A Merry Christmas to All

Hard Copy

Mention here is a bit late, but not so much that one can't pick up a copy as a last minute stocking stuffer. The new issue of Canadian Notes and Queries features the debut of The Dusty Bookcase on paper. Subject? Nothing less than John Glassco's most intricate piece of hoaxery: The Temple of Pederasty. Banned in Canada, pulped in the United States, its history is one involving deception, forgery, plagiarism, smuggling and a cold government bureaucrat.

I'll say no more except to point out that the very same issue features a very fine piece by Zachariah Wells' on The Mulgrave Road, Harry Bruce's 1951 collection of verse.

Neglected, not suppressed.

Reclaiming Mark Strand

The Planet of Lost Things

Mark Strand (William Pène Du Bois, illus.)

New York: Potter, 1982

We're a funny lot, forever going on about Jack Kerouac's French Canadian parents, clutching Dollarton squatter Malcolm Lowry to our collective bosom, while ignoring writers who were actually born in this country. I refer here not to Wyndham Lewis, brought into this world on his father's yacht off the coast of Amherst, Nova Scotia, but to those like Saul Bellow who began their lives on Canada's fertile soil.

Yes, let's look at Bellow, a man who was born and lived the first nine years of his life on the Island of Montreal. His name is not found in The Canadian Encyclopedia, The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature or Encyclopedia of Canadian Literature. Is this Nobel Prize recipient not worthy of even a passing reference?

And what of Mark Strand? Look up his birthplace, Summerside, Prince Edward Island, on Wikipedia (that most unreliable of reference tools) and what do you find? Seven NHL players, a few singer-songwriters and an Olympic bobsleigh gold medalist. Pretty impressive for a town of just 14,000 souls. Strand was born and spent his first four years in Summerside, but we ignore that fact, just as we choose not to recognize his Pulitzer Prize or the term he spent as United States Poet Laureate... or this very fine little book. It can be found in nearly three hundred public libraries across the United States, but in Canada we must make do with one lonely copy held in the Toronto Public Library.

There's no poetry in The Planet of Lost Things... by which I mean there's no verse. A children's storybook, this is one of the oddities in Strand's bibliography. It tells the story of a young boy, Luke, who dreams of traveling the solar system in a rocket ship. When he comes across an unknown, planet, the young astronaut decides to investigate. What he finds is a building filled with lost mail, forgotten umbrellas hanging from barren trees and a park populated by lost cats and dogs.

The celestial body's only human inhabitants are the Unknown Soldier and the Missing Person, found by Luke next to a cluster of lost balloons. Together the three wander a melancholy world, breathing an atmosphere that consists largely of air that has escaped from leaking tires.

It all makes for a fun little bedtime story. The challenge for Canadian parents, of course, comes in finding a copy.

Object and Access: A sturdy hardcover with a flimsy dust jacket, the only decent volume currently listed online is being offered at US$60.

A Gentleman of Pleasure

Just announced by McGill-Queen's University Press:

A Gentleman of Pleasure: One Life of John Glassco, Poet,

Memoirist, Translator, and Pornographer

Brian Busby

April 2011

The first biography of Canada's most enigmatic literary figure, a self-described "great practitioner of deceit."

John Glassco (1909-1981) holds a unique position in Canadian letters and a somewhat notorious reputation throughout the world. He is best known for his Memoirs of Montparnasse, the controversial chronicle of his youthful adventures and encounters with celebrities in the Paris of James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, and Ernest Hemingway. Less known are his poetry, his instrumental role in the foundation of modern translation, and his numerous - and widely popular - works of pornography.

A Gentleman of Pleasure not only spans Glassco's life but delves into his background as a member of a once prominent and powerful Montreal family. In addition to Glassco's readily available work, Brian Busby draws on pseudonymous writings published as a McGill student as well as unpublished and previously unknown poems, letters, and journal entries to detail a vibrant life while pulling back the curtain on Glassco's sexuality and unconventional tastes.

In a lively account of a man given to deception, who took delight in hoaxes, Busby manages to substantiate many of the often unreliable statements Glassco made about his life and work. A Gentleman of Pleasure is a remarkable biography that captures the knowable truth about a fascinatingly complex and secretive man.

More, including pre-ordering information, can be found here.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention that the cover is by the talented David Drummond.