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Richlers in Gestation

A couple of cover mockups from my years as a book buyer, both uncovered last week while going trough old boxes. Keeping Track was the working title of Richler's 1990 collection of essays and reviews for Viking Canada. It was ultimately published with a much better title and cover as Broadsides. I don't believe Richler ever intended to put out anything called Selected Essays & Reports; if memory serves he was still hunting around for a title when Knopf Canada presented this cover. The collection was published in 1998 as Belling the Cat.

Note the barking Borzoi. A nice touch, I think.

Five years later, Knopf used the same photo of Richler, by Julian Edelsten, on the front and back covers of my own book, Character Parts.

Glassco in Knowlton

A week tomorrow I'll be speaking on my forthcoming biography of John Glassco, A Gentleman of Pleasure, at the Knowlton Wordfest. For almost a decade, Glassco lived on the outskirts of this beautiful Quebec town in a grand house he immortalized in his poem "The White Mansion".

The image above, taken in 1914, isn't quite of his time, but it does capture Knowlton very much as Glassco knew it when he called the town home. The building closest served as the post office during the four years he delivered the rural mail. It was the only job he ever had.

On Writing a Life of John Glassco, “A Great Practitioner of Deceit”

Sunday, 18 July 2010

1:00

Galerie Bistro CarpeDiem

61 Lakeside Road (Knowlton)

Ville de Lac-Brome

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