Four Days in Darkest Quebec

Four Days

John Buell

New York: Farrar, Straus & Cudahy, 1962

Jacket copy gives far too much away, recounting in detail the first half of this novel, and revealing the fate of its 12-year-old protagonist. I won't be making the same mistakes.

This is a work to be celebrated, studied and, more than anything, read, because that protagonist – a nameless orphan – might just be the best realized child in our literature. We first see him cycling around Westmount, collecting money on his newspaper deliveries. The tips help, but the job's real value comes through information on vacation plans that he passes on to older brother Milt, a petty thief. The pair live a hand-to-mouth existence, which Milt believes he'll change with a plan that will lead to the big leagues. We're now at page 27, roughly a tenth of the way through the book; I know better than to give away more of the plot.

So, let's return to the dust jacket: "In his second book John Buell more than fulfills the promise of his extraordinary first novel, The Pyx." Very true. Four Days is the better book, though this wasn't reflected in sales.

It was published in England by Macmillan, and was translated into French as Quatre Jours (Paris: Stock, 1963), a "roman américain [sic]". A German language edition was appeared under the mysterious title Lauter Wölfe (Munich: List, 1964). These were followed by paperback editions from Pan (1965), Popular Library (1968) and HarperCollins Canada (1991). "SOON TO BE A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE", trumpets the Popular Library edition. Well, it was optioned in 1962, but the designations "SOON" and "MAJOR" were a tad optimistic. When finally released in 1999, Four Days, the "MOTION PICTURE", used the cinema only as a rest stop on the highway to DVD.

Liberties were taken. Milt is transformed from brother to father and is given a girlfriend named Feather. London, Ontario's Lolita Davidvich earns second billing as Chrystal, a character that doesn't even feature in the book. This scene, with Kevin Zegers playing our unnamed protagonist, will appear utterly foreign to anyone who has read the novel:

Following The Pyx by three years, Four Days was a sophomore effort. On its strength alone, Edmund Wilson positioned Buell as one of Canada's foremost writers. Eleven years passed before novel number three appeared. By then, Wilson was dead. Where were John Buell's champions? Where are they today?

Object and Access: A very attractive hardcover with jacket by Enrico Arno. I bought my inscribed first edition in 1985 for two Canadian quarters. Twenty-six years later, Very Good copies – unsigned – can be had for as little as US$11.00. Though not plentiful, paperbacks begin at less than a loonie. Our libraries are oh-so-predictable: the universities come through, while the others – save the ever reliable (though threatened) Toronto Public Library – fail miserably. Whether in English or French translation, Four Days is not to be found in the Bibliothèques de Montréal. For shame.

Manifest Destiny

Pocket Books' 1974 edition of William C. Heine's The Last Canadian, our silliest novel, seen here with the edition Paperjacks packaged for the American market.

"TERRIFYING!"

Related posts:

At long Last Lunacy

Silent, but Deadly

Mordecai's Mom's Memoirs

The new issue of Canadian Notes and Queries has arrived, bringing a rich mixture of essays on collecting, bookselling and Mordecai Richler. With ninety-six pages of goodness, there's too much to list here, but I will point CanLit collectors to essays by Nigel Beale, Michael Darling and Jim Fitzpatrick. I add that admirers of Charles Foran's Mordecai are treated to the biography's original preface, penned just as work was beginning.

My own piece deals with The Errand Runner: Reflections of a Rabbi's Daughter, the 1981 book by Leah Rosenberg, Richler's mother. A product of John Wiley & Sons' Toronto branch plant, it ranks as the most awkward and badly edited memoir I've yet come across – and here I'm including self-published stuff. Blame belongs entirely with the publisher, which reveals its reason for signing the memoir on the book's dust jacket.

As I write in CNQ: "Discard the dust jacket, however, and Mordecai Richler's name disappears. His is not to be found in the text..."

More in print.

Subscriptions are available here.

An Author Turns Thespian

One of my favourite films as a child, until last week I'd seen Lies My Father Told Me only once. This would have been in the autumn of 1975, within weeks of the debut, and within walking distance of the Montreal neighbourhood in which it had been shot. Lies My Father Told Me was a pretty big deal back then. It followed hot on the heels of The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, garnering glowing reviews and won a Golden Globe as Best Foreign Film before slipping away. Set in the mid-twenties, the film draws upon writer Ted Allan's childhood in telling the simple story of the love shared between young David Herman (Jeff Lynas) and his junk collecting grandfather (Yossi Yadin). The film, like so many about childhood, relies heavily on schmaltz. Roger Ebert recognized this in the conclusion of his own glowing review:

"Lies My Father Told Me" has been criticized here and there for being mawkish, sentimental, obvious, filled with clichés and willing to do almost anything to pluck at the heartstrings. All of those criticisms are correct. It's just that, somehow, such faults don't seem fatal to the movie. [Director Jan] Kadar has told a simple story in direct and strong terms, and he hasn't tried to be so sophisticated that we lose sight of the basic emotions that are, after all, the occasion for making the movie in the first place.

Returning to the film in middle age, I was surprised at how much I'd retained – right down to the scene in which we see David's mother (Marilyn Lightstone) breast-feeding his newborn baby brother.

Did I mention I was a child when I first saw the film?

What eluded me then – and surprised me last week – was Allan's presence in the role of Mr Baumgarten, the neighbourhood tailor.

"Mr Elias, drop in to see me this evening. I'd like to discuss this with you: Engel's Origin of the Family and Private Property."

A dedicated Marxist, like his creator, Baumgarten is a persistent, yet polite pest for the proletariat. Its fun to see Allan making fun of himself. In his second scene, Baumgarten proselytizes as the junk dealer shovels manure.

"Mr Elias! Mr Elias! Mr Elias! I have that pamphlet I was telling you about: Lenin's Imperialism. An incredible work."

The writer more than holds his own in acting opposite Yadin in one of the film's finest scenes.

"Who was it that said, 'What is a bigger crime? To rob a bank or to open a bank?'"

"Probably Jeremiah."

"Or probably Karl Marx, and I will prove it to you."

"He only repeated what the ancient prophets said."

"Not quite, not quite."

"Mr Baumgarten, have you read all these books?"

"All of them."

"I've only read one book... and I'm still reading it."

Allan's acting in Lies My Father Told Me went unrewarded, though he did earn an Oscar nomination for Original Screenplay. Of the critics, it seems that only John Simon had anything to say about the writer as actor:

What makes this an especially sorry film is, first, that Ted Allan, who wrote it and pedestrianly acts in it, is as uninventive a writer as ever addressed himself to a sentimental platitude. Some of the performances are embarrassing, others rise to the height of mediocrity, the music is deplorable, the cinematography garish, and there are doubts as to whether the the film could please even an intelligent child.

I'll agree with Simon about the music. As for the rest? Well, I've never claimed to be an intelligent child.

Trivia: Caught up in his zeal, Baumgarten misidentifies Frederick Engel's work. The English translation is titled The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State.

Related post: A Son's Lies My Father Told Me

A Canadian Bookshelf Conversation

My recent conversation with the charming Julie Wilson. Pulp novels, literary hoaxes, the Edwardian John Glassco, and the neglected and forgotten in our literature – you'll find it all here at Canadian Bookshelf.

More Marwood

Like the Oscar Peterson Trio, I get requests. Many come from those seeking information on the great Brian Moore or the tragic Maria Monk, but most concern Harriet Marwood, a woman who never existed. Was the English governess modelled on a real person? When, if ever, did she use a birch? How might I meet such a woman?

The most common query comes from folks hoping for more Harriet Marwood stories. For those with the hunger, I have very good news: the beautiful, brunette disciplinarian exists outside the pages of The English Governess and Harriet Marwood, Governess. We find her first in The Augean Stable, a 124-page, three-act play that Glassco composed in 1954. Unproduced and unpublished, you'll have to consult his papers at Library and Archives Canada in Ottawa to read this alternate, rather polite version of Harriet's romance with Richard Lovel.

Much more accessible is "The Black Helmet". Published in The Fatal Woman (Anansi, 1974) as one of "Three Tales by John Glassco", this is the novella that Glassco struggled with – forever revisiting and revising – for most of his 71 years. Here Harriet is mentioned frequently, if fleetingly, by her former charge, Philip Mairobert. In this passage, our hero recalls the the arrival of the governess at his family's estate in rural Quebec:

Today I will think of her as the person to whom I owed everything, not as a woman I loved – and think of my life here before she came, with no one but those two old servants in the twilight of dotage who were so terrified of me. I must have been like a wild animal then, with those fits of rage – screaming, biting, breaking things, rolling on the floor. I remember almost nothing of that time: it seemed to be mostly walking through these ruined gardens and in the woods where I set my ineffectual little traps for birds and rabbits, hoping to catch them alive. How desolate and wild a life! Yet when mother left to live in Paris for good, and Miss Marwood came, I was furious. I thought I would lose me freedom. Freedom! As if it ever mattered to me.

Well I lost it certainly – the child's freedom to be lonely, bored, idle, frightened. And I found, quite simply, happiness. A week after she arrived I could sleep without nightmares; and I had stopped stammering: I simply hadn't time! As for my rages, I really think she enjoyed them. as if they offered a challenge to her methods and muscles, to the very strength of her arm.

Though The Fatal Woman enjoyed just a single printing – likely 3000 copies – for a good many years it seemed quite common. No more. I note that only five, one a crummy library discard, are currently being offered by online booksellers.

Fans of the governess are advised not to hesitate. Strike now!

Trivial: The author's biography on The Fatal Woman errs in stating that Glassco won "the Governor-General's award [sic] for both poetry and non-fiction." In fact, he received only the former.

I'll step out on a limb here and say that Anansi's mistake is borne of a common misconception that Glassco won a Governor General's award for Memoirs of Montparnasse (his only "non-fiction" book). No Governor General's Award for Non-fiction was awarded for 1970, the year in which it was published.

Incredible, but true... and oddly appropriate.

Not trivial:

Cross-posted in a slightly altered form at A Gentleman of Pleasure – less flippant, more images.

In Praise of Older Women

Love Affair with a Cougar

Lyn Hancock

Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 1978

Related post:

To the Lighthouse!

Selling The Unfulfilled

A dry study in international relations? I thought so when I unearthed this book last month. After all, author W.G. Hardy was a professor – at the University of Alberta, no less. And just look at the thing. The flap copy informs, but does not inspire:

What do Canadians really think about Americans? An outstanding Canadian novelist here shows the full impact of the United States upon her nextdoor [sic] neighbor [sic] across the famous "undefended border" – and upon the consciousness of the free world. In a compelling novel, Dr. Hardy has done for the character of Canada and the Canadian what no other Canadian or American novelist has done so effectively.

Image and cover copy come from the 1951 McClelland and Stewart first edition. The first American edition, published the following year by Appleton-Century-Crofts, uses the very same cover and spelling.

The paperback houses knew better how to sell a book. Here's the first paper edition, from Harlequin:

No mention of "the character of Canada", nothing about "the consciousness of the free world", the young publisher sells sin – more than one, apparently.

The American paperback, published in 1952 by Popular Library, is hotter still. Odd, adultery isn't even mentioned in the hardcover flap copy. An "Abridged edition", it's rid of dead wood, but still fails to satisfy.

Related posts:

Selling The Strange One

Selling The Nymph and the Lamp

Ontario Gothic Romance (with the scent of Brut)

Satan's Bell

Joy Carroll

Markham, ON: Pocket Books, 1976

190 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.

Bottoms Up, Shy Photographer

Reading The Queers of New York a couple of weeks ago got me thinking about Jock Carroll, under whose editorial direction the book was published. A fine photographer, but not much of an editor, he's at least partly to blame for the novel's failings. Truth be told, Carroll wasn't much of a writer either, though he did have a number of titles to his credit. The first edition of Bottoms Up (1961) is the most sought-after, but only because it was published by the infamous Olympia Press. Carroll's only novel, it is perhaps the blandest piece of writing Maurice Girodias ever passed off as "erotica".

It's a wonder that Bottoms Up thing ever made it into print – that it was republished seems not improbable, but impossible. And yet, for more than a decade the novel was available in one form or another. There were at least thirteen editions, published in six counties, making Bottoms Up one of Canada's all-time best selling novels. Carroll once boasted that it had moved close one million copies. The editions below go some way in backing up his claim.

Bitte recht scharf

Bremen: Schünemann Verlag, 1963

Not only the first translation, but the first hardcover edition in any language. The German was followed by Italian (Il Fotografo Timido, 1967) and Danish (Den blufærdige fotograf, 1969) translations.

The Shy Photographer

New York: Stein & Day, 1964

Retitled, Carroll's novel kicked off Stein & Day's "Olympia Press Series". Short-lived, ill-fated, the series actually began and ended with The Shy Photographer. The cover was also used on the first British edition, published in 1964 by Macgibbon & Kee.

The Shy Photographer

New York: Bantam, 1965

The first and only legal American paperback edition. "Candy with a camera!" exclaims, um... whoever wrote the cover copy, I guess.

The Shy Photographer

London: Panther, 1965

"The novel that's loaded with heaven-ly nudes". Not true.

The image was also used for the 1970 German paperback edition.

Bottoms Up

Covina, CA: Collectors Publications, 1967

A pirated edition produced by the notorious Marvin Miller. "FIRST AMERICAN PRINTING" is the claim. Again, not true.

The Shy Photographer

London: Panther, 1967

A droog takes a photograph. Whoever designed the second Panther edition seems to have been intent on representing both titles.

Wholly unappealing. And is not superimposing the author's name across some guy's ass just a tad insulting?

Il Fotografo Timido

Collana: Longanesi, 1970

The first Italian paperback edition recycles the hardcover image (which was in turn borrowed from the Bantam paperback). Of all the translations, the Italian is by far the most common.

Il Fotografo Timido

Collana: Longanesi, 1972.

A later Italian edition, the last in any language, continues the tradition of misrepresentation. Protagonist Arthur King does not become a photographer for Playboy, and at no point does he don a pair of purple panties.

There has never been a Canadian edition.

Related post:

Canada's Olympians (Part IV)

My Career as a Teenage Rock Photographer

From the archives, these handbills and related photographs from my aborted career as a concert photographer. I never was serious and asked for no special favours. In fact, these were all taken using an old 35mm Canon (with broken light meter) that was smuggled into each show in a friend's purse.

Gang of Four's Jon King at Montreal's Beer Garden, 4 July 1981. thirty years ago today. I've since seen the band three more times, but have never once heard them play "5:45", my favourite of all their songs.

Dave Allen, Hugo Burnham and Andy Gill. It's my understanding that this was the last time Allen played with the band until the 2005 reunion. Here it looks like he's packing up:

Durutti Column with American Devices. Véhicule Art, Montreal. 2 April 1982. With an audience of twenty or so, it was much harder to go unnoticed at this show. Still, no one seemed to mind. Damn that light meter.

The great Vini Reilly.

Montreal was their first ever Canadian gig, squeezed between New York and Toronto on a three-date North American tour. They've never been back – no return of the Durutti Column.

Sorry.

A bootleg recording of the Véhicule Art show is out there under the title dcmtl 1982. It includes this, for three decades my favourite Reilly composition:

Two Hurrahs for the New Dominion

Two poems in celebration of Canada Day, both titled "Hurrah for the New Dominion", both by Scottish immigrants. The first, penned by Alexander McLachlan, comes from his Poems and Songs (Rose, 1888):

McLachlan's verse was later included in Selections from Scottish Canadian Poets; Being a Collection of the Best Poetry Written by Scotsmen and Their Descendants (Rose, 1900), in which we also find this somewhat disturbing photograph of George Pirie.

Considered "one of the ablest writers in Canada" by Prime Minister Alexander Mackenzie, a foe, on 1 July 1867 Pirie was editor of the Guelph Herald. His "Hurrah for the New Dominion" is, I think, a bit more fun:

Hurrah for the New Dominion!
'Tis founded on public opinion;
Mid the blessings of peace
May the nation increase,
Till the twin oceans bound the Dominion.

Sadly, Pirie didn't live to see the young country reach the Pacific Ocean; he died in July 1870, just one year before British Columbia joined Confederation.

A happy Canada Day to all!

Related post: Roberts' Dominion Day Collect

Another Tie, Another Place

The Canadian and America editions of Neil H. Perrin's Death Be My Destiny, both published by News Stand Library, both bearing covers drawn by the same anonymous hand. How to explain the differences? Do Canadians prefer blondes? Do we choose hard liquor over red wine? Are our ties a touch more garish, our women more modest? Can it really be that our seedy hotels are so luxurious? It all seems wrong... even that bit about the ties.

Still no trigger on that gun, I see.

Update: Over at Fly-by-night, bowdler has posted an image of the uncommon dustjacket that adorned the American edition.