Ce Soir: Montreal Noir

Tonight at the Blue Metropolis festival I'll have the honour of hosting 'Montreal Noir', a panel discussion focussing on the city's suppressed, ignored and forgotten novels of the mid-20th century.

Joining me on stage will be Trevor Ferguson, Jim Napier and Will Straw. Actor Marcel Jeannin will be reading excerpts from work by David Montrose, Martin Brett and the great Brian Moore:

Montreal Noir: The City's Forgotten Pulp Past

OPUS Montreal Hotel, Salon St-Laurent

10 Sherbrooke Street West

Saturday, 21 April, 8:30 pm 

Shortlisted for the Gabrielle Roy Prize

The Association for Canadian and Quebec Literatures (ACQL) is pleased to announce the shortlist for the 2011 Gabrielle Roy Prize (English Section), which each year honours the best work of Canadian literary criticism published in English. This year’s shortlisted finalists (in alphabetical order) are Brian Busby for A Gentleman of Pleasure: One Life of John Glassco, Poet, Memoirist, Translator, and Pornographer (McGill-Queen’s UP); Alan Filewod for Committing Theatre: Theatre Radicalism and Political Intervention in Canada (Between the Lines Press); Sophie McCall for First Person Plural: Aboriginal Storytelling and the Ethics of Collaborative Authorship (UBC Press); and Herb Wyile for Anne of Tim Hortons: Globalization and the Reshaping of Atlantic-Canadian Literature (Wilfrid Laurier UP).

The shortlist was chosen by a jury composed of David Creelman (UNB, Saint John), Carrie Dawson (Dalhousie University), and Cynthia Sugars (University of Ottawa).

The winner will be announced publicly on May 26th, 2012, at the Gabrielle Roy Prize reception at the Association for Canadian and Quebec Literatures annual conference, which this year will take place in Waterloo, Ontario. The prize reception will be held from 6:00-7:30 p.m. on May 26th in the Graduate Lounge on the first floor of the Student Services Building at Wilfrid Laurier University.

The jury was unanimous in selecting A Gentleman of Pleasure for particular recognition. One member described the book as “a beautifully written and very well researched account of Glassco’s life and, equally interesting, of his interactions with so many other Canadian writers, artists, and intellectuals. Never before has the mid-twentieth-century Canadian literary and cultural scene appeared so … scandalous!” Another wrote: “Balanced, incisive, and precise, Busby has produced a carefully researched and elegantly written biography. Focusing on a minor writer with a persistent talent, the book is more than a chronicle of the main events of Glassco’s life. A Gentleman of Pleasure captures the tone of the different eras through which Glassco moved and is imprinted with the anxieties and difficulties of an uncentered writer emerging in the midst of the emptiness of the modernist era. The writing is professional, clear, and engaging, and the research is meticulously documented.”

Cross-posted at A Gentleman of Pleasure

Mean Mister MacDonald Attacks a Prime Minister

Day seventeen of National Poetry Month and there's been nary a mention here. Today, the 120th anniversary of the passing of Prime Minister Alexander Mackenzie, will be different. He's remembered as a humble man who took pride in his working class origins, though you'd never know it from this verse by J. J. MacDonald, the "James MacRae" of The Four Jameses.

I'm not so unfair as the poet in describing the verse below as bad. The misspelling of Mackenzie's name is minor; sin comes with the claim that in 1875 the politician travelled overseas with the sole goal of obtaining a knighthood. In fact. Mackenzie thrice declined the honour.

The poet pretends otherwise, adopting the prime minister's voice in addressing "dear generous Brown" – George Brown – whom Mackenzie had succeeded as leader of the Liberal Party (and who had also declined the title):

A. McKENZIE AT QUEBEC IN HIS RETURN FROM GREAT BRITAIN IN 1875, WHICH IT WAS SAID HE VISITED IN ORDER TO GET THE TITLE OF “SIR” 

My sight you would pity, dear generous Brown,
On nearing a city or reaching a town;
For charity hide me from scornful disgrace,
Or crows will deride me and laugh in my face. 

They know when we parted I travelled for fame;
To find as I started my title’s the same,
To party relations returning, I swear
Is more than my patience is able to bear. 

How gladly I’d wander, how swiftly I’d stride
Where back streams meander, and wild beasts abide!
The Ottawa Valley unseen would I roam,
To reach and to rally my dear friends at home! 

In rural seclusion to live as before,
I find ’tis delusion to seek any more;
My standing much lower than ever I see;
The honors of power are useless to me. 

To want them’s unpleasant, to have them no gain;
They prove evanescent, delusive and vain;
They give us more trouble than ease or delight,
And, fleet as a bubble, they’re out of our sight. 

An humble mechanic, oh! did I remain,
And titles Britannic not seek to obtain,
And prosper as Alick with friends as before,
When fables in Gaelic alone was my lore. 

My curses with Britain forever abide–
Her children have smitten by glory and pride.
Though aristocratic, I think they are fools,
They speak so dogmatic on etiquette rules. 

When my predecessor went over before,
They thought no aggressor invaded their shore;
Their nobles held meetings to honor him there,
Nor jovial greetings to him did they spare. 

Though fate made me humble, yet chance made me great,
No mortal should grumble at doings of fate;
Through folly and error from greatness I fell,
My anguish and terror no creature can tell. 

"A. McKenzie at Quebec..." joins the similarly mean-spirited "A. McKenzie's Reflections While About to Address His Constituents at Sarnia in 1875" in leading off the poet's self-published debut, Poems Written by J.J. MacDonald, a Native of Glengarry, Ont. (c. 1877). It precedes further attacks on an unnamed Grit politician, drinkers, bachelors, Protestant converts, Charles Chiniquy, Maria Monk, one Miss A— and pretty much anyone who was not an immediate member of the poet's family.

"In submitting the following poems to your judgment, the author does so in a truly Christian spirit", MacDonald writes in presenting his verse.

Were he alive, I'd call him out on this.

A John Glassco Soirée

Later this month I'll be joining Carmine Starnino, editor of the recent John Glassco and the Other Montreal, in a discussion of Glassco's life and work at St. James the Apostle's Writers' Chapel:

A John Glassco Soirée

The Writers' Chapel

Church of St. James the Apostle

1439 St. Catherine Street West (corner Bishop)

Montreal 

Friday, April 27, 7:00 pm

Glassco's good friend Michael Gnarowski, editor of John Glassco: Selected Poems with Three Notes on the Poetic Process and publisher of the only Canadian edition of The English Governess, will be hosting the evening.

St. James the Apostle was the church of Glassco's childhood. The plaque celebrating his life, affixed to its walls in 2009, marked the beginning of the Writers' Chapel.

This is a free event presented by the Argo Bookshop.

All are welcome.

Cross-posted at A Gentleman of Pleasure

Arthur Stringer from Chatham to London

Arthur Stringer House, London, Ontario

17 March 2012

The current edition of Chatham This Week features Karen Robinet's  tribute to that neglected man of letters Arthur Stringer. There are a few words by yours truly, along with a photo, much like the one above, that I took last month.

Arthur Stringer was a hometown boy who made good, though you'd never know it walking through Chatham; not even on Colborne, the street of his birth. As Ms Robinet notes – with some regret, I think – the only lasting memorials to the man are in London, the city to which his family moved in 1884. Victor Lauriston picks up the story in Arthur Stringer: Son of the North (Ryerson, 1941):

The records of the Middlesex Teachers' Association show that he was awarded the Diploma of Honour as the pupil obtaining the highest standing in the High School Entrance examination in the year 1886. At the London Collegiate Institute he established his dislike and likewise revealed his leaning toward letters by founding and editing a school magazine, Chips, copy of which are still treasured by L.C.I. Old Boys. 

While the London Collegiate Institute was destroyed by fire in 1920, the house in which Stringer spent the latter years of his childhood still stands... as does the school that bears his name.

'Tis a touch bland, 'tis true, but still I'm impressed; we don't see many tributes of this kind in Canada... And then, as if to disprove my own observation I find that there's also a school named in honour of Victor Lauriston, Stringer's biographer. 

Never mind. I'm standing by my words. 

On Wednesday the Tenth

Today is the eleventh. I don't mean to confuse, but so much of Grant Allen's bibliography bewilders, bedevils and befuddles. The Cruise of the Albatross; or, When Was Wednesday the Tenth?, the subject of  the previous post, is all too typical. It first appeared as "Wednesday the Tenth", serialized in a British girl's magazine called Atalanta. The novella made its American debut with the 1890 Lothrop edition pictured above. Yankee boys were treated to images that had been denied young English roses. Here, for example, are the well-toned men of Tanaki:  

Even in retreat, they appear a very formidable force:

Allen was a recognized name when Wednesday the Tenth first appeared between cloth covers, but not so much that he could carry a British edition. This was, as I've said, a slight work. A mere 121 pages of sparsely-laid type, and still I found it a bit of a chore to reach the end. No surpass, then, that it was republished only once... or twice.

In 1898 Lothrop repackaged the novella as The Cruise of the Albatross; or, When Was Wednesday the Tenth? The title page mentions nothing of the previous title, but it has all sorts of other information, including a credit to "Bridgman" for the illustrations.

This would be the busy L.J. Bridgman (1857-1931), whose work can also be found in works by Rudyard Kipling and a whole lot of forgotten writers like Eustace Leroy Williams and Mary Hazelton Wade. My copy includes two plates. Not profusely illustrated, but illustrated none the less.

A much more common Lothrop edition, also dated 1898, was issued under this cover. More often than not it is this that is described by booksellers as the "First Edition". Some copies have the Bridgman plates, some do not.

Caveat emptor.

Cruising Toward Cannibals with Grant Allen

The Cruise of the Albatross;
   or, When was Wednesday the Tenth?
Grant Allen
Boston: Lothrop, 1898

I've never bothered with the stories in The Boy's Own Annual – the pictures are more than enough fun – but I imagine they read something like this very slight Grant Allen novella. Cannibals, slave traders and a powerful thirty-pound brass gun are just a few of its many attractions.

The Cruise of the Albatross begins aboard same with the sighting of a small boat bobbing in the Pacific Ocean.  Ship's captain Julian Braithwaite sets out for the lesser vessel and finds "two white-faced lads, apparently twelve or thirteen years old, dressed in loose blue cotton shirts and European trousers". The pair cling to life, but manage to convey that their missionary parents and siblings are captives of cannibals on the far off island of Tanaki. Barring an act of divine providence or earthly daring-do, all will feature in a feast to take place on "Wednesday the tenth".

Julian is a good man – he once risked his life to free forty or so kanakas from slavery – so it comes as no surprise when he sets course to save the boys' parents. The captain's brother figures they'll arrive just in time:

Jim took out a piece of paper and totted up a few figures carelessly on the back. "We've plenty of coal," he said, "and I reckon we can make nine knots an hour, if comes to a push, even against this head wind. To-day's the sixth; that gives us four clear days still to the good. At nine knots, we can do a run of two hundred and thirty-six knots a day. Four two-hundred-and-thirty-sixes is nine hundred and forty-four, isn't it? Let me see; four sixes is twenty-four, put down four and carry two; four three's is twelve, and two's fourteen; four three's is twelve, and four two's - year that's all right: nine hundred and forty-four, you see, exactly. Well, then look here Julian: unless Tanaki's further off than nine hundred and forty-four nautical miles, - which isn't likely – we ought to be there by twelve o'clock Wednesday, at latest.

Anyone familiar with adventure stories will recognize Jim's calculations as more than mere filler. Time is not only of the essence, it is central to both plot and plot twist. When Was Wednesday the Tenth? – the alternate title – gives away something of the latter. I'll go a bit further and spoil things for the well-read by revealing that the story's twist owes everything to Around the World in Eighty Days.

This is a late Victorian story, complete with heavy, politically incorrect steamer trunks and other musty baggage. Thus, Allen writes about the sensitive European nostril and sharp Polynesian eyes. When ship's boy Nassaline, speculates that the two boys had run away because they feared being eaten by their own kind, Julian responds:

It's my belief, Nassaline, we'll never make a civilized Christian creature of you, in a tall hat, and with a glass in your eye. You ain't cut out for it, somehow. How many times have I explained to you, boy, that Christians never cook and eat their enemies ? They only love them, and blow them up with Gatlinojs or Armstronos – a purely fraternal method of expressing slight differences of international opinion....  

I omitted to have remarked to him (as I might have done) that I hadn't seen such a painful sight before, since I saw the inhabitants of a French village in Lorraine – old men, young girls, and mothers with babies pressed against their breasts – flying, pell-mell, before the sudden onslaught of a hundred and fifty Christian Prussian Uhlans. These little peculiarities of our advanced civilization are best not mentioned to the heathen Polynesian.

Now, I find myself wondering. Would a passage such as this have made it into The Boys' Own Annual, a publication of the Religious Tract Society?

Object: An attractive, slim hardcover in olive green cloth, my copy was purchased for $20 last month from a London, Ontario bookseller. The front free endpaper is signed and dated by a Marion Allen. I've not been able to determine whether this lady was in any related to the author.

Access: Held by most universities, the public libraries serving Toronto and Kingston, the National Gallery of Canada Library, Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec, but not Library and Archives Canada.

"An uncommon Allen title", claims one bookseller. Well... not really. More than three dozen can be bought online with Very Good copies going for under ten dollars. The print on demand folks have really moved in on this title, offering all sorts of ugliness at much higher prices.