The Dusty Bookcase

04 April 2014

A Sailor's Story

Overnight Escapade

Stephen Mark

Toronto: News Stand Library, 1950

The publisher comes clean on the title page. "Overnight Escapade" is no novel, but the longest of a number of stories bound in a cheap paperback that is sure to come apart in your hands.

I admit to being shocked by its beginning: "The glory hole stank more than usual from the sweat of men".

No seaman, I was unaware of "glory hole" as a nautical term.

"Overnight Escapade" is less about ships than shore leave. Central character sailor Steve Green is a man adrift with no attachment to anyone or anything:

Ten years I'd been going to sea – looking for something. I didn't know what when I started – I still don't know, but there's that lousy feeling I get in my stomach and in my brain every now and then.

Now, some might call that a hangover, but Steve is no boozehond. While fellow crewmen check out the public houses of London, the latest port of call, he continues his aimless wandering on dry land. He's taking a breather in front of the Criterion Theatre at Piccadilly Circus when a long black Daimler draws up. Inside a veiled woman with voice "like Margaret Sullivan [sic] only a thousand times more sexy" beckons.

Who can resist!

The mystery woman takes him to a Regent's Park mansion, up a darkened staircase, through a gathering of men and women in evening dress, and into her warm bed.

Seconds of pleasure follow.

This is no slight on Steve – such is the pace of his overnight escapade that there's barely time for a quickie. He hasn't even hitched up his pants before the mystery woman, Elspeth, asks for a favour. He soon finds himself smuggling a package past the well-dressed group. Per instructions, he takes a cab to Denman Street, where he delivers same to one Anthony Masker, the most unattractive transvestite I've yet encountered in our literature.

This was a fruit factory and it looked as if I was the guy about to be served for dessert.

Though Steve is rather rude in declining Anthony's invitation to a bit of fun with a "pretty young queen" in Chinese pyjamas, he politely accepts a drink… which turn out to be a mickey finn. When he comes to, he finds Anthony gone and the queen "as cold as a prostitute's kiss – dead as yesterday's news." Not one hour has passed since our hero enjoyed the pleasures of Elspeth's flesh.

(cliquez pour agrandir)

As I say, "Overnight Escapade" is fast paced. Before the night is up, Steve will have run into a pal in a pub, accompanied a floozy to a hotel room, and been abducted no less than three times. He'll have travelled by train, cab, ship and submarine. Our hero will have also visited a secret island full of Nazi planes and atomic bombs one hundred or so metres off the English coast.

Reading Steve's story I was reminded of the overnight escapade in Douglas Sanderson's Flee from Terror. It only works if the reader accepts a world in which ships bound from London reach the North Sea in well under an hour, and one can travel by rail from Clacton-on-Sea to Liverpool Street station in fifteen minutes. It only works if one believes that the House of Commons is 24/7 and Scotland Yard inspectors are at their desks by five in the morning. It only works if…

Of course, "Overnight Escapade" doesn't work at all. That is, unless the reader recognizes that Steve, our narrator, loses consciousness three more times in its telling – twice from blows to the head.

Favourite passage:

Just as she gets to me she raises her arm and lifts her veil off her face.
ZING!!!!
I don't know what I was expecting but it sure didn't measure up to what I got. Hedy Lamarr is a bag compared to this – and I would never kick Hedy Lamarr out of bed.

Favourite sentence:

When I reached the end of the dock I glanced back at my ship, squatting black and ugly, like an old woman relieving herself.

Bloomer:

The dames had to force themselves to follow Frank around the glory hole.

Object: A poorly produced 160-page mass market paperback, edited in typical NSL style.

Cover by Syd Dyke!

Access: News Stand Library printed separate editions for the Canadian and American markets, then let the novel slip away. Only one copy of the Canadian, the true first, is listed online. A Very Good copy at US$10, it's a bargain. Three copies of the American, all Very Good, are on offer at US$15 to US$20. They are to be considered if the Canadian is gone.

WorldCat lists one copy – the American edition – held at Library and Archives Canada. C'est tout.

02 April 2014

The Master of All Poets Outlives Longfellow, Writes Victoria, Takes on Tennyson and Calls for a Vote

With National Poetry Month in its second day,
Is it not time to celebrate James Gay?

The first Poet Laureate of Canada (by his own account), James Gay produced some of the most memorable verse of the nineteenth century. Such was his capacity that the titles alone are worth repeating: "Gay's Talents", "James Gay's Book of Poems", "A Greater Scholar than James Gay", "The Feathered Tribe and the Poet James Gay", "Throw All Our Grog Bottles Away, Like J. Gay" and "The Mind of Man is Ofttimes Blighted". The poet's accomplishments become all the more impressive when one considers that he didn't begin composing until late in life, after having suffered a bout of "brain fever".

As his name suggests, Gay was a cheerful man, though sadness did enter through the death of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and the inexplicable silence that met repeated entreaties that Victoria recognize his position as Poet Laureate. Both are united in his 1882 poem "My Latest Address to Her Majesty":

My honoured Queen, I feel sorry to say,
I received the sad news across the way
Of my brother Longfellow's death, on the twenty-fourth day.
Singular for me to say he died on my birthday, March, the twenty- fourth day.
The age of both is very true—
Longfellow seventy-five, and Gay seventy-two.
The brightest of poets have passed away:
Now its left between Tennyson and Gay.

Four years earlier the poet had doubled his efforts to be recognized after Victoria's son-in-law, the Marquis of Lorne, became Governor General of Canada. Gay had something in common with the Marquis as he was not born Canadian. The Bard of Guelph began life on 24 March 1810 in Bratton Clovelly, Devon, emigrating to the fair Dominion twenty-four years later. Anticipating a trip to the land of his birth, Gay sent to Rideau Hall "My Address to His Excellency the Marquis of Lorne and Her Royal Highness Princess Louise (No. 2)", in which are found these lines:

As the greatest Poets have passed away,
It appears it's left between Tennyson and James Gay.
Being so long in Canada, according to my belief,
I want to wear on my person the Canadian medal, the beaver and maple leaf;
So when I travel throughout my native land hundreds can have to say,
And also have the pleasure of seeing the world's Poet James Gay,
Poet Laureate of Canada up to this present day;
And when I receive my Canadian medal I shall feel happy as the flowers of May.

A carpenter, an innkeeper, a gunsmith, a locksmith, a musician, a showman and, of course, a poet, Gay was nothing if not ambitious. Recognition as Poet Laureate was secondary to confirmation of his claim to being the Master of All Poets.

Laurels, I have not gained through superstition,
But won by merit and fair ambition;
The greatest poets having long since gone to rest,
On two are left behind of the very best.
Alfred Tennyson is from the south of England,
And James Gay is from Devonshire in the west,
So both poets are English I am proud to say.
It now remains for all to say
Who is the Master Poet of the day,
Tennyson or James Gay.

Gay called for a popular vote to determine whether it was he or Tennyson who was the Master of All Poets. Though it never came, the former gunsmith continued with certain confidence to use the title throughout the remainder of his life. Seven months Tennyson's junior, I imagine he thought he had a fair chance at outliving the Poet Laureate of Great Britain and Ireland. However, it was Gay who was called heavenward first, on 23 February 1891. Alfred, Lord Tennyson, his rival, followed nineteen months later.

Verse for Victoria Day by the Master of all Poets

'November the First' by the Master of All Poets

28 March 2014

The Bullet Trains of the Montreal Metro

Just got into Montreal thanks to my friends at The Word bookstore who kindly offered a ride from my door to theirs. A distance of 694 kilometres, it was punctuated by a stop at Brockville's From Here to Infinity, at which I scored the above.

More on those another day.

For now, a few print on demand covers I've been sitting on. All are products of VDM Publishing, the very worst of the print on demand vultures.