The Dusty Bookcase:A Journey Through Canada'sForgotten, Neglected, and Suppressed Writing
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| Crime on My Hands Carl G. Hodges Toronto Harlequin, 1952 |
If you cannot find the name of Dirty City on the map of the United States it's because you haven't looked hard enough. Look again and you're sure to find it. It's there all right, only the inhabitants don't call it by its right name.Miami? Fort Lauderdale? All I can say for sure is that it's most definitely in Florida. Maybe you know it. Dirty City is a place of lush hotels by the beach, expensive dress shops, fur stores and call houses. Hayseed suckers will save, stay long enough to get a tan, and then return home to brag. In Dirty City an assemblyman once proposed making it illegal for the poor to be seen in rich neighbourhoods. His fellows though it might bring bad publicity.
Milly looked like you'd imagine a girl might look like if Rita Hayworth and Betty Grable were one. Add a touch of what Ava Gardner has, and you're jet about describing Milly White.Jimmie's gamble pays off. Johnson gives him $50,000 to abandon Milly and return to New York, where a further $200,000 awaits. Mickey is thwarted by the producer's success. Johnson has no use for the cabin, choosing to forgo his usual season of orgies and focus on one woman:
His feeling for her was a mixture of admiration and intense hatred. He wanted to desecrate her, use her, whip her, destroy her morally, and then, when she looked old and finished throw her out.Finding himself saddled with a useless piece of real estate, a desperate Mickey sets out to replicate Jimmie's success by presenting himself as a good samaritan, gaining Milly's trust, have her fall in love with him, and then sell her off to Johnson. Seems another long shot, I know, but he very nearly pulls it off.
I hated the idea of people making millions during the war on the blood and horror of the guys who fought and died. I figured I wouldn't be a sucker, that I'd make my pile.
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Now they're drumming up another little war for us. But they don't get me this time. I was right about some things and wrong about others. Just because they were bastards profiting by the war didn't mean I had to become one.
This time she split. It hit him across the cheek and the saliva oozed down his chin. He wiped it off in disgust.Dirty City isn't so much as listed on WordCat, and yet isn't so rare that it can't be found for sale online. Prices begin at three Yankee dollars. Go get 'em!
In my own contribution – another Dusty Bookcase on paper – I make the case for There Are Victories (New York: Covici Friede, 1933), an ambitious, unconventional and next to unobtainable novel by Charles Yale Harrison. Sharp students of Canadian literature will make a link with his Generals Die in Bed (New York: Morrow, 1930), Harrison's first work of fiction, inspired by his experiences in the Great War.André AlexisHeather BirrellMichael ChoJason DicksonBeth FollettDouglas GloverDavid GodkinAnita LaheyDavid MasonMichael PriorSethBruce Whiteman
* Full disclosure: I'm a member of that self-same group.
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The Poems of Thomas D'Arcy McGee
Montreal: D & J Sadlier, 1870
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She hated her own beauty, for it attracted numerous lusty suitors, despite her well-known vow of perpetual chastity. Finally, her constant prayers to become ugly were answered – miraculously, one of her eyes became grotesquely huge, while the other disappeared – so her father consented to her becoming a nun. It is said that, during the ceremony, Angels shoved aside the attending priest and presented her with the veil, the wooden steps of the altar burst into leaf, and her good looks were instantly restored.You can't make that stuff up. Not always, anyway. Later in the entry, Kelly and Rogers inform:
Since she was born sixty-six years after the death of Saint Patrick, reports of their intimate friendship are doubtless exaggerated. Nor is it necessarily true that the holy but drunken Saint Mel consecrated her a full-fledged bishop. Some facts we may be sure of, though. Her bath water was sometimes transformed into beer for the sake of thirsty clerics…There's much more, but the image of a naked virgin turning bathwater into beer should be inspiration enough for today's poets.
