The Dusty Bookcase

25 March 2019

Canada Reads: No Country for Old Books

For those who just can't wait, the essay on Canada Reads I wrote for next month's Canadian Notes & Queries has just been posted on the magazine's website. You can read it here:

No Country for Old Books

Canada Reads itself begins airing today. You can listen to it here:

Canada Reads

What fun!

CBC's Awful List, Radio-Canada's Disheartening List,
and Perhaps the Best Book List I've Ever Seen

On the Disgrace That Is CBC Books' 100 Young Adult Books

That Make You Proud to Be Canadian

CBC Books' French Problem

19 March 2019

Nature as the Devil's Playground

The Ravine
Kendal Young [pseud Phyllis Brett Young]
London: W.H. Allen, 1962
208 pages

Young Barbara Grey "saved for simply ages" to buy a silver bracelet for her mother's birthday. Now that that the day has arrived, she can barely contain her excitement. She manages to make it through her after-school art class, but can't wait for the teacher, Miss Warner, to drive her home. And so, Barbara heads off, cutting through the ravine.

Miss Warner – Christian name: Julie – notes Barbara's absence and ties to be brave. She rounds up her other students, piles them into her station wagon, and drives down into the ravine. It is dark and rainy, mud makes the tires spin, yet Julie Warner presses on, dreading what she might find.

The car hits a particularly bad patch, spins out of control, and shines its headlights on a man resembling the devil standing over what looks to be a vast pool of blood. The figure disappears into the darkness. The pool of blood turns out to be Barbara's red raincoat... which covers her dead body.

Oh, Barbara, why did you go into the ravine? Not six months earlier, Deborah Hurst – then a student at your very school – was assaulted in the ravine. She hasn't been the same since, and now spends her afternoons waking blank-faced through the streets of your town.

Julie is devastated, of course, but what makes it particularly hard on her is that she has – or had – a little sister who disappeared from the luxurious lobby of the Warner family's Manhattan apartment building. The missing girl was on her way to a violin lesson.

The art teacher comes from a very different place than Barbara and Deborah. Her station wagon replaced a convertible. She works, though she doesn't have to. She has a flat above a drug store, though she can afford better digs. She doesn't have to live here.

But where is here?

Because of title, The Ravine, and the knowledge that it was written by a Torontonian (whose best-known work is The Torontonians), I began this novel thinking it was set in Toronto.

It is not.

The Ravine takes place somewhere in New England. The setting is referred to as a "town," though it appears to be a much larger municipality. There are two daily newspapers, a "foreign" quarter, and downtown streets that are unfamiliar to the art teacher. And yet, the community is so small that everyone knows everyone else; Julie, being relatively new, is the exception.

She's brought into contact with several people as a result of poor Barbara's murder. There's Dr Greg Markham, who treated Deborah Hurst, and has been following her movements ever since. Tom Denning is a newspaper editor, whose chief concern is circulation. Captain Velyan, head of the police, is doing his best to deal with crimes of a sort that just don't happen in a town like this.

Of these three men, Greg is the most important. Struck by Julie's testimony at the coroner's inquiry into Barbara's death, he trails her to a filthy café in which she has taken refuge from reporters. He asks her to dinner that evening. By the end of the date, during which they share one brief kiss, they've become an item.

Julie runs around behind her new boyfriend's back in enlisting Denning and Velyan to entrap the devilish man. Meanwhile, Greg puts together a plan of his own, which he keeps from Julie. Neither action bodes well for a long-term relationship.

The educated, lithe, artsy, blonde, daughter of wealth, Julie is a type; she's as familiar as Dunning, the alcoholic newspaperman, and Velyan, the out-of-his-depths police captain. Dedicated doctor Greg is also a type, though I'd argue that his day has passed. From their very first meeting he looks to exert control over Julie's life:

"Your trouble is that you think too much about other people, Julie. You need someone who will put you first. Do I do that with your permission, or without it?"

The afternoon newspaper is anxiously awaited, a hospital switchboard operator causes concern, meals are taken in drug stores, and cigarettes are offered all around. This is a novel of another time, and nowhere is is more evident in its depiction of the ravine itself.

At midnight on that Thursday night, the ravine was as dark and silent as the valley of death itself. Its thick, black canopy of branches was as motionless as the windless darkness, as secretive as the deep earth trough it shielded.
Unseen, soundless, the sullen pools in the depths of the ravine swelled and spread, bloated by rivulets of rain-water which slithered inexorably down its steep sides: which crept around the holes of the trees; which filtered noiselessly through the lesser resistance of undergrowth obscene with funguses which had ever seen the light of day.
Shunned even by the owls, it knew no movement other than this dreary invasion of last minute streams which it would eventually absorb with slow reluctance. A reluctance not duplicated by the morbid eagerness with which it took the night into itself and became one with it.
Severed, as if by a will of its own, from all but the powers of darkness, it seemed to brood with deliberate malice upon the evil secrets it guarded: seemed to reveal in a black, inanimate triumph belonging only to itself.
Brooding over a dark past, savouring the taste and smell of recent death, the trees and bushes which were its real substance became linked one to another in a tangled threat as ugly as it was positive.

More fully realized than the encircling town, the ravine is seen by a great many in the community as "a tangled, cancerous growth." It is an evil place. The reader is told there are those who want it left alone, but none of them feature as characters.

After Deborah's assault, Denning's paper launched its "Abolish the Ravine" campaign, painting a picture of a changed landscape with roads, scattered shade trees, and "artificial drainage." It calls for light standards "as unobstructed as the moon and stars above." The campaign was a success in that circulation increased. Barbara's murder provided a second boost.

The novel's brief denouement, which takes place the month after Barbara's murder, features a passage in which the first snows begin to fall, "clean, white, and beneficent, gently covering the acres of raw stumps which are all that remained of the ravine."

For this reader, it was an unhappy ending.

Trivia: The dust jacket features an advert for other W.H. Allen titles, including Psyche, Phyllis Brett Young's first novel:

Kendal Young is the pseudonym of Phyllis Brett Young whose latest novel will be one of 1962's major films. It is the fascinating story of what happens to a young girl after she has been kidnapped.

I'm sorry, which novel will be one of 1962's major films?

The reference is to The Ravine; Psyche is the story of the kidnapped girl*

The Ravine was not a major film of 1962 or any other year, though an adaptation was shot and released nine years later under the title Assault. It is not to be confused with the 1971 gay porn film of the same title.

Must say, of the six novels W.H. Allen advertised on the dust jacket, the one that most intrigues is Touch a French Pom-Pom, with its promised probing of "the curious situation of four people with the same peculiar desire."

*Addendum: Phyllis Brett Young scholar Monika Bartyzel informs that the “major film” reference was indeed to Psyche: "Victor Saville had the movie rights, and cast Susannah York to play the dual roles of Psyche and her mother. It was announced far and wide, but then he retired from filmmaking in ill health (his last credits are from 1962) and the project floundered." She adds that “'Latest novel' is definitely a poor choice of words, especially since The Torontonians came out in 1960, the year after Psyche."

Thank you, Monika!

Object: A compact hardcover made of red boards. My copy was purchased for five American dollars (with a further twenty for shipping) from a dishonest New Zealand bookseller. Described as "Ex library used copy with wear and tear but overall clean square copy," the thing came apart in my hands.

Access: As far as I can tell, the W.H. Allen edition enjoyed just one printing. Pan published the first paperback edition in 1964, followed by a 1971 movie tie-in as Assault.

A German translation, Mein Mörder kommt um 8, was published in 1966.

The Ravine is held by Library and Archives Canada and McMaster University.

That's it!

Copies of the The Ravine is surprisingly uncommon. The Ravine was published in Canada by Longmans, yet there is no evidence of its existence online. I know of it thanks to Amy Lavender Harris, who owns a signed copy. As of this writing, there are no copies of the Allen and Pan editions listed for anywhere. Two copies of Assault are currently listed for sale online at £2.50 and £3.50. Get 'em before their gone. Like the Longmans, this edition isn't recognized by WorldCat.

04 March 2019

Miss Fenwick's Good Old Hockey Match

More than a fortnight has passed since my last post, but I haven't been lazy. It's been a hectic time, centred around our third move in seven months. To think that we lived over a decade in our last home. Our new house is much smaller, but an addition is planned. Right now, bookcases are the priority.

During all this activity, I somehow managed a couple of pieces for next issue of Canadian Notes & Queries. The longer of the two concerns Canada Reads, CBC Books' "literary Survivor" (their words, not mine). The shorter is a review The Arch-Satirist, a 1910 novel by elocutionist Frances de Wolfe Fenwick. I wish I could say that I liked the novel. Set in fin de siècle Montreal, it begins with great promise by introducing a degenerate, drug-laden teenage poet, only to shift focus to Lynn Thayer, another of those self-sacrificing female characters that are all too common in early Canadian literature.

The Canadian Bookman, July 1910

Still, the novel managed to hold my interest; in part, because of its cynical depiction of Montreal Society (Miss Fenwick was a member). It's not much of a stretch to conclude that scenes involving the Golden Square Mile set were inspired by actual events, particularly given the fact the author's second novel, A Soul on Fire (1915), features a character so clearly modelled on Sir Andrew Macphail.

Perhaps the greatest value in The Arch-Satirist comes in its depiction of a late-nineteenth-century "hockey match." I've never seen this novel referenced in histories of the sport, and so encourage chroniclers of the early game – Stephen Harper is one – to follow this link., which leads to a six-page description of the match and the building in which it was played.

Read "Caruso" for "Calvé."

Constructed in 1898, the Montreal Arena stood at the corner of St Catherine and Wood, and is thought to have been the first building designed specifically for hockey. The match described by Miss Fenwick is played between the Wales and the Conquerers – likely the Wanderers and the Canadiens, both of which called the Arena home.

I'll leave with these remarks made by Estelle Hadwell, Lynn Thayer's closest friend. Those who don't much care for hockey will appreciate:

I do love to be fin-de-siecle,'' she had said. "But, when it comes to hockey or pug dogs — well, I simply can't, that's all.'' Then she had told a plaintive tale of how, when a girl, she had been taken to a hockey match. Her escort had been an enthusiast of the most virulent type; and she had been obliged to feign a joy which she by no means felt.
"It was ghastly," she observed, ghastly. "There I sat, huddled in grandmother's seal-skin which wasn't a bit becoming, and watched a lot of weird things dressed like circus clowns knocking a bit of rubber round a slippery rink. And all those poor misguided beings who had paid two, three and five dollars to see them do it yelled like mad whenever the rubber got taken down a little faster than usual — oh, you may laugh! but I can tell you that when one of those silly men whacked another silly man over the head when the umpire wasn't looking because the second ass had hit that absurd bit of rubber oftener than he, the first ass, had — why, I felt sorry to think that the human species to which I belonged was so devoid of sense.

Fun fact: "1 Wood," the building that now stands on site of the old Montreal Arena, was designed by my father's friend Ray Afleck, the man who also designed the Beaconsfield house in which I was raised.

17 February 2019

Wilfrid Laurier: 100 Years

The great Wilfrid Laurier died one hundred years ago today. Our seventh prime minister, he held the office for more than fifteen consecutive years. Laurier led his party for over three decades, and served in the House of Commons for 44 years, 10 months and 17 days until February 17, 1919 brought all that to an end. At age seventy-seven, his death shouldn't have come as a shock, but contemporary press suggests otherwise. Tribute was paid by George V, but my favourite comes from a commoner who remembered the widow Laurier. It was published in Right Honourable Sir Wilfrid Laurier: A Tribute (Ottawa: Modern Press, 1919).

WILFRID LAURIER

Elegy Written on the Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier's Death
by Mr. T.A. Brown, Ottawa

He'll pass no more, nor shall we backward glance
To note again that loved, commanding form,
Like some fine figure of chivalrous France
Round which men rallied in old times of storm.

A Bayard, ever gallant in the fray;
Lute voiced, a man of magic utterance rare,
What was the spell, the secret of his sway—
The noble life, the silver of his hair?

Unaging and majestic as the pine,
The evergreen of youth within his soul,
Tilting young-hearted with that soul ashine,
He onward bore unto his purposed goal.

With her he loved through shadowed hours and gay.
In rare companionship the sunset road
He walked in such felicity; the way
Seemed rose hung, and the years a lightsome load.

With malice unto none, e'en in defeat;
With charity in triumph, he has stood,
Broad gauge Canadian, after battle's heat,
Speaking the language of wide brotherhood.

The inspiration of his service yet.
The charity, the brotherhood he taught,
Shall light our pathway though his sun be set,
And may we build as nobly as he wrought.

New tasks begin, new duties, new resolves,
For Canada, his land and ours, we take;
And since such partings come as time evolves,
His spirit watching, we new pledges make.

Though mute his lips, the seal of death thereon,
While men remember how he loved this land,
His voice will sound a trumpet leading on—
Great Heart, adieu—bowed at thy bier we stand.

* * *

Dear Lady, in the sadness of this hour
For him we honor as our noblest son,
If our affection and our love had power
To save thee grief, we'd bear it, everyone.