Reclaiming Mark Strand

The Planet of Lost Things

Mark Strand (William Pène Du Bois, illus.)

New York: Potter, 1982

We're a funny lot, forever going on about Jack Kerouac's French Canadian parents, clutching Dollarton squatter Malcolm Lowry to our collective bosom, while ignoring writers who were actually born in this country. I refer here not to Wyndham Lewis, brought into this world on his father's yacht off the coast of Amherst, Nova Scotia, but to those like Saul Bellow who began their lives on Canada's fertile soil.

Yes, let's look at Bellow, a man who was born and lived the first nine years of his life on the Island of Montreal. His name is not found in The Canadian Encyclopedia, The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature or Encyclopedia of Canadian Literature. Is this Nobel Prize recipient not worthy of even a passing reference?

And what of Mark Strand? Look up his birthplace, Summerside, Prince Edward Island, on Wikipedia (that most unreliable of reference tools) and what do you find? Seven NHL players, a few singer-songwriters and an Olympic bobsleigh gold medalist. Pretty impressive for a town of just 14,000 souls. Strand was born and spent his first four years in Summerside, but we ignore that fact, just as we choose not to recognize his Pulitzer Prize or the term he spent as United States Poet Laureate... or this very fine little book. It can be found in nearly three hundred public libraries across the United States, but in Canada we must make do with one lonely copy held in the Toronto Public Library.

There's no poetry in The Planet of Lost Things... by which I mean there's no verse. A children's storybook, this is one of the oddities in Strand's bibliography. It tells the story of a young boy, Luke, who dreams of traveling the solar system in a rocket ship. When he comes across an unknown, planet, the young astronaut decides to investigate. What he finds is a building filled with lost mail, forgotten umbrellas hanging from barren trees and a park populated by lost cats and dogs.

The celestial body's only human inhabitants are the Unknown Soldier and the Missing Person, found by Luke next to a cluster of lost balloons. Together the three wander a melancholy world, breathing an atmosphere that consists largely of air that has escaped from leaking tires.

It all makes for a fun little bedtime story. The challenge for Canadian parents, of course, comes in finding a copy.

Object and Access: A sturdy hardcover with a flimsy dust jacket, the only decent volume currently listed online is being offered at US$60.

A Gentleman of Pleasure

Just announced by McGill-Queen's University Press:

A Gentleman of Pleasure: One Life of John Glassco, Poet,

Memoirist, Translator, and Pornographer

Brian Busby

April 2011

The first biography of Canada's most enigmatic literary figure, a self-described "great practitioner of deceit."

John Glassco (1909-1981) holds a unique position in Canadian letters and a somewhat notorious reputation throughout the world. He is best known for his Memoirs of Montparnasse, the controversial chronicle of his youthful adventures and encounters with celebrities in the Paris of James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, and Ernest Hemingway. Less known are his poetry, his instrumental role in the foundation of modern translation, and his numerous - and widely popular - works of pornography.

A Gentleman of Pleasure not only spans Glassco's life but delves into his background as a member of a once prominent and powerful Montreal family. In addition to Glassco's readily available work, Brian Busby draws on pseudonymous writings published as a McGill student as well as unpublished and previously unknown poems, letters, and journal entries to detail a vibrant life while pulling back the curtain on Glassco's sexuality and unconventional tastes.

In a lively account of a man given to deception, who took delight in hoaxes, Busby manages to substantiate many of the often unreliable statements Glassco made about his life and work. A Gentleman of Pleasure is a remarkable biography that captures the knowable truth about a fascinatingly complex and secretive man.

More, including pre-ordering information, can be found here.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention that the cover is by the talented David Drummond.

And These Were Her Magnificent Breasts

This was Joanna

Niel [sic] H. Perrin [pseud. Danny Halperin]

Toronto: News Stand Library, 1949

Of all the novels read this past year, not one has left so great an impression as Neil H. Perrin's The Door Between. In the second of two posts about the book, I described it as "one of the most peculiar Canadian novels I've ever read". Here I reconsider: The Door Between might well be the most peculiar Canadian novel I've ever read. It's portrayal of 1948 Toronto as a dark, sexual sin city, populated by stricken, agonizing souls certainly runs counter to the staid and sober images that linger in popular culture.

These same sorry sods would find fit in This was Joanna, which was published twelve months earlier. We never actually meet Joanna – she's found dead on page one by an unnamed fisherman, as depicted on the cover of the publisher's American edition: "...for one witless moment he looked down on the haunting perfection that was Joanna, the closed eyes in a kind of rapture, the long, strained throat, twisted torso, magnificent breasts, profound hips, proud legs, crouched in death like a supple cat."

Profound hips...

This is not the dead woman's story, rather it concerns an ex-lover, a nameless newspaperman who attempts to solve the mystery that was Joanna. His quest brings him into contact with her other past paramours. As with The Door Between, sexual disfunction and perversity pervade. We see this on Joanna's wedding night, as described by her husband Charles:

At last she stood nude before me. When I looked at her I was shocked to see the most brazen smile on her face.

Then, without hesitation, her fingers sure, carefully, slowly, she began to undress me. I went slightly hysterical then. I began to shudder to laugh, to giggle, to squirm. I simply went berserk. In the grip of nameless emotions that shook my whole body and dazed my mind I began to fight with her, to hit her, to drag her toward the bed.

What Joanna thought of this I don't know. We have never discussed it. I only know that later, all passion spent, as I lay beside her in the muttering gloom, I realized that on our wedding night I had gone mad, had beaten my wife and had virtually raped her.

Joanna never forgives Charles, whose desperate attempts to win her back render him a cuckold. The tryst with the newspaperman is just the first in a series of extramarital flings. It's with penultimate lover Ted Wrisley that Joanna's amorous adventures come to a climax. A sensualist who owes much to J.-K. Huysmans' Jean Des Esseintes, Wrisley introduces Joanna to "the arts of which immortal Ovid and the Marquis de Sade have written." He takes delight in showing his "chamber of horrors" to the newspaperman:

On the walls of the room were hung all sorts of gadgets of torture; long needles, small, hairy whips, knouts, knives sharp as razors, silken threads of unbelievable length. Over the mantlepiece were afixed two large peacock feathers; the end of one was a rubber stopper, the end of the other a handgrip. I dared not ask the significance of these feathers for fear of being told.

Suspended from the ceiling were two long cords, obviously used to hold a person up from the floor by his (or her) thumbs. On the floor, as if alive, lay the stuffed corpse of a sinuous cobra. The most unspeakably evil paintings adorned the walls and, in one corner of the room under a blue light, sat the grinning statue of Priapus, the phallic symbol of the ages.

This was Joanna was banned in Ireland.

Wrisley's playroom – which, incidentally, is soundproof – stands as Priapus in what is otherwise a remarkably flat environment. Like an American soap opera, This was Joanna is set in a neutral everyplace that is populated by the pampered and privileged. How bland compared to the torrid Toronto of The Door Between! I can't help but compare – had it not been for one I would not have read the other – and yet... and yet I still recommend the novel. This was Joanna might not be the most peculiar Canadian novel I've ever read, but it's up there.

Trivia: News Stand Library's American edition of This was Joanna, published in November 1949, two months after the Canadian, marks the last time the book saw print. Why Halperin's pseudonym was changed from Neil H. Perrin to Grant R. Brooks remains a mystery.

Object: A mass market paperback that is typical of News Stand Library's shoddy production values. Streaks of black ink run along the edges of a dozen or so pages, making for challenging reading. The author's name is misspelled on the cover and title page (but is correct on the spine and back cover). "I before E, except after C", I suppose.

Fly-by-night provides a thorough account of the publisher's many failed attempts at getting Halperin's pseudonym right.

Access: Only the University of Calgary has copies (both the Perrin and Brooks editions). This was Joanna might be all but absent from libraries, but that doesn't mean it's expensive. Ten copies – all fairly decent – are currently listed online at between US$7.50 and US$30. One bookseller describes his offering as "a bit misscut [sic]". Par for the course, really.

Amazon Customer Review: 'A Jonny come lately approach to writing about the American frontier.'

Related posts:

Homophobes and Book Burners Weigh In

Amazon Customer Review: 'My review has more intelect'

Amazon Customer Review: 'I could not throw it away or burn it as I would have liked to do'

Many Happy Returns

The Ottawa Citizen, 3 December 1960

McClelland and Stewart's Christmas offerings from half-a-century ago. Only This Side Jordan is in print today. Pity that, Robertson Davies' A Voice from the Attic is a particularly good match for a snowy winter's day. "A witty, robust and wonderfully opinionated book on the joys of reading and the author's own offbeat likes and dislikes." There is truth in advertising.

Which of this fall's McClelland and Stewart titles will be in print in 2060, I wonder. I'm betting against Ezra Levant's Ethical Oil (and even 2009's Shakedown, which I was once told "belongs in the category of Uncle Tom's Cabin".)

My recommendations for this season's gift-giving favours presses that are hard at work mining the neglected riches of our past.

First up, Véhicule, which this fall launched its Ricochet Books series of pulp fiction reprints. (Full disclosure: I'm consulting editor for the series.)

The Crime on Cote des Neiges

David Montrose

The series debut, returning Montrose (Charles Ross Graham) to print after after an absence of more than four decades. Originally published in 1951, this edition includes a foreword by yours truly.

Two blondes, one brunette, a roadster and a whole lotta Dow. It doesn't get much better.

Murder Over Dorval

David Montrose

Foreword by Michael Blair

"In one hand she held a plane ticket to Montreal, in the other a wad of greenbacks. She was a gorgeous looking redhead. For the sake of her lovely green eyes, Russell Teed took the plane and the money. But it wasn't long before h realized that whatever she had offered, it wasn't worth it."

Recognition of Dundurn's Voyageur Classics series is long overdue. For four years now it's been "bringing forward time-tested writing about the Canadian experience in all its varieties." This year's titles:

Storm Below

Hugh Garner

Introduction by Paul Stuewe

Combat Journal for Place d'Armes:

A Personal Narrative

Scott Symons

Introduction by Christopher Elson

Self Condemned

Wyndham Lewis

Introduction by Allan Pero

Pilgrims of the Wild

Grey Owl

Edited and introduced by Michael Gnarowski

Note the handy links to the publishers' websites. Of course, all are also available from booksellers, whether online or not, but I'm not playing favourites.

Related post: Books are Best

That's Herbert... not Hébert

The Healing Hands of Rocke and Locke

The third part of my review of The Canada Doctor by Clay Perry and John L.E. Pell 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 posts:

The Canada Doctor: First Visit

The Canada Doctor: Second Visit