Acknowledging Hugh MacLennan

Hugh MacLennan died twenty years ago today. I never met the man, though I did once nod reverently as we passed each other in an otherwise deserted university hallway. He smiled. I should have stopped. I've since learned not to let such opportunities slip by.

Another regret: I've never seen the screen adaptation of MacLennan's Two Solitudes. When offered the opportunity I chose Superman: The Movie. Christopher Reeve as the Man of Steel beat Stacy Keach's Huntly McQueen. This happened back in 1978 when I was still a young pup – shouldn't I be given a second chance? As far as I can tell, Two Solitudes never made it to Beta or VHS or LaserDisc or DVD. YouTube doesn't have so much as the trailer.

Is it any good? All I have to go on is the poster, a publicity photo, Macmillan's movie edition and a handful of contemporary reviews. It seems no one was particularly crazy about the film... "letdown" is the most accurate one-word summation, though Jay Scott provided a particularly detailed and damning review for the 30 September 1978 Globe and Mail:

Stylistically, Two Solitudes is pure Hollywood, Old Hollywood. It is not enough that we make exploitation films for the Americans: now we are copying their ponderous historical dramatizations, employing composer Maurice Jarre, the once-favored treacly symphonizer of those lumpen ethics. It is a characteristically Canadian irony that the dramatizations being Xeroxed no longer exist in their original form. Two Solitudes does not resemble any contemporary American film of quality as much as it resembles made-for-TV novels like Washington: Behind Closed Doors and Rich Man, Poor Man; it's a passionless political soap opera.

A few months later, Scott named Two Solitudes as one of ten worst films of 1978, while pointing to Superman was one the ten best.

Wonder if I'd agree.

Susanna Moodie's Bloomers

A gift from a friend, this modest booklet became part of my collection just weeks after I was introduced to the bloomer by the ever-informative Bookride. Known first, I think, as "inadvertencies", these are double entendres mined from the Western Canon. The woefully neglected Edward Gathorne-Hardy seems to have been the first to recognize the bloomer when in 1963 he published Inadvertencies collected from the works of several eminent authors. He followed this three years later with An Adult's Garden of Bloomers: Uprooted from the Works of Several Eminent Authors.

And they are eminent. Here's Henry James with a little something from The Wings of the Dove:

Then she had had her equal consciousness that within five minutes something between them had – well, she couldn't call it anything but come.

James, it seems, gave growth to more than his fair share of bloomers. How's this from Roderick Hudson?

"Oh, I can't explain," cried Roderick impatiently, returning to his work. "I've only one way of expressing my deepest feelings – it's this." And he swung his tool.

"Contributed by the public", like An Adult Garden of Bloomers, A New Garden of Bloomers is oh so English: Charles Dickens, E. M. Forster, Thomas Hardy...

And then there's Jane Austen:

Mrs Goddard was the mistress of a school – not of a seminary, or an establishment, or any thing which professed, in long sentences of refined nonsense, to combine liberal acquirements with elegant morality upon new principles and new systems – and where young ladies for enormous pay might be screwed out of health and into vanity...

No Canadian bloomers, alas – and yet our soil is so fertile!

I had bloomers on my dirty mind when rereading – yes, rereading – Susanna Moodie's Roughing It in the Bush. And that's when I came across this:

At a few miles' distance from our farm, we had some intelligent English neighbours, of a higher class; but they were always so busily occupied with their farming operations that they had little leisure or inclination for that sort of easy intercourse to which we had been accustomed.

Too subtle? Well, it is a start. I'm sure that there are more colourful Canadian bloomers out there.

And what about Roughing It in the Bush? Can a title be a bloomer? Gathorne-Hardy never addresses the matter.

"How many fine young men have I seen beggared and ruined in the bush!" Moodie exclaims in her follow-up, Life in the Clearing. The same book features this reportage of her encounter with a group of evengelicals:

Most of these tents exhibited some extraordinary scene of fanaticism and religious enthusiasm; the noise and confusion were deafening. Men were preaching at the very top of their voice; women were shrieking and groaning, beating their breasts and tearing their hair, while others were uttering the most frantic outcries, which they called ejaculatory prayers.

Not really a bloomer, but I couldn't resist passing it on.

Really, there's a part of me that is still ten years old.

Another Wreath for a Redhead

Wreath for a Redhead

Brian Moore

Toronto: Harlequin, 1951

Lady – Here's Your Wreath

Raymond Marshall (pseud. James Hadley Chase)

Toronto: Harlequin, 1953

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Another Harlequin Halloween

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Limited Time, Limited Editions (6/6)

General Ludd

John Metcalf

Downsview, Ontario: ECW, 1980

Bought nearly a quarter century ago, it turns out that this, not No Man's Meat, was the first signed and numbered edition in my collection. That General Ludd was overlooked is understandable, I think; there's no real indication that this book is in any way unusual. What we have here is John Metcalf's signature, with a number in the upper right hand corner. This latter feature caused considerable confusion when it was purchased. No, not the price, but the number: 45 of 100 copies. Or was it 50 copies?

As I say, nearly a quarter century ago.

At the time I was a student at Concordia, the model for the novel's St. Xavier University. I'd been on a tear through Metcalf's writing after having being introduced to it by Harry Hill. Goodness, I miss Harry. A wonderful teacher, he features briefly – too briefly – in Metcalf's Shut Up He Explained (Biblioasis, 2007); all to do with "cottaging":

I'd heard the word used by the late Harry Hill, actor and raconteur, in one of his scabrous anecdotes involving a power failure in the lavatory of the Montreal Voyageur Bus terminal at Berri-de Montigny and the loss of his partial plate.

The binding of this General Ludd is by The Porcupine's Quill. I'm a great fan of the press – it has produced some of the finest and finest looking small press books this country has seen – but this design seems deathly dull; quite the opposite of the novel itself.

A quarter century ago.

That confusion at the cash took place in the Double Hook. Also gone.

The ladies of the Double Hook were wonderful booksellers, unlike these folks:

Not the limited edition, mind you, but the paperback. It's a new, unread book that is typical of used books and just might have some notes or highlighting. Oh, it might also be an ex-library book. Still, you'll be surprised. Just remember, it's a new, unread, used book.

This can be yours for only US$102.76 (shipping included!).

Amazon Customer Review: 'my review has more intelect'

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Limited Time, Limited Editions (5/6)

Collected Poetry

Louis Dudek

Montreal: Delta Canada, 1971

"This first edition of 3,000 copies, printed by W. & G. Baird Ltd., established in Belfast since 1861, was printed in Northern Ireland. The test is set in 11/12 Baskerville, with section headings in 12 pt. Albertus. Printed on Clan Bulkrite. Cover and book design by Glen Siebrasse. Of this edition, 100 numbered copies are signed by the author."

The most attractive of all Delta Canada's books, I think, though this image hardly does it justice. My photographical limitations aside, the problem is that embossed title on the front cover. No ink, just glossy white paper. Commercial suicide? Not necessarily – consider the original pressings of The White Album.

Delta Canada co-founder Michael Gnarowski tells me that Dudek was less than keen, likening the shiny white book to a refrigerator. Siebrasse, on the other hand, was justifiably proud of the design.

The title design used on the jacket and boards is more easily made out on the title page.

Three thousand printed – seems such a high number in today's sorry market. You'll find only fifteen copies listed for sale online, none of which are numbered and signed. I bought mine for $75 back in 1994.