Sugar-Puss Returns!

Sixty-three years after it disappeared from drugstore spinner racks, Sugar-Puss on Dorchester Street is finally making its way to bookstore shelves. This is not your grandparents' Sugar-Puss, but a brand new edition with Introduction by Will Straw. Reset and printed on FSC certified paper, unlike the News Stand Library original this baby is built to last!

Much has changed since the story of young, innocent, farmette Gisele Lapine last saw print. Dorchester is not a street but a boulevard. No longer a centre of the city's nightlife, it's now a bloodless artery lined by some of the city's blandest buildings. Even the name is gone. The honour conferred upon Guy Carleton, 1st Baron Dorchester, the man credited with saving Quebec from the Americans during their Revolutionary War, has been stripped and given to a former United States Army liaison officer.

Enough. This is not a time for speeches. In celebration of her return, I present a Sugar-Puss Top Ten – favourite passages from the novel, beginning with the very first sentence:

1 - Dorchester Street spews out almost within shadow of the Harbour Bridge in Montreal’s slummy, crummy East End. Her spawning ground is wedged solidly between vermin-ridden tenements where French and English meet – but do not blend – and the greasy waters of the St. Lawrence River.

2 - Her eyes were large and softly brown as was her skin thereby hinting of a strain of Basque blood. Her breasts were large and firm; a legacy of her Norman ancestry. Long legs tapered off from well-rounded thighs to shapely ankles. Her feet were small and beautifully formed as are those of most French Canadian women.

3 - Bewildered Gisele looked at her newly acquired, giant-sized and self-appointed protector. He smiled back at her through a cloud of smoke. "It's okay, Honey. I'm Jim Schultz. I own this flea trap and you're safe here as you are in yah mudda's arms. Safer unless yah mudda'sgot cauliflower ears."

4 - The girl slouched against the bar beside her. "My name's Trixie. Helluva name that. Pop said he named me after a mongrel that died but Ma said it was a burlesque broad he used to sleep with."

5 - He turned slightly and looked down at her. The lamp cast a bluish glow across her flat stomach. It was like television, he thought.

6 - He didn't trust himself to speak. Instead he drank slowly looking into the light until his eyes blurred.
     She whimpered like a spaniel. "Please, Jimmy."

7 - "Today, Gisele," she told herself, "you are a woman." She paused for some time reliving every one of the precious moments of the night. "You are," she said, "a young woman in love – and what's more you look it."

8 - "Gisele ma petite bebe you are the greatest thing to hit show business here since Fifi D'Orsay. You are superb, magnificent, you are – shall we say – tres, tres? A combination of Pavlowa and Mam'selle St. Cyr. You were great."

9 - Madame Lapointe had given the nearest possible example of a human being sparked with atomic power.

10 - "So she's still in the city," he thought grimly, "and so are a million and a half other souls – plus a few heels."

The Gazette, 2 November 1949

Related post:

'THE NEONS GO UP ON MONTREAL'

O is for OW!! OW!! OW!! OUCH!!! OUCH!!!!

A glimpse of Jazz Age Montreal published ninety years ago today in The Axe, John H. Roberts' much-missed muckraking tabloid.

"HE-SWEETIES HAUNT HOTELS" is pretty great, but I much prefer the sub-headline. Click to enlarge.

The Axe, 19 October 1923

Eleven Earth and High Heavens

It's been a week since the celebration of Gwethalyn Graham at the Writers' Chapel, which isn't to say that she is no longer on my mind. Looking through my collection, I'm beginning to think that nearly all Anglo Montreal families once had a copy of Earth and High Heaven. That pictured above, published in 1948 by Bantam, was ours. I picked up my own, the Lippincott first American edition (below) from the "FREE" box at Cheap Thrills. Like Lionel Shapiro's The Sixth of June, there was a time when it was pretty thick on the ground.

Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1944

I like the Lippincott cover because it reminds me of Charles Addams; those trees are most certainly his. The English Jonathan Cape edition, which I understand to be the true first, doesn't have nearly as much going for it:   

London: Jonathan Cape, 1944

The edition I've always wanted was given away to Americans serving in the Second World War. Cheap, so cheap, it was not designed to survive – Lippincott didn't want thousands of used copies flooding the market in peacetime – but they are out there.

New Delhi: Editions for the Armed Services, 1944

Much more rare is Entre ciel et terre, the French translation. I've never seen a copy. The image below was found in my online wanderings.

Entre ciel et terre
Paris: Tallandier, 1946

Odd to think that this novel of Montreal – one that dominated bestseller lists, one that is still studied university – should have enjoyed just one printing in French translation... from a Parisian press.

Welcome to the depressing world of Canadian literature.

Outside the English-speaking world, it's the Germans – yes, the Germans – who have paid the most attention to Graham's novel.

Im Himmel und auf Erden
Nürnberg: Nest Verlag, 1948

The novel has also found a home with the Dutch, the Danes and the Finns.

Maa ja korkea taivas
Helsinki: Otava, 1947

In the nearly seven decades since Earth and High Heaven first appeared, it's pretty much retreated behind Canadian borders. The novel that once topped the New York Times Bestseller List was last published down south during the Johnson administration:  

New York: Paperback Library, 1965

While Earth and High Heaven has had more legs in Canada, this didn't mean much for its author. Graham received a $100 advance on royalties in 1960 when the novel joined the New Canadian Library. Four years later, the author received a further three dollars when it earned out.

Gwethalyn Graham died in 1965, so was spared witness to the ugly New Canadian Library editions credited to "Gwenthalyn Graham".

  

Two bucks will buy a copy from a Yankee bookseller. That said, he has "McClulland and Stewart" as the publisher, so I can't be sure it's the same.

Never mind. The one you want is the 2003 Cormorant edition:

By far the most attractive edition ever published in this country, it has an Introduction by Norman Ravvin.

Buy it!

With Norman Ravvin, Claire Holden Rothman and the Venerable Linda Borden Taylor
The Writers' Chapel, Montreal, 11 October 2013 

Credit: The image of the NCL "Gwenthalyn Graham" edition was lifted from the very fine Chumley and Pepys on Books blog. 

Related post:

The Paralyzing Success of Gwethalyn Graham