No Picnic

Murder's No Picnic

E.L. Cushing

London: Wright & Brown, 1956

188 pages

My latest Dusty Bookcase review, of E.L. Cushing's Murder's No Picnic, is now available gratis at the Canadian Notes & Queries website:

A House Full of Orphans

I wish I could say I liked the novel. I didn't. Given its cover, I was at the very least expecting a fun read. It wasn't. Regular readers may remember my enjoyment of Murder Without Regret. Now that was fun!

I don't know that I'll read anything more by Cushing. Her books aren't at all common and tend to be quite expensive. My warped copy of Murder's No Picnic was purchased earlier this year £16.00 from an English bookseller located somewhere in Devon. With shipping added, the thing set me back well over fifty dollars. The true first edition was published in 1953 by New York's Arcadia House. There has never been a Canadian edition. I don't expect we'll ever see one.

Not a Ricochet Books candidate.

Related post:
Bewitched, Bothered, but Not Bewildered

Archibald Lampman's 'In October' in October

The Poems of Archibald Lampman (Toronto: Musson, 1900)

IN OCTOBER

     Along the waste, a great way off, the pines
          Like tall slim priests of storm, stand up and bar
     The low long strip of dolorous red that lines
          The under west, where wet winds moan afar.
     The cornfields all are brown, and brown the meadows
          With the blown leaves' wind-heaped traceries,
     And the brown thistle stems that cast no shadows,
          And bear no bloom for bees. 

     As slowly earthward leaf by red leaf slips,
          The sad trees rustle in chill misery,
     A soft strange inner sound of pain-crazed lips,
          That move and murmur incoherently;
     As if all leaves, that yet have breath, were sighing,
          With pale hushed throats, for death is at the door,
     So many low soft masses for the dying
          Sweet leaves that live no more. 

     Here I will sit upon this naked stone,
          Draw my coat closer with my numbed hands,
     And hear the ferns sigh, and the wet woods moan,
          And send my heart out to the ashen lands;
     And I will ask myself what golden madness,
          What balmed breaths of dreamland spicery,
     What visions of soft laughter and light sadness
          Were sweet last month to me. 

     The dry dead leaves flit by with thin weird tunes,
          Like failing murmurs of some conquered creed,
     Graven in mystic markings with strange runes,
          That none but stars and biting winds may read;
     Here I will wait a little; I am weary,
          Not torn with pajn of any lurid hue,
     But only still and very gray and dreary,
          Sweet sombre lands, like you.

Related post:

'October in War Time'

A Misleading Amazon Customer Review

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Les Plouffe: An Amazon Customer is Disappointed

An Invalid Amazon Customer Review (and others)

Amazon Customer Review:

'A Jonny come lately approach to writing bout the American frontier'

An Amazon Customer on Michel Tremblay's Possible Potential

An Amazon Customer Review is Reconsidered

Homophobes and Book Burners Weigh In

The Return of John Buell's Four Days

John Buell is Montreal's most unjustly neglected novelist, and this is his most unjustly neglected novel. Four Days is so strong a work that it alone caused Edmund Wilson to declare Buell one of Canada's foremost writers. Beginning with the 1962 Farrar, Straus & Culahy, the novel enjoyed several editions and translations, then slipped out of print in the early 'nineties.

No more.

This week sees its return, following The Pyx, John Buell's debut novel, as the thirteenth Ricochet Book published by Véhicule Press. Montreal writer Trevor Ferguson, also known by his "John Farrow" pen name, provides a new foreword. As Ricochet series editor, I'm proud to have worked with publishers Simon Dardick and Nancy Marrelli in returning Four Days to print.

I first wrote about Four Days in this 2011 Dusty Bookcase review:

Four Days in Darkest Quebec

It is one of Canada's greatest novels.

Edmund Wilson would agree.

John Buell
1927 - 2013

Related posts:

Remembering John Buell: A Lot to Make Up For
Four Days in Darkest Quebec

The Pyx Censored!