The Dusty Bookcase:A Journey Through Canada'sForgotten, Neglected, and Suppressed Writing
 |
| 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.
…
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.
 |
The Poems of Thomas D'Arcy McGee
Montreal: D & J Sadlier, 1870
|
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.
 |
| Love is a Long Shot Alice K. Doherty [pseud Ted Allan] Toronto: News Stand Library, 1949 |
 |
| Quest for Pajaro Edward Maxwell [pseud Ted Allan] London: Heinemann, 1957 |
 |
| Willie the Squowse Ted Allan Illustrated by Quentin Blake Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1978 |
 |
| Love is a Long Shot Ted Allan Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1984 |
 |
| Don't You Know Anybody Else? Ted Allan Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1985 |
The Dusty Bookcase:A Journey Through Canada'sForgotten, Neglected, and Suppressed Writing
 |
| The Toronto World, 18 September 1915 |
Hardly had they become settled when the terrible news of Lincoln's assassination reached them. Later on came stories of terrible negro riots, where the blacks, seemingly intoxicated by their sudden freedom, and fiery speeches from their trick doctors had run amuck doing tremendous damage in some localities even taking the lives of innocent whites.The three do their best to avoid "the negro settlements", but eventually exhaust their provisions. They make for the nearest village, now "crowded with half-intoxicated negroes". Once there, Hardwick is accosted by "a hulking negro".
Accordingly, whipping out his revolver he drove full tilt at the enemy, firing as he went. The negroes were too completely surprised to offer much resistance, and he was through them before they realized it, leaving one dead and three wounded in his trail. The enraged blacks a last recovered their senses, but not until it was too late. Those with fire-arms blazed away with customary negro accuracy, only one shot striking the fugitive. That unlucky bullet passed through Hardwick's arm, causing him to reel in his saddle, but quickly recovering himself he pressed on with determination.Hardwick manages to reach the Klan's meeting place, and a call to arms takes place beneath a burning cross.
I have never said a thing I did not think; but I have sometimes had to abstain from saying many things I did think. When I wished to purvey strong meat for men, I was condemned to provide milk for babes.This is Allen liberated, if only briefly. In Lane, he believed he'd found a publisher who "would consent to aid me in introducing to the world what I thought most important for it."
"Now, that 's awfully kind of you. But it's curious, as well; for two or three people passed my window last night, all Englishmen, as I judged, and all with suits almost exactly like this one – which was copied, as I told you, from an English model.There is action, but as one might expect in a work written simply and solely for the sake of embodying and enforcing Allen's own opinions, conversation dominates. Topics include marriage, war, religion and property, all discussed by Bertram with the keen interest of an outsider:
"Last night; oh, yes," Philip answered. "Last night was Saturday; that makes all the difference. The suit's right enough in its way, of course, – very neat and gentlemanly; but not for Sunday. You're expected on Sundays to put on a black coat and waistcoat, you know, like the ones I'm wearing."
Bertram's countenance fell. "And if I'm seen in the street like this," he asked, "will they do anything to me? Will the guardians of the peace – the police, I mean – arrest me?"
Frida laughed a bright little laugh of genuine amusement.
"Oh, dear, no," she said merrily; "it isn't an affair of police at all; not so serious as that: it's only a matter of respectability."
"I see," Bertram answered. "Respectability's a religious or popular, not an official or governmental, taboo. I quite understand you. But those are often the most dangerous sort. Will the people in the street, who adore Respectability, be likely to attack me or mob me for disrespect to their fetich?"
"Your taboos, I foresee, will prove a most valuable and illustrative study."Just who is this Bertram Ingledew fellow?
"I beg your pardon," Philip interposed stiffly, now put upon his mettle. "We have no taboos at all in England. You're misled, no doubt, by a mere playful façon de parley, which society indulges in. England, you must remember, is a civilised country, and taboos are institutions that belong to the lowest and most degraded savages."
But Bertram Ingledew gazed at him in the blankest astonishment. "No taboos!" he exclaimed, taken aback. "Why, I've read of hundreds. Among nomological students, England has always been regarded with the greatest interest as the home and centre of the highest and most evolved taboo development. And you yourself," he added with a courteous little bow, "have already supplied me with quite half a dozen."
This is a Hill-top Novel. I dedicate it to all those who have heart enough, brain enough, and soul enough to understand it.Object: A very attractive, well-produced hardcover issued sans jacket. Cover and frontispiece are by Aubrey Beardsley. My Near Fine copy is a second printing, won for 99p from a British bookseller in an ebay auction this November past.
 |
| My Kitchen Window Edna Jaques Toronto: Thomas Allen, 1935 |
