Old Folks

Jean-Louis Lessard has just completed a very fine series on early Canadian writer Philippe-Joseph Aubert de Gaspé, the seigneur best-known for Les Anciens Canadiens (1863). I first encountered this historical romance as part of a CEGEP course on the literature of Quebec (if memory serves, Hubert Aquin's Prochain épisode and David Fennario's Without a Parachute were also on the reading list), but the words I read belonged to translator Sir Charles G.D. Roberts.

I've always viewed Roberts and his translation, The Canadians of Old, with a dab of derision, an irrational discourtesy that originates with the cover of the New Canadian Library edition used in the course. Those familiar with the NCL's second series design will be grateful that the only image I could find is so small. It was such an ugly book, made all the worse by the inexplicable presence of Roberts' name in place of the author's. Even the title is wrong: Canadians of Old, when it should be The Canadians of Old. Of course, none of this had anything to do with Roberts, who was three decades dead when this particular edition appeared. Like I say: irrational.

To be fair to Sir Charles, his name doesn't even appear on the cover of the handsome 1890 first edition, despite the fact that he was at the time a poet of some acclaim. I don't believe Roberts ever really considered himself a translator. The idea for the book came from New York publisher Appleton, and was accepted at a time when he was in dire need of cash. That said, it wasn't a bad match. Roberts may not have shared Aubert de Gaspé's interest in Boileau and Racine, but both he and the seigneur were readers of Sir Walter Scott. The name of the novel's protagonist, Archibald Cameron of Locheill, provides a good indication of the depth of the baronet's influence. This was raised to the surface in 1905, when publisher L.C. Page reissued the book as Cameron of Lochiel - dropping the double 'l', thus bringing the character's name into line with Cameron of Locheil in Waverley, Scott's hugely successful first novel.

This second title has received a good amount of criticism these past ten decades, but let's again be fair; though adopted in Canada by Copp Clark, it was first imposed on the book by a Boston publisher with an eye on the American market. I'll add that the 1865 theatrical adaptation was titled Archibald Cameron of Locheill ou un épisode de la guerre de Sept Ans au Canada, and that the plot has more to do with Archie than pal and fellow protagonist Jules d'Haberville.

Les Anciens Canadiens holds a unique position in this country as a novel translated by four different hands. The first, by Georgina M. Pennée (The Canadians of Old, 1864), was later revised by Thomas Guthrie Marquis and published in 1929 as Seigneur d'Haberville: A Romance of the Fall of New France. I imagine that Roberts' translation is the most read (the NCL edition sold nearly 1800 copies in the first six months alone); a great shame since it has been surpassed by Jane Brierley's 1996 translation. The only one currently in print, it is highly recommended, as are her translations of Aubert de Gaspé's Mémoires (A Man of Sentiment, 1988) and his posthumous Divers (Yellow-Wolf and Other Tales of the Saint Lawrence, 1990), which received a Governor General's Award.

Oh, and Prochain épisode and Without a Parachute? Also recommended.

Coincidence?

Frank Newfeld's Masterpiece (and Leonard Cohen's Unseen Face for Tits)

The Spice-Box of Earth

Leonard Cohen

Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1961

Let's get this out of the way. Leonard Cohen doesn't really have much of a place in a blog devoted to the suppressed, ignored and forgotten in our literature. Anyone doubting his stature in this country need only look at the media's treatment of this weekend's news out of Valencia. Not to say that there aren't Cohen works that are forgotten and ignored – the short story 'Lovers and Barbers' comes to mind – but this isn't one of them. Most of the poems in The Spice-Box of Earth have reappeared at some point or other – twenty-eight are currently in print as part of Stranger Music: Selected Poems and Songs – and yet, Frank Newfeld's accomplished, award-winning design has never been reprinted.

Of the many books the designer created for McClelland and Stewart, The Spice-Box of Earth ranks as is one of the more elaborate. Issued in simultaneous cloth and paper editions, the book has a cut-out jacket through which the poet's portrait is displayed, while nearly every page features pen and ink illustrations and other design elements printed in red, black and gold.

This was not at all what Cohen had first envisioned. Two years before publication, he'd rejected editor Claire Pratt's proposal that the collection be included as part of M&S's hardcover Indian File poetry series (where it would have followed John Glassco's The Deficit Made Flesh), arguing for a cheaper paperback edition. However, biographer Ira Nadel tells us that the poet underwent a change of heart; when asked to choose between a basic edition and one with a Newfeld design, Cohen opted for the latter. The result is, I think, the designer's finest work.

Access: Canadians, look to your university libraries. There are copies out there for sale, the cheapest being the 1968 Bantam mass market edition (expect to pay at least C$20), but only the 3000 copy first edition features the Newfeld design in its full glory. Cohen being Cohen, Near Fine copies in cloth fetch a very high price – usually somewhere in the area of C$750. One problem is that cut-out jacket, which is easily damaged and, it seems, all too readily discarded. I bought my paperbound copy – signed – as a university student for all of four dollars. The vendor, a long-gone used bookshop on Montreal's Monkland Avenue, was just around the corner from Irving Layton's house. Coincidence? I have my doubts. During that same visit I noticed new copies of Layton's For My Neighbours in Hell (1980) and The Gucci Bag (1983) piled a dozen deep. All were signed.

Beware: the first American edition, published by Viking that same year, incorporates select elements of Newfeld's work, but is considerably less ambitious. It's also not nearly as beautiful or desirable. Lacking the cut-out jacket, it replaces Newfeld's elegant black and gold design with brown and butter.

Let us compare covers: In retrospect, The Spice-Box of Earth seems to have enjoyed a fairly easy birth. Not so, Flowers for Hitler, Cohen's next book of verse. Jack McClelland thought the quality of the poems uneven, while Cohen considered the collection 'a masterpiece'. Then, there was the matter of the proposed title, Opium and Hitler, on which publisher and poet could not agree. The two were still arguing in September 1964, mere months before the pub date, when a new battle flared up. At issue was Newfeld's cover image. I've not seen the design, so rely on imagination coupled with Cohen's own description in a letter to McClelland:

Nobody is going to buy a book the cover of which is a female body with my face for tits. You couldn't give that picture away. It doesn't matter what the title is now because the picture is simply offensive. It is dirty in the worst sense. It hasn't the sincerity of a stag movie or the imagination of a filthy postcard or the energy of real surrealist humour. It is dirty to the brain.

Adding that he refused to 'preside over the distribution of a crude hermaphrodotic distortion of the image of my person', Cohen suggested canceling the book altogether. With the book in production, McClelland could only back down.

What became the cover is, according to Nadel, an amalgamation of six designs Cohen himself provided.

As the biographer suggests, the result appears as 'a Valentine's Day card of sorts.' After The Spice-Box of Earth, it's difficult to see the design as anything but a disappointment. (And it is hard to get past the boyish Hitler in the bottom right... George Gobel's square.) Understandable, then, that it wasn't used when Jonathan Cape issued the first foreign edition in 1973.

But is this really any better?

Hugh Hood and Le Gros Bill

Strength Down Centre: The Jean Béliveau Story

Hugh Hood

Scarborough: Prentice-Hall of Canada, 1970

The Montreal Canadiens begin their 101st year tonight. For at least a dozen reasons too obvious to mention, it's hard to raise much enthusiasm.

(Okay, okay, just one. How about the fact that they'll be hosting a team from some place called Sunrise, Florida.)

Strength Down Centre is an artifact of a time when hockey was healthy, the NHL was exciting and les Glorieux were indeed glorious. It seems an unlikely project for Hood. The author of seventeen novels and ten short story collections, Strength Down Centre, comprising roughly 120 pages of text, is his longest work of non-fiction and only biography. In his 1973 collection of essays, The Governor's Bridge is Closed, Hood reveals that the project originated with Prentice-Hall – and that, as a 'serious artist', his first reaction was to turn it down. (A decision he later described as 'stupid', based on 'simple snobbery'.)

Hood's own strength lay in fiction. Even 'The Pleasures of Hockey', the 'essay' that attracted the publisher's attention, was, by his own admission, a blending of fiction and fact. Hood could write well about sport – see: 'The Sportive Center of Saint Vincent de Paul' – but he was not a sportswriter. This is most evident in the first chapter of Strength Down Centre, covering the Canadiens successful, yet anti-climactic 1969 playoff run.

Saturday night. Big game, big BIG game!

Punchy non-sentences. Liberal use of the upper case. Exclamation marks. Repetition. Repetition and italics. Hood uses them all in an attempt to capture something of Béliveau and his Canadiens on ice. It's only when he turns away from the game, and toward the man, that the book achieves its value. The portrait presented is familiar: a generous, genteel and articulate man. Clearly, Hood recognizes this last quality, allowing Béliveau to tell much of his own story. Several quotes cover six pages or more.

Strength Down Centre received a second printing, but never appeared in paperback. As Puissance au centre: Jean Béliveau (Prentice-Hall, 1970), it is Hood's only translated title. Both editions feature dozens of really great photos, including this one of the subject in conversation with the author.

One not found in the book is this photo of le Gros Bill, smoking and reading in bed. I recommend the latter, but advise against the former.

Object and Access: Montrealers will not be surprised to learn that their own public library system doesn't have a copy, but Puissance au centre is available at the Pierrefonds branch. While the Toronto Public Library and several of our academic libraries hold the book, it is more easily found in the republic to the south. This odd situation due, perhaps, to the crummy binding, which seems designed to come apart with use. Very Good copies of the first edition will set you back US$10. One Montreal bookseller lists a Near Fine copy in Very Good dust jacket signed by Béliveau and the late author. A bargain at US$30.