This coming Thursday – September 30 – I'll be speaking on "Forgotten Montreal Novelists" at the Atwater Library.
Forgotten Montreal novelists? Where to begin! I've selected six. I'll be talking about their lives with a focus on a novel by each.
These being strange days, I won't be appearing in person. Wish I could. The good thing is that you can watch through Zoom. The link to register is here.
Poldrate Street
Garnett Weston
New York: Messner, 1944
256 pages
The first resident of Poldrate Street to die is Sarah Reckon. She's killed by two of her neighbours while stealing flowers from their gardens. Sarah's murder has nothing to do with theft, rather her discovery of a missing dog. Though she doesn't realize it – and never will – the mutt is key in a scheme involving extortion, embezzlement, fraud, mutilation, and sexual slavery.
Three more Poldrate Street residents will die over the next few days. A fourth will be drugged, kidnapped, and then drugged again. That's a lot of activity for a cul de sac consisting of just five houses.
Doctor Ivor Palling lives in the middle house with a raven-haired bombshell named Violet. Everyone believes her to be the doctor's wife, but they're not actually married. Palling spotted Violet waiting at a bus stop one rainy night and offered her a lift. You could call her a pickup.
The fourth house is the home Jacob Sleep, the most elderly resident of Poldrate Street. Sleep had been living his final years alone when he received a letter from an old schoolmate asking whether he might care for her granddaughter. The poor girl had been orphaned, and the grandmother feared that she herself was not long for this world. Turned out she was right. And so, that is how nineteen-year-old Kitty McKay came to live with an old man on a dead end street. Sleep's interest in the girl begins and ends with her sizeable inheritance (of which she has no knowledge).
The last house belongs to Mafia Breene; it's also his place of business. An undertaker, Breene struggles to make a living dealing in the dead. He has some support from Cora, his live-in maid. In her quarters lies the tenth resident of Poldrate Street, Cora's motionless, voiceless, nameless, suffering child known only as "Him."
Of the Garnett Weston novels I've read, Poldrate Street is the very best. As far as I can tell, it's the only one to have enjoyed multiple editions. The second, published in 1945 by American Mercury, gives something away in providing a new title: The Undertaker Dies.
Dedication:
R. Rowe Holland was chairman of the Vancouver Parks Board and treasurer for the Liberal Party. A barrister, he represented Vancouver theatre owners. In 1932, he was part of a failed campaign to build a large movie studio in the city. In short, he wanted to make Vancouver Hollywood North.
Trivia: Max Ralph holds distinction as the cover artist for Wreath for a Red Head, the very first novel by Brian Moore. Canadian Fly-By-Night has a very good series on Ralph's work for Harlequin.
Beware!: The American Mercury edition is abridged.
I suspected the Harlequin – 185 pages of text to Messner's 248 – to also be abridged, but Canadian Fly-By-Night's bowdler has convinced me otherwise. The word-count of the Messner is roughly 380 words per page, while the Harlequin is at least 500 per page.
Object: A hardcover with yellow boards, all evidence indicates a single Messner printing. The jacket illustration is uncredited. The figure is meant to be young Face Gordon. The flashlight he carries was a reward for selling magazines door-to-door. Weston describes the beam it casts as white, not yellow.
I purchased my copy for US$37.50 from a New York bookseller. The shipping set me back a further US$25.00.
Access: Copies of the Messner Poldrate Street can be found in Library and Archives Canada, Queen's University, the University of Toronto. the University of New Brunswick, the University of British Columbia, and the University of Victoria.
As I write this, no copies of Poldrate Street in any edition are listed for sale online. Ditto The Undertaker Dies.
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| Canadian Illustrated News 28 September 1878 |
On the day of the 44th Canadian general election, verse from The Poems of Archibald Lampman (Toronto: Morang, 1900).
THE MODERN POLITICIAN
What manner of soul is his to whom high truthIs but the plaything of a feverish hour,A dangling ladder to the ghost of power!Gone are the grandeurs of the world's iron youth,When kings were mighty, being made by swords.Now comes the transit age, the age of brass,When clowns into the vacant empires pass,Blinding the multitude with specious words.To them faith, kinship, truth and verity,Man's sacred rights and very holiest thing,Are but the counters at a desperate play,Flippant and reckless what the end may be,So that they glitter, each his little day,The little mimic of a vanished king.
You'd think Robert Fife might know a thing or two about the publishing world. His first book, A Capital Scandal, co-authored by John Warren, was a lead title in Key Porter's fall 1991 catalogue. Fife went solo two years later with Kim Campbell: The Making of a Politician. A slight biography published by HarperCollins, it managed to land on bookstore shelves before her 132 days as prime minister were up. I consider this Fife's greatest accomplishment to date.
HarperCollins Canada would not discuss the deal for the Chinese publication of the book or whether any money went to Mr. Trudeau’s private holding company, which is in a blind trust. “I’m afraid these things are confidential business terms that are not typically discussed with third parties,” HarperCollins editor Jennifer Lambert said in an e-mail
And so, I know not to ask HarperCollins about the terms negotiated for Kim Campbell: The Making of a Politician.
The real question here is who brought 传奇再续 to Fife and Chase's attention? And why did they wait five years?
* HarperCollins is a subsidiary of News Corp. Yilin Press is distributed in the United States and Canada by Simon & Schuster, a subsidiary of ViacomCBS.
