
Knowing well he died with grit.
Politics with man are no disgrace,
When kept in their proper place;
The best politics ever man possessed
Are truth, honesty, and his mind at rest.
A party man may act civil;
He cannot please God and the devil.
In this poem you may well understand,
No happiness for a party man;
If he wants to enjoy a happy mind.
He must live in peace with all mankind.
I give it to all in my straightforward way—
As the motto of your poet, James Gay.
When on this earth George done his best,
I hope he now has found his rest.
No more wrangle and jangle of political life.
"The Late Hon. George Brown"
James L. Weston Canadian Illustrated News, 15 May 1880
Straight to video, but without enough momentum to make it to DVD. I'm guessing I've missed my opportunity to see Deadly Companion. True, there are used VHS copies for sale out there, but who can be bothered? Besides, I can't figure out how to connect our old VCR to the Samsung.
Deadly Companion was a tax shelter film. "Based on the novel 'The 3 Roads' [sic] by Ross MacDonald [sic]", it was offered up by the same Toronto production company that gave us Nothing Personal, a romcom starring Donald Sutherland/Suzanne Somers.
Screenwriter Thomas Hedley (Flashdance) appears to have taken a good number of liberties with his source material. Here's John Candy as John, a character not found in the novel.
And here's John doing lines of coke.
Fellow SCTV cast members Joe Flaherty, Eugene Levy, Catherine O'Hara and Dave Thomas also feature, but it's Candy who shares top billing in the 1994 VHS release.
He gets less than two minutes screen time.
I feel particularly bad for the late Michael Sarrazin – cast as Michael Taylor (Bret Taylor in the novel), he's owed top billing. This earlier video package, issued under the original title, seems a tad more fair:
The adaptation brings things into the 'eighties by having Taylor shed his Second World War naval uniform for a journalist's trench coat. Here he's traumatized not by a Japanese kamikazes, but by Middle Eastern terrorists in aviator sunglasses.
Like the Taylor of The Three Roads, Michael must also deal with the murder of his young wife Lorraine. She's given life here – fleetingly – by Pita Oliver, an actress best remembered for having survived Prom Night.
Of course, she's not so lucky here.
Pita Oliver is billed twenty-fifth in the film's IMDb listing. This too seems unfair; after all, the solution to her character's murder is key to Macdonald's plot. The Three Roads positions Larry Hopkins (Anthony Perkins) as prime suspect, but I'm not sure about Deadly Companion. Here we see an encounter between Taylor and Hopkins.
In what I take to be a later scene, the two are involved in a dust-up.
Taylor also takes on Dellassandro (Al Waxman). Same camera angle.
Waxman's character doesn't feature in the book, nor do any of the five played by the SCTV cast. Fourth-billed Howard Duff portrays some guy named Lester Harlen. He's not in the book either.
The film has Hopkins shooting Harlen though a doorway…
…allowing Perkins to do his thing.
Leonard Maltin's review runs two sentences: "Confusing, annoying thriller with mentally tortured photojournalist Sarrazin attempting to track down his wife's murderer. Sarrizan is his usual bland self; Clark is wasted." The few souls bothering to weigh in at IMDb appear to agree:
This murder/mystery makes little sense.
– sgt619-1
The film simply does not make sense even after seeing it twice
– cfc_can
In "Double Negative Developing" (The Globe & Mail, 10 February 1979), critic Jay Scott suggests chaos on the set. He quotes actress Susan Clark on the script:
"This is one of the things that's in progress, so it's a big question mark. The three writers [Hedley, Janis Allen, Charles Dennis] seem to be coming from three different places. We have improvised; the locations have stayed the same and so has the intent of the individual scenes but…"
The ellipses are Clark's… Or are they Scott's?
The Globe & Mail, 10 February 1979
I was hundreds of kilometres away in high school when all this was going on, and yet I realize, all these decades later, that I'm just one degree of separation from several of the key players in this drama.
The Three Roads Kenneth Millar New York: Dell, [n.d.]
The Three Roads is a psychological thriller of the type in which Margaret Millar excelled. Here husband Kenneth, writing under his true name for the last time, falls a bit flat. But only in comparison.
This story from Millar, mari, concerns Second World War veteran Bret Taylor, a naval officer made amnesiac by the loss of his ship and his wife. Now hospitalized, he's visited by Hollywood screenwriter Paula West. It was only a couple of years ago that determined Paula, a divorcée, saw a second husband in Bret. They'd met at a vacation resort and had shared nineteen nice enough days together. No bed, true, but twenty-something navy man Bret was a virgin.
Months passed before they were able to meet again. When they did, Bret drank too much, felt pressured to perform and propose, and fled to Los Angeles. Forty-eight hours later – or was it seventy-two? – he found himself married to a nineteen-year-old barfly.
"Fast moving" pitches Dell.
Sure, but not 'til the second half.
The earliest chapters of The Three Roads have Bret lagging behind, struggling to recall what the reader already knows. I spoil little in disclosing that his young wife was victim in the "murder in sunny California" referred to on the back cover.
Bret saw her naked dead body beautiful and passed out.
See front cover.
Credit goes to psychoanalyst Theodor Klifter for kicking this novel into gear. He hands over newspaper accounts of the murder, Bret springs to his feet, "irises shining grayly like small spinning wheels", and we're off!
Nose to ground and grindstone Bret starts sniffing out the killer of the wife he can't remember. First stop is the Golden Sunset Café, a dive at which she spent her penultimate hours. But Bret's no detective. He ties one on, gets into a fight and ends up in the bed of some guy named Larry Miles. I made the made too much of this; Larry's interest in Bret isn't at all sexual:
The way things were going he and Taylor might end up as bosom pals. And that would be a belly laugh of the first water. He was a card, all right, a real wag out of the top drawer with bells on.
Or am I wrong?
Look, I'm no psychologist, nor am I a psychoanalyst. That said, I recognize The Three Roads as very much a post-war work – not because of the conflict, but for its focus on psychopathy. It's no accident that the Dalíesque cover of Knopf's 1948 first edition brings to mind Hitchcock's Spellbound. Herr Doktor Klifter is one of two – two – psychoanalysts who chew up page after page with theories as to the source of Bret's psychosis, Interesting stuff, I guess, but it was much more fun to read about Bret's bar fight.
It seemed more real, too.
Dedication:
To Margaret [Millar]
Epigraph:
For now am I discovered vile, and of the vile. O ye three roads, and thou concealed dell, and oaken copse, and narrow outlet of three ways, which drank my own blood…
– Sophocles, Oedipus Tyrannus
Trivia:In 1980, the novel was made into what looks to be a particularly bad Canadian film known variously as Deadly Companion, Double Negative, Killer aus den Dunkel, Kauhun pierre and Imagem Dupla.
The subject of a future post. Object: A 222-page Dell mapback with cover illustration by Bob Stanley. I purchased my copy for $7.50 this past January at London's Attic Books, a mere three kilometres down three roads from the University of Western Ontario, Millar's alma mater.
Access: Published in 1948 by Knopf, for a fourth novel from a major house the first edition isn't cheap. We're well over US$300 before we find a copy in decent dust jacket.
The Knopf and Dell editions are the only to have been published under Millar's real name; the others – Cassell, Bantam, Corgi, Warner, Virgin, Allison & Busby and Vintage/Black Lizard – employ his more famous nom de plume. That last, the Vintage/Black Lizard edition, is in print at US$15.95/C$17.95.
While Americans are well-served, we Canadians starve. The only library copies I see are held by the Kitchener Public Library, the Toronto Public Library, the University of Toronto and the University of Calgary.
The University of Western Ontario does not have a copy.
As with most Millar/Macdonalds, translations abound: French (La boite de Pandora), Dutch (Drie wegen), German (Der Mörder im Spiegel), Italian (L'assassino di mia moglie), Portuguese (Vitória amarga), Polish (Troista droga), Czech (Rozcestí), Finnish (Valheen pitkät jäljet), Russian (Tri dorogi) and Japanese (三つの道).
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.
