Fifty years ago today saw journalist Jeff Buchanon's last appearance in the pages of Montreal's Gazette. Handsome and fearless, he was in very many ways Canada's answer to Steve Roper. Buchanon's time at the Gazette was not a long one. When the reporter first appeared, in the 17 October 1960 edition, he'd only just returned from the Arctic and, with wife Julie, was soon flying off to Sydney, Nova Scotia. (Cliquez pour agrandir.)
Sadly, the couple's "MARITIME HOLIDAY" was disrupted by smugglers.
Truth be told, it wasn't much of a break. There was no relaxation to be had on the return to their Montreal home; within days Buchanon found himself entangled in a protection racket.
He was almost played by a dame.
A few more adventures ensued before Buchanon was assigned to investigate "small time robberies by kids." Dantin, the editor of his unnamed newspaper, cautioned that there might be dope involved – and was he ever right!
By extraordinary coincidence, Buchanon had only just begun work on the story when he witnessed a gas station robbery committed by those very same kids.
He tailed them.
He confronted them.
And then he disappeared, never to be seen again... at least in the pages of The Gazette. The panel above was his very last.
Did Buchanon turn to a life of crime? Was he offed by the kids? I suppose Julie cared. Not so the readers of the Gazette; the paper published no letters of concern.
Consider this a cold case... one I have every intention of solving after I've retired from the force.
Jacket copy gives far too much away, recounting in detail the first half of this novel, and revealing the fate of its 12-year-old protagonist. I won't be making the same mistakes.
This is a work to be celebrated, studied and, more than anything, read, because that protagonist – a nameless orphan – might just be the best realized child in our literature. We first see him cycling around Westmount, collecting money on his newspaper deliveries. The tips help, but the job's real value comes through information on vacation plans that he passes on to older brother Milt, a petty thief. The pair live a hand-to-mouth existence, which Milt believes he'll change with a plan that will lead to the big leagues. We're now at page 27, roughly a tenth of the way through the book; I know better than to give away more of the plot.
So, let's return to the dust jacket: "In his second book John Buell more than fulfills the promise of his extraordinary first novel, The Pyx." Very true. Four Days is the better book, though this wasn't reflected in sales.
It was published in England by Macmillan, and was translated into French as Quatre Jours (Paris: Stock, 1963), a "roman américain [sic]". A German language edition was appeared under the mysterious title Lauter Wölfe (Munich: List, 1964). These were followed by paperback editions from Pan (1965), Popular Library (1968) and HarperCollins Canada (1991). "SOON TO BE A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE", trumpets the Popular Library edition. Well, it was optioned in 1962, but the designations "SOON" and "MAJOR" were a tad optimistic. When finally released in 1999, Four Days, the "MOTION PICTURE", used the cinema only as a rest stop on the highway to DVD.
Liberties were taken. Milt is transformed from brother to father and is given a girlfriend named Feather. London, Ontario's Lolita Davidvich earns second billing as Chrystal, a character that doesn't even feature in the book. This scene, with Kevin Zegers playing our unnamed protagonist, will appear utterly foreign to anyone who has read the novel:
Following The Pyx by three years, Four Days was a sophomore effort. On its strength alone, Edmund Wilson positioned Buell as one of Canada's foremost writers. Eleven years passed before novel number three appeared. By then, Wilson was dead. Where were John Buell's champions? Where are they today?
Object and Access: A very attractive hardcover with jacket by Enrico Arno. I bought my inscribed first edition in 1985 for two Canadian quarters. Twenty-six years later, Very Good copies – unsigned – can be had for as little as US$11.00. Though not plentiful, paperbacks begin at less than a loonie. Our libraries are oh-so-predictable: the universities come through, while the others – save the ever reliable (though threatened) Toronto Public Library – fail miserably. Whether in English or French translation, Four Days is not to be found in the Bibliothèques de Montréal. For shame.
Pocket Books' 1974 edition of William C. Heine's The Last Canadian, our silliest novel, seen here with the edition Paperjacks packaged for the American market.
The new issue of Canadian Notes and Queries has arrived, bringing a rich mixture of essays on collecting, bookselling and Mordecai Richler. With ninety-six pages of goodness, there's too much to list here, but I will point CanLit collectors to essays by Nigel Beale, Michael Darling and Jim Fitzpatrick. I add that admirers of Charles Foran's Mordecai are treated to the biography's original preface, penned just as work was beginning.
My own piece deals with The Errand Runner: Reflections of a Rabbi's Daughter, the 1981 book by Leah Rosenberg, Richler's mother. A product of John Wiley & Sons' Toronto branch plant, it ranks as the most awkward and badly edited memoir I've yet come across – and here I'm including self-published stuff. Blame belongs entirely with the publisher, which reveals its reason for signing the memoir on the book's dust jacket.
As I write in CNQ: "Discard the dust jacket, however, and Mordecai Richler's name disappears. His is not to be found in the text..."
One of my favourite films as a child, until last week I'd seen Lies My Father Told Me only once. This would have been in the autumn of 1975, within weeks of the debut, and within walking distance of the Montreal neighbourhood in which it had been shot. Lies My Father Told Me was a pretty big deal back then. It followed hot on the heels of The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, garnering glowing reviews and won a Golden Globe as Best Foreign Film before slipping away. Set in the mid-twenties, the film draws upon writer Ted Allan's childhood in telling the simple story of the love shared between young David Herman (Jeff Lynas) and his junk collecting grandfather (Yossi Yadin). The film, like so many about childhood, relies heavily on schmaltz. Roger Ebert recognized this in the conclusion of his own glowing review:
"Lies My Father Told Me" has been criticized here and there for being mawkish, sentimental, obvious, filled with clichés and willing to do almost anything to pluck at the heartstrings. All of those criticisms are correct. It's just that, somehow, such faults don't seem fatal to the movie. [Director Jan] Kadar has told a simple story in direct and strong terms, and he hasn't tried to be so sophisticated that we lose sight of the basic emotions that are, after all, the occasion for making the movie in the first place.
Returning to the film in middle age, I was surprised at how much I'd retained – right down to the scene in which we see David's mother (Marilyn Lightstone) breast-feeding his newborn baby brother.
Did I mention I was a child when I first saw the film?
What eluded me then – and surprised me last week – was Allan's presence in the role of Mr Baumgarten, the neighbourhood tailor.
"Mr Elias, drop in to see me this evening. I'd like to discuss this with you: Engel's Origin of the Family and Private Property."
A dedicated Marxist, like his creator, Baumgarten is a persistent, yet polite pest for the proletariat. Its fun to see Allan making fun of himself. In his second scene, Baumgarten proselytizes as the junk dealer shovels manure.
"Mr Elias! Mr Elias! Mr Elias! I have that pamphlet I was telling you about: Lenin's Imperialism. An incredible work."
The writer more than holds his own in acting opposite Yadin in one of the film's finest scenes.
"Who was it that said, 'What is a bigger crime? To rob a bank or to open a bank?'"
"Probably Jeremiah."
"Or probably Karl Marx, and I will prove it to you."
"He only repeated what the ancient prophets said."
"Not quite, not quite."
"Mr Baumgarten, have you read all these books?"
"All of them."
"I've only read one book... and I'm still reading it."
Allan's acting in Lies My Father Told Me went unrewarded, though he did earn an Oscar nomination for Original Screenplay. Of the critics, it seems that only John Simon had anything to say about the writer as actor:
What makes this an especially sorry film is, first, that Ted Allan, who wrote it and pedestrianly acts in it, is as uninventive a writer as ever addressed himself to a sentimental platitude. Some of the performances are embarrassing, others rise to the height of mediocrity, the music is deplorable, the cinematography garish, and there are doubts as to whether the the film could please even an intelligent child.
I'll agree with Simon about the music. As for the rest? Well, I've never claimed to be an intelligent child.
Trivia: Caught up in his zeal, Baumgarten misidentifies Frederick Engel's work. The English translation is titled The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State.
My recent conversation with the charming Julie Wilson. Pulp novels, literary hoaxes, the Edwardian John Glassco, and the neglected and forgotten in our literature – you'll find it all here at Canadian Bookshelf.
Like the Oscar Peterson Trio, I get requests. Many come from those seeking information on the great Brian Moore or the tragic Maria Monk, but most concern Harriet Marwood, a woman who never existed. Was the English governess modelled on a real person? When, if ever, did she use a birch? How might I meet such a woman?
The most common query comes from folks hoping for more Harriet Marwood stories. For those with the hunger, I have very good news: the beautiful, brunette disciplinarian exists outside the pages of The English Governess and Harriet Marwood, Governess. We find her first in The Augean Stable, a 124-page, three-act play that Glassco composed in 1954. Unproduced and unpublished, you'll have to consult his papers at Library and Archives Canada in Ottawa to read this alternate, rather polite version of Harriet's romance with Richard Lovel.
Much more accessible is "The Black Helmet". Published in The Fatal Woman (Anansi, 1974) as one of "Three Tales by John Glassco", this is the novella that Glassco struggled with – forever revisiting and revising – for most of his 71 years. Here Harriet is mentioned frequently, if fleetingly, by her former charge, Philip Mairobert. In this passage, our hero recalls the the arrival of the governess at his family's estate in rural Quebec:
Today I will think of her as the person to whom I owed everything, not as a woman I loved – and think of my life here before she came, with no one but those two old servants in the twilight of dotage who were so terrified of me. I must have been like a wild animal then, with those fits of rage – screaming, biting, breaking things, rolling on the floor. I remember almost nothing of that time: it seemed to be mostly walking through these ruined gardens and in the woods where I set my ineffectual little traps for birds and rabbits, hoping to catch them alive. How desolate and wild a life! Yet when mother left to live in Paris for good, and Miss Marwood came, I was furious. I thought I would lose me freedom. Freedom! As if it ever mattered to me.
Well I lost it certainly – the child's freedom to be lonely, bored, idle, frightened. And I found, quite simply, happiness. A week after she arrived I could sleep without nightmares; and I had stopped stammering: I simply hadn't time! As for my rages, I really think she enjoyed them. as if they offered a challenge to her methods and muscles, to the very strength of her arm.
Though The Fatal Woman enjoyed just a single printing – likely 3000 copies – for a good many years it seemed quite common. No more. I note that only five, one a crummy library discard, are currently being offered by online booksellers.
Fans of the governess are advised not to hesitate. Strike now!
Trivial: The author's biography on The Fatal Woman errs in stating that Glassco won "the Governor-General's award [sic] for both poetry and non-fiction." In fact, he received only the former.
I'll step out on a limb here and say that Anansi's mistake is borne of a common misconception that Glassco won a Governor General's award for Memoirs of Montparnasse (his only "non-fiction" book). No Governor General's Award for Non-fiction was awarded for 1970, the year in which it was published.
Incredible, but true... and oddly appropriate.
Not trivial:
Cross-posted in a slightly altered form at A Gentleman of Pleasure – less flippant, more images.
A writer, ghostwriter, écrivain public, literary historian and bibliophile, I'm the author of Character Parts: Who's Really Who in CanLit (Knopf, 2003), and A Gentleman of Pleasure: One Life of John Glassco, Poet, Translator, Memoirist and Pornographer (McGill-Queen's UP, 2011; shortlisted for the Gabrielle Roy Prize). I've edited over a dozen books, including The Heart Accepts It All: Selected Letters of John Glassco (Véhicule, 2013) and George Fetherling's The Writing Life: Journals 1975-2005 (McGill-Queen's UP, 2013). I currently serve as series editor for Ricochet Books and am a contributing editor for Canadian Notes & Queries. My most recent book is The Dusty Bookcase (Biblioasis, 2017), a collection of revised and expanded reviews first published here and elsewhere.
