A Publisher's Worst Book?

A sunny weekend in St Marys was made brighter still when I finally finished Arctic Rendez-vous, the sixth novel by part-time pilot and sometime novelist Keith Edgar.

Now all I have to do is write a review of the damn thing.

Arctic Rendez-vous ranks in the lower tier of Canada's post-war pulps. The early pages are by far the most interesting, taking its hero, Taffy Calhoun, from chatting up a young lady in the Imperial Room of Toronto's Royal York Hotel, to a tense business meeting at the Bank of Commerce Building.

Things then shift to the Arctic archipelago... where my interest waned.

I would've given up on Arctic Rendez-vous had not been the errors – the many errors – that plagued the book. Something of a surprise, they kept me going because I'd long considered the novel's publisher, Collins White Circle, to be the most competent producer of Canadian post-war paperbacks. I've read White Circle editions of Ralph Connor, Hugh Garner, Stephen Leacock, and David Montrose, but never encountered anything nearly inept.

Ignoring typos – "riffe" for "rifle" is one example – let's look at the title: Arctic Rendez-vous. The title page and back cover have it as "Arctic Rendezvous."

This, I'm willing to overlook – hell, no less a publisher than Penguin got the title wrong with no less an author than Brian Moore – but then comes the back cover copy:

"Here is the story of a man and a woman, savage and elemental, matching their hatred and a strange attraction in a race for a guilty secret and sunken fortune..."

In fact, the fortune is not sunken, though there are several pages in which Taffy believes that might be the case. The "ghost-ship Baychimo" doesn't feature in the novel. Taffy and Marta are racing to reach the Unaikto, a fictional ship that was abandoned after becoming icebound.

This is not to say that there was no Baychimo. It was abandoned in 1931, the very same year as the fictional Unaikto. A ghost-ship, it was last seen in 1969.

That's Marta being groped on the cover.

Her hair should be black.

Her breasts should be conical.

More anon.

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The Wonderful World of Mortimer Tombs

The Dustiest Bookcase: B is for Beresford-Howe

The Dustiest Bookcase:

Short pieces on books I've always meant to review (but haven't).

They're in storage as we build our new home.

Patience, please.

My Lady Greensleeves

Constance Beresford-Howe

New York: Ballantine, 1955

220 pages

The author's fourth novel – and lone historical novel – My Lady Greensleeves holds the distinction of being her worst received. Eighteen years passed before she returned with her fifth, The Book of Eve.

In the three-page "About Constance Beresford-Howe" tacked to the end of the novel, the author reveals that My Lady Greensleeves was inspired by a sixteenth-century scandale involving Anne Hungerford, husband Sir William Hungerford, and William Darrell, who was accused of being Anne's lover.

Beresford-Howe uses Anne as a model for the novel's Avys Winter; Sir William is Piers Winter, and Durrell becomes Avys's kissing cousin Henry Brandon.

I don't much care for historical fiction, but regret that I've not read this one. It would be interesting to see just how much the author drew from history. Sir William Hunderford's father was beheaded for violating the Buggery Act of 1533. Does Piers Winters' papa meet the same fate? All evidence indicates that William Durrell committed infanticide at the birth of a child he'd fathered with a servant girl. He was accused of tossing the newborn into a fire.

Kudos to the cover artist for depicting the heroine in green sleeves.

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The Queen is Dead

Verse for Victoria Day, composed by Jean Blewett upon news of the monarch's death. This version is taken from The Cornflower and Other Poems (Toronto: Briggs, 1906).

QUEEN VICTORIA

1837 

The sunshine streaming through the stained glass
Touched her with rosy colors as she stood,
The maiden Queen of all the British realm,
In the old Abbey on that soft June day.
Youth shone within her eyes, where God had set
All steadfastness, and high resolve, and truth;
Youth flushed her cheek, dwelt on the smooth white brow
Whereon the heavy golden circlet lay. 

The ashes of dead kings, the history of
A nation's growth, of strife, and victory,
The mighty past called soft through aisle and nave:
"Be strong, O Queen; be strong as thou art fair!"
A virgin, white of soul and unafraid.
Since back of her was God, and at her feet
A people loyal to the core, and strong.
And loving well her sweetness and her youth. 

1901 

Upon her woman's head earth's richest crown
Hath sat with grace these sixty years and more.
Her hand, her slender woman's hand, hath held
The weightiest sceptre, held it with such power
All homage hath been hers, at home, abroad,
Where'er hath dwelt a chivalrous regard
For strength of purpose and for purity,
For grand achievement and for noble aim. 

To-day the cares of State no longer vex;
To-day the crown is laid from off her brow. 

Dead! The great heart of her no more will beat
With tenderness for all beneath her rule.
Dead! The clear eyes of her no more will guard
The nation's welfare. Dead! The arm of her
No more will strike a mighty blow for right
And justice; make a wide world stand amazed
That one so gentle as old England's Queen
Could be so fearless and so powerful! 

Full wearily the sense of grief doth press
And weight us down. The good Queen is no more;
And we are fain to weep as children weep
When greedy death comes to the home and bears
From thence the mother, whose unfailing love
Hath been their wealth, their safeguard, and their pride.

Related posts:

Victoria Day Poetry Disaster

 Cheery Victoria Day Verse from the Cheese Poet

A Civil Servant's Awful Victoria Day Poem

Queen Victoria and He

Verse for Victoria Day by the Master of All Poets

'Away to Canada' – A Song for Victoria Day

Victoria Day Verse from Victoria

Victoria Day Verse from the Second World War

More Victoria Day Disaster Verse

A Teenage Rock Photographer Between the Covers

Longtime readers may remember me writing here of teenage adventures smuggling cameras into concerts. Sadly, in middle age, those acts still rank amongst my most daring. What I  failed to mention is that the resulting photos ended up in the pages of Bandersnsnatch, the student newspaper of John Abbott College, for which I served as entertainment editor. We were offered press screenings to Hollywood films and had tickets waiting at the Centaur Theatre box office, but music dominated our coverage. Anyone distributed by Polygram had a

A Durutti Column column

leg up because the company sent us records. The Durutti Column received more notice in Bandersnatch than all the Southam and Thompson papers combined.

Lest anyone think we teens could be bought with freebees, two non-Polygram acts, David Bowie and Gang of Four, received by far the most column inches. I penned the paper's reviews of Scary Monsters, "Up the Hill Backwards," Baal, "Under Pressure," and "Cat People," as well as reissues of his own teenage work with the Mannish Boys, the King Bees, and the Lower Third.

Gang of Four didn't have nearly so long a history. Bandersnatch was there from the beginning, praising Entertainment! and the Gang of Four EP. I wrote those reviews, and saw the band's 4 July 1981 concert at Montreal's Beer Gardens. The photos I took at that show – with smuggled camera – decorated further reviews of Solid Gold, Another Day/Another Dollar, and everything else I wrote about Gang of Four.

Going over old issues of Bandersnatch – even then, I knew to save them – I see those same photos have taken on a sepia tone. They're cleaner in Red Set: A History of Gang of Four, a new book by my friend Jim Dooley.

I first met Jim the year after those heady days at Bandersnatch came to an end. Back then, I doubt either of us would've dreamt – or even dared dream – that he'd one day write the authoritative history of this band we both loved so much. I can say with certainty that I never thought the photos I took all those years ago at the Beer Garden would feature in that same book.

I'm honoured. Jim is one of the most astute critics and music historians I've ever read.

Today marks the UK release of Red Set, published by London's Repeater Books. On June 19, the book will be available in Canada and the United States. Well worth the wait.

Again, I'm honoured.

Congratulations, Jim!

Congratulations all around!

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My Career as a Teenage Rock Photogapher

Les Plouffe: An Amazon Customer is Disappointed

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Verse for Mother's Day by Dorothy Livesay's Mum

Florence Randal Livesay
1874 - 1953
RIP

Florence Randal Livesay was a remarkable woman. Born, raised and educated in the small Quebec town of Compton, during the very same years as fellow Comptonian Louis St-Laurent, as a young woman Livesay taught in Montreal, New York, and overseas in Boer War concentration camps. She later worked at the Winnipeg Telegram and Winnipeg Free Press. Her lone book of verse, Shepherd's Purse (Toronto: Macmillan, 1923), was followed by a novel, Savour of Salt (Toronto: Dent, 1927), that was praised by William Arthur Deacon. I came to Florence Randal Livesay through my interest in her daughter, Dorothy Livesay, whose career was propagated in the pages of the Free Press.

Florence Randal Livesay was a good mother.

This verse is one of four Florence Randal Livesay poems included in editor John W. Garvin's Canadian Poems of the Great War (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1918):

Being the the hundredth since the end of the Great War, I couldn't let this Mother's Day pass without acknowledging the fact and adding this verse by Isabel Ecclestone Mackay, which is also taken from Canadian Poems of the Great War:

Happy Mother's Day!

War is over if you want it.

Related posts:

A Novel My Mother Read

A Poem for Mother's Day from the Great War

The Dustiest Bookcase: A is for Adams

The Dustiest Bookcase:

Short pieces on books I've always meant to review (but haven't).

They're in storage as we build our new home.

Patience, please.

S: Portrait of a Spy

Ian Adams

Toronto: Virgo, 1981

196 pages

I wrote a great deal about S: Portrait of a Spy in my first book Character Parts, which is pretty much the reason I haven't covered it here. An intriguing novel of political intrigue concerning a member of the RCMP who is suspected of being both a KGB and CIA mole, S generated headlines through my college years. Most came courtesy of Toronto Sun publisher Peter Worthington, who pushed the idea that Leslie James Bennett, former head to the RCMP's Russian Intelligence Service Desk, was the model for the title character. Worthington encouraged Bennett to sue, which is exactly what he did, going after Adams and original publisher Gage for $2.2 million.

S: Portrait of  Spy
Ian Adams
Toronto: Gage, 1979

In December 1980, Bennett agreed to a modest out-of-court settlement, barely enough to cover his legal fees, and made the mistake of insisting upon this notice, which appears in the Virgo edition:

"A curious resolution, as the disclaimer republished the alleged libel even as it discredited it," noted lawyer Douglas J. Johnson.

Agreed.

The Virgo edition also includes a good deal of information on Bennett, much of it gleaned through court testimony. Transcripts are provided.

Bennett described Adams' novel as "a typical KGB-type operation" and went so far as to claim that his life was under threat from an RCMP "death squad."

He died in Melbourne of kidney failure on 18 October 2003,  four days after the publication of Character Parts. I deny any responsibility.

Related post:

The Trudeau Papers: Bang!