McClelland's Experiment, Newfeld's Art

Mad Shadows [La Belle Bête]

Marie-Claire Blais [Merloyd Lawrence, trans.]

Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1960

An antidote to Friday's post.

Isabelle Hughes' review of The Double Hook has had me revisiting McClelland & Stewart's 'unusual experiment' of the late 'fifties and early 'sixties. Encyclopedia of Canadian Literature (note: not The Encyclopedia...) devotes a surprising amount of space to the venture in its entry on Sheila Watson:

In 1959 and 1960 the Canadian publisher McClelland and Stewart published its first two paperback originals, choosing two newcomers to advance the guard: the second book was Mad Shadows, the translation of Marie-Claire Blais's first novel, published a year earlier when she was 20 years old. The first, by a few months, was The Double Hook. Both books were designed by Frank Newfeld, who would become the first notable postwar book designer in Toronto, and they would openly declare the primacy of innovative book design.

These words, penned by George Bowering, aren't quite right. For one, they fail to mention that these titles appeared in simultaneous cloth and paper editions. I might also point out that Irving Layton's M&S debut, Red Carpet for the Sun (1959), hit the stores in both cloth and paper during the nine or so months that separated The Double Hook and Blais' Mad Shadows. Still, Bowering does recognize an important element ignored by Hughes – that being the creative contributions by Newfeld. The entry continues: 'Adepts might have thought about Wyndham Lewis and Marshall McLuhan. The proper text of The Double Hook begins after 12 pages of highly noticeable front matter.'

While there was nothing at all standard in Newfeld's designs – Red Carpet for the Sun began with six pages of colour illustrations – I find his approach unwaveringly reminiscent of being eased into a movie through the opening credits. Here, for example, are the first thirteen pages of Mad Shadows. It isn't until part way down the fifteenth page that the novel's first sentence – 'The train was leaving town.' – appears.

(My copy was signed by the gracious Ms Blais one fine chilly Vancouver evening in the autumn of 2001.)

Gustafson's Good or Bad Novel

Ralph Barker Gustafson

16 August 1909 - 29 May 1995

In recent months, I've come to realize the importance of nineteen-aught-nine to the poetry of Anglo-Quebec. A.M. Klein was born that year, as were Ralph Gustafson and John Glassco. Three very different poets and, I dare say, three very different men.

Today belongs to Gustafson. I'm sometimes hesitant when acknowledging anniversaries here – it may be argued that the poet didn't always receive the recognition he deserved, but his writing wasn't exactly suppressed or ignored. That said, there is one work, No Music in the Nightingale, that could be considered forgotten. Much of what I know of this unpublished novel comes from Jack, A Life in Letters, James King's 1999 biography of Jack McClelland. Its history is curious, one where publication, which at first seems certain, becomes less likely with each new draft. We're told that in 1953 the publisher approached Gustafson, then under contract with Viking in New York, hoping to win Canadian rights. Three years later, the manuscript arrived at McClelland and Stewart's offices, generating an 'enthusiastic letter' with detailed comments from fiction editor Conway Turton.

Then... silence.

Three more years passed, during which M&S published Gustafson's well-received collection of verse, Rivers Among Rocks. The poet wrote McClelland asking him to reconsider the novel. This time, however, the reception was muted. 'We have read it here and are reserving judgement', he wrote. 'It's either very, very good or very, very bad. I'm damned if I know which.' These words, to Little, Brown editor Alan D. Williams, were part of an ill-fated effort to find an American co-publisher. What happened to the early contract with Viking, King doesn't say.

Gustafson tried again in 1965, sending a McClelland a revised version of the novel. This time, John Robert Colombo weighed in with a reader's report that featured a fatal line: 'As a poet he is a consummate craftsman – but as a novelist: ugh!' In response, Gustafson wrote McClelland: 'I was deflated by the readers' reports and haven't got up enough courage to read through the novel again – I know I should, in fairness to you, and I know it needs one revision. I suppose, on the whole, after the reader's "ugh," you better ship the thing home to me, alas.'

The unpublished novel is held at the Queen's University Archives.

A POD Publisher's Alternate Universe

I've taken more than a few swipes at print on demand publishers. And why not? The industry has yet to complete its second decade and already these firms are responsible for a great percentage of the ugliest books in existence. Blurred scans, scored texts and missing pages only add to the unpleasantness. However, much was forgiven today – if only temporarily – after I happened on the latest post by J.R.S. Morrison at his always interesting Caustic Cover Critic blog. Mr Morrison brings to our attention English POD publisher Tutis Digital, whose covers feature the most bizarre pairings of title and image I have ever seen.

A quick visit to the company's website brings photographs of Jacques Cartier's nuclear submarine, the Samurai War between Canada and the United States and the tropical paradise that is Quebec. I present the following without further comment, adding only that Tutis offers an alternate edition of The Backwoods of Canada, one that features a handsome cover image of the majestic mountains of Peterborough, Ontario.

Related post:

It's Tutis Time!

POD Cover of the Month: Romany of the Snows
POD Cover of the Month: The Sky Pilot

The Modern Canadian Novel at Fifty

A bit late, but it was only yesterday that I happened upon the above, placed in the 16 May 1959 edition of the Globe and Mail. Can't imagine Jack McClelland was too happy with the investment – the very same page features a review titled 'Left Hook, Right Hook, KO!'

While critic Isabelle Hughes begins by praising the experimental nature of the book, her compliments are directed at the publisher, not the author:

By far the most interesting thing about The Double Hook – which is a first novel by Canadian writer, Sheila Watson – is that it represents an unusual experiment in Canadian publishing. The book is available in two covers, one paper and one cloth. This arrangement, which seems eminently sensible, gives the reader a choice between buying a new book at a reasonable price if he does not wish to add it to his permanent library, or investing a larger sum in it if he does.

It is extremely doubtful, however, whether The Double Hook was a happy selection with which to introduce this experiment. Obscure in style, eccentric in punctuation, and with a plot that is difficult to follow, it is permeated by an odd atmosphere of unreality; it has the quality of a distorted, not especially vivid dream.

...

The Double Hook is by no means an easy book to read. Certainly, it cannot be described as entertainment in any sense of the word. And surely a novel, of all forms of literature, ought primarily to entertain the reader, or at least to draw him into a world which for the time seems real to him. However profound and thought-provoking a novel's thesis may be, if it is not intelligible to the average discerning person who likes an absorbing story, then that book fails as a novel.

The reviewer's words remind me of Earle Birney, who had two years earlier written McClelland to say that he'd found the novel 'monotonous, self-conscious, artificial and lacking in real fictional interest'. He advised McClelland not to publish, complaining, 'I just don't know what the damn novel is about, or I didn't until it was almost ended.'

A year after publication, McClelland told the Montrealer that he hadn't expected to break even on the novel. In fact, it had already turned a profit. Good man, that Jack McClelland.