News Stand Library Cover Cavalcade

As patrons flock to SoHo's Openhouse Gallery to take in cutting edge art commissioned by Harlequin Enterprises, thoughts turn to News Stand Library. The publisher's early rival, New Stand was much more willing to use sex and scandal to sell its wares. In nearly every way, their books were cheaper, nastier and inferior. It makes perfect sense that Harlequin published Brian Moore's first book, while Hugh Garner's second, the pseudonymous Waste No Tears, came from News Stand. And yet, the two competitors did share a few writers, including prolific pulpist Thomas P. Kelley.

The most valuable of all New Stand titles, Kelley's The Gorilla's Daughter – ' OFFSPRING of MAID and MONSTER' – cannot be had in any condition for under C$400. Its cover is more polished than most; a typical example of the publisher's look would be that found on the author's Jesse James: His Life and Death.

The type is ugly and in places difficult to read. Note that the author's name is misspelt, an error found time and again on News Stand covers. Here we have Bentz Plagemann , author of Each Night a Black Desire, identified as Bentz Plageman.

By my count, a dozen covers suffer similar mistakes. Niel H. Perrin is Neil H. Perrin, Murry Leinster is Murray Leinster and Ursula Parrot is good time gal Ursula Parrott. The cover of Alan Marston's Strange Desire reads 'Strange Desires by Alan Malston'.

Other blunders are more curious, and may reveal the true names behind pseudonyms. Just who wrote Private Performance – the Glen Watkins on the cover or the Eliot Brewster credited on the title page? Perhaps the most amusing error is found on the cover of Terry Lindsay's Queen of Tarts, which has the title as 'Quean of Tarts'.

In keeping with the previous post, here are my three all-time favourite News Stand covers. A couple appear to use work produced in a high school art class, but what I find most appealing are the pitch lines above each title. 'Never Will HELL Admit a Gayer Sinner than Laura Warren' reads the first – printed on the cover of a book written by... Laura Warren. An unforgiving editor, perhaps?

Related posts:

About Those Ugly NCL Covers

About Those Awful PaperJacks Covers

Harlequin's Romantic View of the Past

Harlequin's sixtieth anniversary celebrations continue this weekend with the opening of an exhibit devoted to its cover illustrations. Look not in Winnipeg, the city of its birth, or Toronto, home of parent corporation Torstar, the showing is being held at SoHo's Openhouse Gallery.

Since it was announced a few months back, I've been wondering how the publisher would handle its first twelve or so years. As noted previously, Harlequin hasn't been much interested in having attention drawn to its early history. What to do? The answer is found in the exhibition's title: The Heart of a Woman: Harlequin Cover Art 1949-2009. Little place here for Joe Barry's Fall Guy, never mind the vast majority of books from the publisher's first decade. I expect James Hadley Chase's Twelve Chinks and a Woman was particularly unwelcome.

I don't deny that there's interest to be had in viewing sixty years of romance novel cover art; witnessing the rise and fall of the nurse, the rise and fall of the mini-skirt, and the rise and shine of 'inspirational' romances targeted toward born-again Christians. That said, aside from Doctor in Bondage, I find each individual title so very lackluster. True, the artists are technically competent, but like Harlequin's writers they follow formulae. The same notes are struck repeatedly, the same themes are followed, evolution is slow, change is subtle and at times microscopic. The parade of covers is the visual equivalent of Kraftwerk's 'Trans-Europe Express' – except that the latter doesn't go on for six decades. And it's beautiful.

So, I join the publisher's sixtieth anniversary celebrations by presenting, in order, my three all-time favourite Harlequin covers.

Related posts:

Harlequin's Change of Heart

Covering Up the Past

Hard Lessons in Publishing

Not Only Chic, but Well-read

A photograph of Yves Thériault, André Langevin and Jean-Charles Harvey, stumbled upon early this week in the 28 November 1954 edition of Chic, Montreal's 'Journal de la Femme'. The weekly devoted a two-page spread, 'LES ECRIVANS CANADIENS FONT FACE LEUR CHER PUBLIC', to a 14 November gathering of 'romanciers et quelques romancières du Canada français' at the Windsor Hotel's Rose Room. Judging by the photographs, our romancières were severely outnumbered; not one features a female novelist. Here's Thériault again, looking a touch less shifty, standing between Robert Élie and Roger Viau:


Other photos capture Eugène Cloutier, Bertrand Vac, Guy Boulizon and Jean Bruchési. In short, a lot of men who appear happy to be surrounded by the stylish women of the Société d'étude et de conférences, including vice-president Miss Louise McNichols and president Mrs Redmond Roche, shown here with the dowdy Father Marie-Ceslas Forest.

Father Forest served as professor at the Dominican College of Ottawa and the Université de Montréal, was an early supporter of women's suffrage and wrote Le divorce (1920). His papers are held at the Université of Montréal. Much less can be said about Chic. Quebec's Bibliotèque et Archives nationales holds only eleven issues, the final being the edition in which these photographs appeared. Though the newspaper states otherwise, the BAN claims that it was published by Merlin, the company best known for Allô police.

Another Handful of Dust

Dust Over the City [Poussière sur la ville]

André Langevin

Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1955

Since the death of André Langevin in February, I've been reading so slowly, so very slowly, this translation of his second novel. I discovered Dust Over the City by chance when a student – and as with everything from those heady days, it was revisited with trepidation. I needn't have worried.

The opening image continues to haunt: a lone man stands motionless, bareheaded, coatless, late at night in the swirling snow, eyes fixed on the darkened house in which his adulterous wife of three months sleeps. Alain Dubois is a talented young doctor who attends to the pale, sickly, suffering citizens of Macklin (really Thetford Mines – those swirling flakes of snow mix with asbestos dust). Confident and efficacious in his professional life, he is staggered and debilitated by his wife's infidelity.

There's little story here; these are the thoughts of a tortured soul who struggles to comprehend. It's not the sort of novel suited for the screen, yet in 1968 Langevin adapted the work for director by Arthur Lamothe. The resulting film has disappeared from view. The only glimpse I've had comes from this brief clip that appeared mysteriously last year on YouTube.

The translation, credited to John Latrobe and Robert Gottlieb (Robert Gottlieb? The editor?), is a haphazard piece of work. I suspect it was tackled tag-team. Sure, as a whole it's more than competent, but it often becomes awkward and clumsy. An example: recklessness nearly leads to violent death – the couple's car is nearly hit by a train. The young wife's passion inflamed, she kisses Dubois savagely. Latrobe and Gottlieb have our hero confess:

Her ardor bowled me over. Gently I repulsed her. We drove on...

Though Dust Over the City was published in the United States by Putnam, English-language editions of Langevin's work never achieved much in the way of sales. He wrote four other novels – all acclaimed – but only one, Une Chain dans la park (1974), the first Canadian book to be nominated for the Prix Goncourt, appeared in English. In 1976, when Jack McClelland published the translation, Orphan Street, he wrote Hugh MacLennan, 'I am tempted to get really carried away on this one and really try to force-feed the market. We don't do that very often, but there is some justification for it because, as I am sure know, French-Canadian novels in translation almost invariably bomb in English.'

Sadly, Orphan Street was no exception.

Object and Access: Readily available in our larger public libraries. More good news: as number 113 in the old New Canadian Library, there are plenty of copies out there at under C$10. The first edition, a handsome hardcover with dust jacket by Rus Anderson, is usually found at C$20 or less. Copies of Poussière sur la ville are cheaper still – and, as might be expected, more common.

Hey Kids! Comix!

I imagine that there is no more cautionary a tale in comicdom than that of Toronto-born Joe Shuster. Things seemed to have got off to such a good start (though perhaps not quite as swell as is portrayed in the Historica Minute): kid cartoonist Joe and his writer friend Jerry Siegel create Superman and spend several years flogging the character before finding a home with Detective Comics Inc. Then they make the mistake of selling their creation for US$130. Never mind, for the next ten years the pair rake in big bucks working for DC, until they take their employer to court in an ill-fated effort to win back the rights.

Shuster's entry in The Canadian Encyclopedia tells us that he was fired and 'stopped drawing completely.' It's a sloppy error. Shuster and Siegel went on to create Funnyman, a 'two-fisted howlarious scrapper' that soon appeared in dustbins everywhere. A few years later, having finally parted ways with Siegel, Shuster was reduced to providing fetish art for cheap publications like Hollywood Detective, Rod Rule and, above all, Nights of Horror.

Last month, the multi-talented Craig Yoe published Secret Identity, an entertaining and informative look at Shuster's later artistic endeavours. The most interesting aspect of our countryman's work is the inclusion of characters that resemble members of what DC calls 'the Superman family'. Yoe's cover image features a scantily-clad Lois Lane look-alike whipping a man who resembles Superman. And is this cub reporter Jimmy Olsen putting his hand up Lois Lane's skirt? In a library? For shame.

Nights of Horror was eventually banned, its destruction called for by no less a body than the Supreme Court of the United States. Blame for this censorship rests squarely on the shoulders of the Thrill Killers, a Brooklyn-based group of Jewish neo-Nazis. I kid you not, and direct those interested to Yoe's 23 April interview on NPR's Fresh Air.