Just Say the Invitation Never Arrived

The Globe and Mail, 30 December 1936

A Quiet Revolution and Still Cowards Complain

The Squeaking Wheel

John Mercer [pseud. Eric Cecil Morris]

n.p.: Rubicon, 1966

103 pages

This review now appears, revised and rewritten, in my new book:

The Dusty Bookcase:

A Journey Through Canada's

Forgotten, Neglected, and Suppressed Writing

Available at the very best bookstores and through

Biblioasis, Amazon, Chapters/Indigo, and McNally-Robinson.

Related post:

Bilingual Today, French Tomorrow and the Bigots of Yesteryear

A Merry Christmas to All

A few favourite images from the 1961 Eaton's Santa Claus Parade Colouring Book. The entire thing – 32-pages, plus "COLOUR GUIDE IN FULL COLOUR" – is available for download here from the Archives of Ontario.

Merry Christmas!

Pulp Noir à Montréal

The new edition of Canadian Notes & Queries lands, and with it comes another Dusty Bookcase sur papier. This time the spotlight plays upon Ted Allan's Love is a Long Shot. Not the Love is a Long Shot for which he was awarded the 1984 Stephen Leacock Medal, but a cheap, pseudonymous pulp novel from a quarter-century earlier.

Published by News Stand Library in September 1949, two months before newspaperman Al Palmer’s Sugar-Puss on Dorchester Street, this Love is a Long Shot holds the distinction of being the first pulp noir novel set in Montreal. As I write in CNQ, it ain't that pretty at all. The cover depicts, but doesn't quite capture, one of the darkest, most horrific scenes in any Canadian novel.

There's more to the issue, of course, including new fiction by Nathan Whitlock, new poetry by Nyla Matuck and – ahem – praise for A Gentleman of Pleasure from George Fetherling.

POD Cover of the Month: The Simple Adventures of a Memsahib

Wait, isn't that Montreal?

It seems almost cruel to again focus on Nabu Press, but what better way to begin this day, the 150th anniversary of Sara Jeannette Duncan's birth, than to take a swipe at those dishonouring her work. Using a stock photo of a Slovakian castle for a novel set in India is one thing, but what I find more interesting is the botching of fair Sara's name:

Sara Jeanette (Duncan) "Mrs. Everard Cotes" Cotes

What dog's breakfast lies beneath that cover?

First edition:

New York: Appleton, 1893

A Christmas bonus:

Further ineptitude from POD publisher Echo Library of Fairford, Gloucester. The surname is correct.

Related posts:
POD Cover of the Month: Montreal for Tourists..
POD Cover of the Month: Rila of Ingelside
POD Cover of the Month: Romany of the Snows