Climax!: A Happy Ending

The second part of my review of Neil Perrin's The Door Between, this 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.

Related post:

Toronto's Tortured Sexual Souls

Toronto's Tortured Sexual Souls

The Door Between

Neil H. Perrin [pseud. Danny Halperin]

Toronto: News Stand Library, 1950

160 pages

The first part of my review, this 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.

Maria Monk and the Kennedy Campaign

Hard to get much work done this past weekend, what with the din drifting across the border, so it seems somehow appropriate that I came across the item below, printed fifty years ago today in the 23 March 1960 edition of the Milwaukee Journal.

Click to enlarge, as they say.

A full 124 years after publication – a full 124 years after it was discredited – and still Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk was being paraded about by religious bigots. Here it joined old frauds Abraham Lincoln's Warning and the bogus Knights of Columbus Oath, along with newer works like Do you Want the Pope for a President?, written specifically with Kennedy in mind. I dare say that the book credited to Montrealer Maria is the most interesting of the bunch.

Though there's little fun to be found in a hoax built upon a brain-damaged prostitute, a smile might be raised by Don W. Hillis' If America Elects a Catholic President. The prolific pastor wrote a good many works, including Tongues, Healing and You, What Can Tongues Do for You? and Is the Whole Body a Tongue? My favourite is The Mini-Skirt Speaks. I present the first four paragraphs:

I want to make it clear that I am a Christian miniskirt. That is, I go to church every Sunday. What's more, I attend an evangelical Church. Of course, I am not the only Christian miniskirt in town. There are many others who go to my church.

Though we represent a variety of colors and patterns there is one thing we have in common. We all have a way of revealing attractive thighs, especially when the legs are crossed. They tell me that's the most comfortable way to sit.

Unless I am misreading the situation we seem to make our wearers a bit self-conscious. At least the girl who wears me is always tugging at my hem. Though I am not an expert on human nature, this appears to indicate some kind of complex.

I have also noted that we miniskirts have the ability to attract a good deal of masculine attention even at church. At first I took pride in the fact that men are fascinated by my pattern and color design. However, just this morning I heard the preacher say that this was not really what the young men (some not so young) were looking at. Though I was all ears when he started to preach, "The Appeal of a Miniskirt," I was embarrassed before he was through.

Imagine the stories Ann Coulter's little black dress could tell.

My thanks to Marc Fischer of Public Collectors for the image of Pastor Hillis' tract.

Related posts:

Maria Monk's Immortal Book

Pornography of the Puritan

Words of Hate for Maria Monk

Christmas Comes Early

Attractive Millars (w/ a Silly One)

That copy of Fire Will Freeze from last Thursday was part of International Polygonics' Library of Classic Crime. The publisher released eighteen Margaret Millar titles in all, not one of which was blessed with a good cover. Sure, some were passable, but others, such as that gracing Vanish in an Instant, were just silly.

Pity I couldn't find a larger image.

A good many paperback houses have published Millar over the decades, but for my money the very best covers were all done by Dell. Just look at their 1947 edition of Fire Will Freeze.

Death putting on his skis. What a sportsman.

1946

1948

1951

1952

1952

1960

Kitchener's Grand Dame

Fire Will Freeze
Margaret Millar
New York: International Polygonics, 1987

"America's grand dame of the genre", says the cover, yet Margaret Millar was Canadian. A Kitchener girl, born and bred, it seems that whenever her name is mentioned today it's as the wife of Kenneth Millar – better known as Ross Macdonald. The couple met as students at the Kitchener-Waterloo Collegiate Institute; their respective literary debuts were published in the same 1931 school annual. Margaret's 1945 novel The Iron Gates – set in World War II Toronto – paid for their Santa Barbara home and gave Ken the freedom to pursue a career as a novelist. I pass on this dry account as a bit of an introduction. Once a president of the Mystery Writers of America, winner of the Edgar Award, Margaret Millar has been done wrong on this side of the border. Not one of her 27 novels has ever been published in Canada.

I'd read some Ross Macdonald, was aware that his parents were Canadian, and had known that he'd grown up in Kitchener, but never had an inkling that his wife was an accomplished and acclaimed author in her own right until I received this book from a friend who was working for her New York agent.

First published in 1944, Fire Will Freeze is one of many novels Millar set in her home and native land. It begins on a "Sno-bus" being driven to a "Sno-lodge" in the midst of a Quebec "Sno-storm." The driver disappears, the passengers take shelter in an large house, and people begin to die. What seems such a standard scenario, is enlivened by Millar's use of black humour, well-realized characters and, for we Canadians, occasional references to Westmount, the Montreal Star and Ottawa Citizen.

When it first saw print, publisher Random House tried to sell Fire Will Freeze as a mystery set in a "Quebec chateau." I wonder whether this misleading description roped in many American mystery buffs? The setting does sound exotic, but what I found more interesting – here comes the spoiler – is the introduction of Pierre Jeanneret, inspired by self-described "führer canadien" Adrien Arcand, who leads a fascist organization called French Canada for Frenchmen. Le Canada français aux Français? Le Canada français aux hommes français? Millar doesn't tell us.

Some people deserve to be forgotten.

Trivia: Millar's Quebec novel has appeared in both French (Omelette canadienne) and Dutch (De sneeuw bleef niet wit). The latter – which I translate as The Snow was Not White – seems a superior title.

Object: Roger Roth's cover illustration captures something of Millar's humour, but depicts a scene not found in the novel. The design is most unpleasant and the paper is as white as the driven snow.

Access: The Kitchener Public Library has a very large collection of Millar titles, but not Fire Will Freeze. Of our public libraries, it appears that only that serving the good citizens of Toronto has a copy. Academic institutions don't fare much better; it's held by only five. Used copies range in price from one American dollar (for the International Polygonics edition) to US$125 (for the Random House first).

'Sleep On, O Hearts of Erin'

"Grosse Isle", a memorial poem by forgotten Ontario poet Thomas O'Hagan (1855-1939), himself the son of Irish immigrants who were once housed in the island's quarantine sheds. This version is drawn from J.A. Jordan's The Grosse-Isle Tragedy and the Monument to the Irish Fever Victims, 1847, published in Quebec City by the Telegraph Printing Co a few months after the 15 August 1909 unveiling of a new monument to those who fell... victims of typhus, within sight of the new land they'd hoped to call home.

A Friend of the Family

Adopted Derelicts

Bluebell S. Phillips

Toronto: Harlequin, 1957

I grew up in a house of books, but not a family of writers. Not really. My father had just begun work on what might have been his debut, a history of the CBC, when he was struck down by a heart attack at age forty-two. Two decades later, his younger brother, my uncle, co-authored a slim volume on the Anglicans in Mission program.

As a kid, the only writer I knew was Bluebell Phillips. A generation older than my mother, Mrs Phillips was an occasional visitor to our house. I don't think she crossed the threshold more than once a year, but when she did Mrs Phillips always left behind a copy of her latest book. The Plate Glass Sky, Selected Poems, A Glass Prairie, Windrush, The Alleyne Curse... these looked for all the world like vanity publications. Still, I was in awe of this elderly lady. I knew that there had been other books in the past; books published by real publishers. Ryerson had put out Something Always Turned Up and The Fair Promise had been published by Robert Hale – in England! Though both were hardcovers, the height of accomplishment to my young mind, the book to which I was most attracted was this mass market paperback. "Murderers, gunmen, prostitutes..." promises the cover. What adolescent could resist?

For more than a decade Mrs Phillips and her husband, Rev Gordon Phillips, had welcomed newly released prisoners to share their five-room Montreal apartment. I read and reread about the crimes these houseguests had committed. Down and out lovers Joe and Lillian supported themselves by shoplifting, petty crook Abie Cohen was framed for bank robbery and a very passable transvestite named Willa ended up in the Bordeaux prison after fending off an assault by an "aggressive Lesbian". Titillating and exciting, yes, but Mrs Phillips' goal was to show "the WHY as well as the WHAT of their anti-social behavior". Her hope was that the reader would come to sympathize and raise a voice in support of cure in place of punishment.

Revisiting the work after all these decades, I see much that escaped me. I overlooked the larger story... the one of a generous couple who had dedicated themselves to helping these folks become a part of society. That they succeeded even once is so much greater an achievement than having had a book published in hardcover.

Something else I missed: the Acknowledgements features thanks to M Busby, my father.

Trivia: The Fair Promise was published in West Germany as Ein zärtliches Versprechen.

Object and Access: A typical Harlequin paperback. There are currently only three copies offered online, none of which is in particularly great shape. Expect to pay somewhere in the range of ten dollars. It would appear that only Library and Archives Canada holds a copy.