Three reviews by Amazon customer Lamppu. I have problems with the first, disagree wholeheartedly with the second, and have no opinion on the third.
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RIP Shel Talmy
4 hours ago
15 September 2014
12 September 2014
University Professor Writes Roman à Clef Roman
Fasting Friar
Edward McCourt
Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1963
222 pages
This review now appears, revised and rewritten, in my new book:
The Dusty Bookcase:A Journey Through Canada'sForgotten, Neglected, and Suppressed Writing
Available at the very best bookstores and through
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08 September 2014
A Coupla Canadian Copycats
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| Carnival of Love [Mardi Gras Madness] Anthony Scott New York: Red Circle, 1949 Cover by Ray Johnson |
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| Carnival of Love [Mardi Gras Madness] Anthony Scott Toronto: News Stand Library, 1950 Cover by Syd Dyke |
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| The Glass Ladder Paul W. Fairman New York: Handi-Books, 1950 Cover artist unknown |
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| The Glass Ladder Paul W. Fairman Toronto: Harlequin, 1951 Cover artist unknown |
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06 September 2014
George-Étienne Cartier at 200
Such a young country. I'm still kind of a kid – really – and yet I remember Canada's centennial celebrations. So, it makes no sense – not really – that today, 6 September 1919, should mark the 200th birthday of George-Étienne Cartier. Yet it does.
A son of Saint-Antoine-sur-Richelieu, one hundred years after his birth, one hundred years ago today, saw the dedication of the most glorious monument in the Dominion.
The program for the unveiling, a two-hour affair, includes Benjamin Sulte's "La Statue de Cartier" and "The Statue of Cartier" by Gustavus William Wicksteed, both dating back to the 1885 installation of the statue on Parliament Hill. I think William-Athanse Baker's tribute to Cartier would've been more appropriate.
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| from George-Étienne Cartier Benjamin Sulte Montreal: G. Ducharme, 1919 |
Two hours. Imagine. Charles Joseph Doherty, Robert Borden's Minister of Justice spoke. What can we expect today from Peter Mackay?
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02 September 2014
Margaret Millar's Great Toronto Murder Mystery
The Iron Gates
Margaret Millar
New York: Dell, 1960
222 pages
This review now appears, revised and rewritten, in my new book:
The Dusty Bookcase:A Journey Through Canada'sForgotten, Neglected, and Suppressed Writing
Available at the very best bookstores and through
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01 September 2014
Labour Day Verse for "All Good Workers"
The dedication in The Workshops and Other Poems, the only volume of verse by Florence Nightingale Horner Sherk (1857-1930), otherwise known as "Gay Page". James Hardy Sherk (1887-1975), a lawyer, was the poet's only surviving child.
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| from The Thunder Bay Historical Society: Eighth Annual Report (1917) |
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27 August 2014
The Long November in Late August
"Mysterious" is the word I used when first describing James Benson Nablo. This was four years ago. I'd just finished The Long November and I had questions:
- How did a man who had never published anything bolt out of the gate with a novel from a major house?
- Given its commercial success, why is The Long November Nablo's only book?
- Why did the flurry of editions and printings of The Long November come to such an abrupt end?
Today, sixty-four years after the last edition, The Long November is again available as the latest in the Véhicule Press Ricochet Books series. I think it's worth a read. But then I would say that – I was the guy who suggested that it be reprinted in the first place. You'll find the answers to the question posed above in my Introduction.
Look, there aren't many novels out there that take place in Cataract City (read: Niagara Falls), Moreland Lake (read: Kirkland Lake) and Toronto (read: Toronto). This one is the real deal.
Write what you know.
Nablo wrote about rumrunning because he'd been a rumrunner, he wrote about mining because he'd been a miner, and he wrote about women because he had known more than a few. The Long November is a rough novel; back in 1946 its language offended a whole lot of people. If talk of "shacking up", "suck-holing" and "being screwed without being kissed" offend, this isn't the book for you.
Stronger eggs and skirts will find The Long November just the thing for fin d'été. You Yanks will have to wait for autumn.
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| Den Lange November James Benson Nablo [trans. Henning Kehler] Copenhagen: Nyt Nordisk, 1948 |
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25 August 2014
An Amazon Customer Review is Reconsidered
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| The Loved and the Lost Morley Callaghan Toronto: Macmillan, 1951 |
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23 August 2014
The Angels of Mons at 100
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| The Angels of Mons, R. Crowhurst, c.1920 |
Gothic master Arthur Machen argued against all of the above, citing his supernatural fantasy "The Bowmen", not divine intervention, as the source the legend. His convincing and highly entertaining Introduction to The Angels of Mons: The Bowmen and Other Legends of the War (1915) should have prevented things like this piece of reportage from the 10 August 1915 Globe:
Got that? An unnamed man received a letter from his unidentified sister recounting a conversation with a certain Miss M, who had told the man's sister that an undisclosed friend told her about seeing angels. Later, another anonymous man told her that he too had seen angels.
Now, before you and Jan Harold Brunvand discount this story, I point out that the man who received the letter was "one of the most prominent citizens in Toronto", and that Miss M. was "daughter of the canon". The canon? Which canon? Why, Reverend Canon M., of course.
Lest you doubt an anonymous man's word about something written to his sister by a woman who was told something by someone and someone else, allow me to present this article about an unnamed preacher, who on alluded to the words of an unidentified soldier as reported by an unknown nurse. Ye of little faith are advised to consider that this featured in a sermon that was delivered somewhere at some point:
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| The Globe, 11 April 1916 |
Reverend Gustave Adolf Kuhring was several thousand of kilometres from the scene of battle, so relied on his powers of oratory in delivering a chilling account of the British advance as led by St George, his horsemen and his archers:
A German officer later taken prisoner asked:—A century later, we're still looking for those testimonies, and that of the "nurse who had been brought into contact with one of the soldiers from the battle [sic] of Mons." In their absence, I recommend "The Angel of Mons" by Ethel Ursula Foran.
"Who were those men with the bows and arrows? We tried to get their leader, the one on the white horse, but couldn't hit him."
"It is sworn by numerous witnesses," said Mr. Kuhring, "that when the British came to examine the bodies of the dead, by far the larger number of them had no wounds on their bodies."
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| The Battle of Mons, 23 August 1914 |
THE ANGEL OF MONS(A legend of the Great War of 1914-1918.)
The Great War that Napoleon in exile foretold
O'er the nations of Europe like a tidal-wave roll'd—
Crumbling Crowns into dust, snapping Sceptres in twain,
Shaking Thrones to earth to ne'er rise again,
Scattering armies of might, burning humbler homes,
Laying low in the dust spires, temples and domes,
Bringing death and grim ruin in its terrible wake
Until half of all Europe was a blood-crimsoned lake.
The fires of destruction blazed fierce on each shore,
All sounds were drowned out in the thundering roar
Of cannon, of rifle, of bomb and of shell,
Turning heavenly peace into furious hell.
While Death in all forms stalked over the world,
And its blood-stained banners were fiercely unfurled.
There were terrors untold in the Teutons' advance
Which rallied the forces of Britain and France.
It was thus in the midst of that world-shaking strife,
A struggle intense to save Liberty's life,
That the darkness of night was lit into a glow,
In the heavens above, in the valleys below,
When the flashing of shells, as they rushed through the sky,
To the thundering guns of the trench made reply,
When the "curtain of fire" cast its blaze o'er the plain,
And the soil was deep-drenched with torrents of rain,
When the signals of death rushed over the sky
And the hovering aeros inter circled on high,
When each trench was at once a shelter and tomb,
As the spirits of life and death met in the gloom,
Whence eager eyes watched for a move or a sign
To reveal the fate of their much-harassed line;
The sentinels on duty gazed anxious afar
For a hint of the fight in the trenches of war.
All through the long night as the Germans advance,
Sharp vigils are kept by both Britain and France.
Not a man at the front has a moment's repose.
No watcher dare sleep though his aching eyes close.
'Twas thus, 'midst the shreaks of a furious night,
A vision appeared over Mons' naming height, —
A something that seem'd supernatural to all —
A something that thousands of soldiers recall.
Was it a spirit of Hope or a spirit of Doom
That arose on their sight amidst stygean gloom?
What is it that the watcher with night-glass there cons?
They call it, who saw it, "The Angel of Mons."
The soldiers of France, looking out of the dark,
Thought they saw on the hills Saint Joan of Arc,
Clad in armour of silver, with a sabre of gold,
Advancing to lead them as she did of old
They claimed that the vision so wondrous to see
Was a heavenly sign of a grand victory;
And strong grew each heart that was growing faint,
As they thought they were fighting 'neath the eye of their Saint
The soldiers of Britain saw the vision as well;
That wonderful tale these brave fellows tell
Just as ghost-stories are told with lowering breath,
For they feared such a vision far more than death.
Then one whispered the word, in a moment of awe,
It was England's Saint George that the whole army saw.
The courage at once revived in each breast,
Of victory's wave they were now on the crest —
They declared that the War was now rightly begun —
And would end with the crush of the barbaric Hun.
The Belgians beheld Saint Michael the Great
In the vision of Mons, like a signal of Fate,
As he drove the dark legions from Heaven above.
So his power and his justice again he will prove
By leading the ranks that are fighting for Right.
By commanding once more against soldiers of Might.
It could not be other than the Archangel there
That appeared like a spectre, in the sulphurous air;
His invincible sword he unsheathes as of yore,
He will fight for God as he once fought before,
And the hosts of dark evil will again be hurl'd
From the face of the earth clear out of the world:
Such the Belgians thought was that vision so bright
That appeared above Mons in the depths of the night.
Be Michael, or George or Joan the Saint
That appeared over Mons amidst glimmering faint,
Like a spectre let loose from the region of ghosts,
Sent to cheer on to glory fair Liberty's hosts,
The Angel of Mons was a harbinger true
Of the victory the Allies eventually knew.
It may be a legend, or it may be a fact —
With the spirits of Power it may be a pact —
Or it may be a phantom of some horrible dream —
Or it may be of God a forerunning gleam;
But the Angel of Mons was the polar star
Of many a hero in that terrible war.
It is said that soldiers, like sailors, are all
Superstitious and fear the supernatural;
They see spirits in trees and ghosts on the waves,
The dead in shrouds coming out of their graves,
They shudder to think of the spirits that walk,
And the beasts that like human beings oft talk.
It is likely that all the things that they dread —
Be they the living or be they the dead —
Arose to their fancy as on Mons' grim height
They witnessed the vision upon that dread night.
But one thing is certain and all question defies,
That Angel brought victory to the Allies.
18 August 2014
The Return of the Amazon Customer Review
Okay, so they never went away – but they did from this blog. I had a grand old time a few years back tearing strips off homophobes, book burners, prudes, egotists, and those who think they know something about history and geography.
I wonder why I stopped. Too much fun? I do remember thinking that change was coming. After the Orlando Figes scandal, how could it not? No responsible retailer would allow its customers to be so grossly misled.
Sure enough, 2012 saw Amazon deleting all sorts of customer reviews. “My sister’s and best friend’s reviews were removed from my books,” sniffed self-published author M. E. Franco. “They happen to be two of my biggest fans.”
Now, there's a coincidence.
How many reviews did Amazon delete? The company was mum. Writing in the New York Times, David Streitfeld described the exercise as a "sweeping hazy purge". Neither friend nor family to M.E. Franco, I noticed nothing.
Then came 2013, a busy year in which Amazon's customer reviews cropped up in a trio of otherwise unrelated Canadian news stories.
The first concerned the resignation of Toronto District School Board director Chris Spence, who had been caught plagiarizing all sorts of things including – improbably – an Amazon customer review. Might it have been one by educator Rudy Patudy? Reporters were not so specific.
The Spence scandal was followed closely by a hysterical, media-created controversy over a print on demand publisher's sexy blonde Anne Shirley. Then came Stephen King, who just happened to give his latest the same title as a very fine 2006 graphic novel by Emily Schulz.
This in turn led to all sorts of nastiness from semi-literate folks who purchased the wrong book in error:
Good souls worked to repair the damage:
The author endured it all, recording her experience on a blog and coming out a winner with a refurbished MacBook Air for her suffering.
The current year had been much more quiet until I began receiving emails from a publisher encouraging me to ask family and friends to post reviews of my "books" on Amazon.
Before continuing, I want to make one thing clear: I have no books with this publisher. I have no book with this publisher. That said, I did play some small role in one tome's journey to print. This modest effort has resulted in messages such as these:
If you/your family and friends are unfamiliar with posting online reviews, we have included some guidelines below. Online reviews are a great way for authors and readers to interact online. Reviews are critical to both publishers and readers alike, and many consumers rely on these opinions when making purchases on Amazon.Lord knows this is anything but the golden age of publishing. I wish the publisher well. I wish the book well; it deserves to by widely read. But I cannot call on family and friends to plant online reviews. I cannot ask them to laud something they haven't read or encourage them to think better of a book because of some small connection to yours truly. Amazon customer reviews are unreliable and ill-informed as it is. Who wants to be part of that mess.
13 August 2014
Richard Rohmer Recycles (Again)
Starmageddon
Richard Rohmer
Toronto: Irwin, 1986
Starmageddon takes place in a future past. We know this because the Office of the Vice-President of the United States is held by a woman. The president calls her a bitch, primarily because she never supported Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative. It's the year 2000, seventeen years have passed since The Gipper initiated the program and – glory be – the thing works! Doesn't the VP have mud on her face!
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| Time, 4 April 1983 |
What could go wrong?
Plenty.
The captain is distracted by the vice-president, another pilot is distracted by the hot purser, and the first officer is legally blind. As a result, the wrong coordinates are entered into the navigation system and the 747 flies over a site where the Soviet Union is at that very moment testing its own strategic defence system.
Well, you can imagine.
Starmageddon is the twelfth book tackled as part of the Reading Richard Rohmer project. By now, I've come to expect a fair amount of self-plagiarism in the author's books. For the most part, this takes the form of passages, speeches, chapters and fictitious documents lifted from previous novels. Separation Two, the most egregious act of self-plagiarism in Canadian literature, is the most extreme example.
Starmageddon is something else altogether. Here Rohmer lifts and tweaks page after page from Massacre 747, his 1984 book on the Korean Air Lines disaster. Behold, fiction born of non-fiction:
Like a lumbering elephant, Flight 315 began to move down runway fourteen, accelerating rapidly toward the computer-precalculated speed of 196 miles per hour. When the speed was reached, the co-pilot called out "rotation"and the captain, both hands now on the wheel of the control column, hauled back smoothly and strongly. Instantly, the nose rotated up into the climb position, and the enormous aircraft, 196 feet between its blinking wingtip lights and 232 feet between nose and tail, leapt gracefully up into the black night. It was 2:02 on the morning of August 29.
— Starmageddon
Like a lumbering elephant, Flight 007 began to move down runway 31L, accelerating rapidly toward the computer-precalculated speed at which the co-pilot would call for rotation. When the rotation came, the captain, both hands now on the wheel on the control column, hauled back smoothly and strongly. Instantly, the nose came up into the climb position, and the enormous aircraft, 196 feet between its blinking wingtip lights and 232 feet between nose and tail, leapt gracefully up into the black night. It was 12:24 on the morning of September 1.August 29, not September 1. The flight and runway numbers are different, too. Again, Starmageddon is set in the future; albeit a future in which the lessons of Flight 007 are forgotten. Oh, people still remember the disaster, its a real topic of conversation, but that doesn't prevent this from happening:
— Massacre 747
At 5:53 the Soviet pilot reported: "804. I have executed the launch."
In one second the lights of the rockets, as burning propellants thrust the missiles ever faster toward the target, had become mere pinpoints in the distance. The rockets headed unerringly for the brilliant navigation lights and the red rotating beacons of the target.
Pilot 804 knew this his heart-seeking missile, if functioning properly, would have locked onto one go the river of intense heat that the target's huge engines pouring out into the frigid high-altitude air.
— Starmageddon
At 18:26:20 the Soviet pilot reported: "805. I have executed the launch."One can understand Rohmer's temptation; Massacre 747 is one hell of a book, and it contains some of his very best writing:
In one second the lights of the rockets, as burning propellants thrust the missiles ever supersonically faster toward the target, had become mere pinpoints in the distance. The rockets headed unerringly for the brilliant navigation lights and the red rotating beacons of the target.
The fighter pilot knew this his heart-seeking missile, if functioning properly, would have "locked on" to one go the target's huge engines pouring out a river of intense heat into the frigid high-altitude air.
— Massacre 747
The mortally wounded 747 cut through the night sky, illuminating it for miles around. With only one wing it slowly began to roll. It was like a comet. Its long, distinctive humplike cockpit and nose thrust ahead and clear of the ball of flame as if trying to run away, to avoid being consumed. Inside the roiling fire all was being engulfed or spit out by the explosion into the icy air. Bodies were torn apart. Blankets, luggage, seats, toys – everything movable or ripped away from floors and ceilings at the rear of the massive aircraft – were spewed out the hole where the tail had been.
— Massacre 747
The flaming and mortally wounded 747 cut through the night sky, illuminating it for miles around. With only one wing, it slowly began to roll. Its long, distinctive humplike cockpit and nose thrust ahead and clear of the ball of flame, as if trying to avoid being consumed. Inside, the roiling fire engulfed all that was not spit out into the icy air by the explosion. Bodies were torn apart. Blankets, luggage, seats, toys – everything that was movable or had been ripped away from floors and ceilings at the rear of the massive fuselage – were spewed out the hole where the tail had been.Who wouldn't want to revisit those images. Besides, it gave opportunity to fix that awkward sentence about the roiling fire.
— Starmageddon
Did anyone notice?
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| Books in Canada, May 1986 |
Best sentence:
Pieces of the shattered engine blade penetrated the thin fuselage skin like a knife through gossamer.
— Starmageddon
Pieces of the shattered engine blade penetrated the thin fuselage skin like a knife through gossamer.Object: A 241-page hardcover in blue binding. The cover art by Peter Mossman reminds me of the very worst albums sold during my time at Sam the Record Man (1983-85).
— Massacre 747
The hardcover first edition – there was no second printing – is more common than the mass market paperback. The only cover image I can find (right) comes courtesy of Toronto bookseller David Harris, who offers his copy for all of two dollars.
Worth every penny.
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11 August 2014
Harlequin Librarians: So Many Secrets
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| Hospital Librarian Margaret Malcom 1961 |
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| The Librarian's Secret Wish Carol Grace 2009 |
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| The Librarian's Secret Scandal Jennifer Morey 2010 |
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| What the Librarian Did Karina Bliss 2010 |
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07 August 2014
No he didn't.
He Learned About Women
Ted Greenshade [?]
Toronto: News Stand Library, 1949
Tex had lived long enough to realize he had more than average appeal to women. All his life they had either wanted to clutch him to their bosoms and mother him or have him clutch their bosoms and make mothers of them.Oh, brother.
I won't say that He Learned About Women was News Stand Library's worst book, only that it's the worst of those I've read.
Let's hope it isn't.
He Learned About Women opens on Tex Lane, a mercenary in the employ Israel's "Jewish Army", belly down on the desert sand, facing an unforgiving "arab horde". As he awaits certain death, thoughts drift back to the women of his past.
"A THOUSAND NIGHTS, A THOUSAND WOMEN and ONE LESSON"
A THOUSAND WOMEN? I count twelve, beginning the Methodist Sunday School superintendent's daughter, who let teenaged Tex touch her during a clubhouse initiation. Sexy, sporty Peggy McLean is next; she capped a day at the beach by taking his virginity. Third is the wanton wife of his instructor at Sandhurst.
Wait.
Tex starts out as a lower-middle class, middling schoolboy from Hamilton, Ontario. How did he come to be accepted at England's most prestigious military academy?
More than a soldier of fortune, Tex Lane is a man of mystery. He moves about the globe – London, Paris, Shanghai, Montreal – with impunity. Inexplicably wealthy, Tex can become the rattiest of church mice when plot requires. By turns a journalist, an ad man, an actor, a captain and a carny, he is everyone and no one. Meanwhile, women come and go, each more fully formed than the protagonist. The most interesting to these eyes is Helen Demoskoff, a sympathetic young Doukhobor who was once arrested for removing her clothes as a form of protest.
Helen is a woman of conviction and character. Tex, on the other hand, is the sort of man who will sleep with a woman, then accuse her of being a slut. He's the type who will pressure a woman to give up her child because he isn't the father. Tex is the kind of guy who will abandon a woman, return, then feel betrayed that she has married.
In short, he's not a man you'd want to know.
Best sentence:
Looking into her worried face Tex felt like someone who has been caught putting a feather up the nose of a child in an iron lung.Epigraph:
Ibid?
It's from the Book of Ezra (1 Esdras 4:22).
Speculation: The idea of the trapped soldier revisiting his past may owe something to James Benson Nablo's 1946 novel The Long November, which News Stand Library reprinted in two editions prior to He Learned About Women.
Trivia: Back cover copy refers to a "girl who died in the Cathay Hotel because of a millionaire's lust and passion." No such character features in the novel.
Object and access: A 160-page mass market paperback with cover art by Syd Dyke.
He Learned About Women is nowhere to be found on WorldCat. As of this writing just four copies are being offered by online booksellers. The lone copy of the Canadian printing looks to be in about the same condition as mine, but is a bargain at five dollars. The three Americans range from US$2 (Reading Copy) to US$14 (Very Good - Fine).
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