Romance... Harlequin Romance

Related posts:

Harlequin: Before the Romance

Another Harlequin Valentine

This Year's Harlequin Valentine
A Harlequin Valentine from Day Keene

Harlequin: The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name

Gay Canadian Rogues
Frank Rasky
1958

Gay Cavalier
Alex Stuart [pseud. Barbara Allen]
1967

The Gay Gordons
Barbara Allen
1967

The Strange Quest of Nurse Anne
Mary Burchell
1965

Framed in Guilt
Day Keene [pseud. Gunnar Hjerstedt]
1953

Related posts:

Suggestive Harlequins: A Romantic Threesome

Harlequin Blondes: Terror Struck Them Dumb

Gay and Withdrawn

A Harlequin Valentine from Day Keene

Harper Hockey Book Watch: Year Nine, Day 237

As expected, rumours of a ghostwriter grow, fuelled in large measure by Globe & Mail columnist John Barber naming Roy MacGregor as the phantom. Short hours later, the description was scrubbed with "ghostwriter" changed to "editorial consultant". This "editor's note" has been appended to the story online:

Roy MacGregor acted as an editorial consultant on Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s hockey history book. An earlier version of this story referred to Mr. MacGregor as a "ghostwriter."

I repeat my belief that Mr Harper wrote the forthcoming book himself. Yep, everything except the title... and he might just get around to that, too.

Not to say that some polishing was in order... or that it wasn't done by another hand.

No, I suggest that Mr Barber's piece contains something significant that is being overlooked in all this speculation over the spectral:

The Prime Minister had no role in choosing a publisher for his book, according to Toronto lawyer Michael Levine, who brokered the deal. "These were all my decisions, these were not his decisions at all," Mr. Levine said, adding it was "extremely important" to achieve North American distribution for the English-language edition. "Obviously, we’re in a very transitional time in the publishing business here, and I talked to everybody, but I felt this was the best deal for him because of the enormous commitment on both the American and Canadian side of the border," Mr. Levine said.

An observation:

Last February, a few days before the decision was to be made, Bruce Westwood of Westwood Creative Agency – Mr Levine is Chairman – told the Toronto Star that it was the prime minister who would choose the publisher: "There’s a lot of interest in the book. We are in negotiations. We have to go with [Harper’s] decision."

Emphasis mine.

A query:

To what does Mr Levine refer when he speaks of the enormous commitment on both the American and Canadian side of the border? I'm going to say that it's Simon & Schuster. Conspiracy theorists will say that all begins with Republican consultant Frank Luntz, who in May 2006 advised our new Conservative Party to feed on Canadians’ love of the game.

Full disclosure: I've paid many a bill as a ghostwriter myself. Make of that what you will.

Note: In writing this piece I was twice logged out "from another location". Again, make of that what you will.

Related posts:

Ignatieff's Ink and Harper's Hockey Book
The Harper Hockey Book Watch (Updated!)
Harper Hockey Book Watch: Year Eight, Day 253
Harper Hockey Book Watch: Year Nine, Day 39
Harper Hockey Book Watch: Year Nine, Day 222

Harper Hockey Book Watch: Year Nine, Day 236
Harper Hockey Book Watch: Year Ten, Day 27
Harper Hockey Book Watch: Year Ten, Day 77
Harper Hockey Book Watch: Fin (et raison d'être)

Harper Hockey Book Watch: Year Nine, Day 236

What a day this turned out to be!

Activity began early with 'Details of Stephen Harper's hockey book to be revealed', a story by Marsha Lederman, posted at 5:00 am EST on the Globe and Mail website. Begins the journalist:

Publication details of Stephen Harper’s long-awaited hockey book are expected to be announced imminently, likely on Thursday, according to a source close to the deal.

Thursday? You mean today?

Oh, but who could take Ms Lederman seriously? After all, her anemic story – 123-words in length – refers to the book, which the PM has been going on about since 2005, as an "open secret".  Then we have the matter of the publisher. Ms Lederman describes this as being "kept under careful wraps", but it's been two full weeks since Stephen Maher broke the story that Simon & Schuster had won the rights. Finally, there's this: "Mr. Harper is a serious hockey fan – a member of the Society for International Hockey Research – and can often be seen attending NHL games."

Oh, for goodness sake. How many times must I address this issue? Look, it's far more difficult to join Costco than it is the Society for International Hockey Research. Much more expensive, too.

The eyes did roll, but Ms Lederman turned out to be right. Short hours later, Simon & Schuster announced a November pub date for the long-awaited tome. We learned also that there's still no title for Mr Harper's book. Roy MacGregor's name was mentioned for the first time, to no one's surprise – he's been providing our PM with "editorial services". No mention of Greg Stoicoiu... or, for that matter, George Pepki.

I look forward to the book, and am betting it will be a solid piece of work. But the most welcome bit of news is that all author royalties will go to the Military Families Fund. Makes sense. After all, our PM is well-aware of the challenges facing those who serve and have served this country, whether it be fighting his government for benefits, fighting his government for pension claims, fighting his government's clawbacks on disabled veterans, fighting his government's spying on and smearing of veterans (and cover-up of same). The very minute that Simon & Schuster's press release began to circulate, Major Marcus Brauer appeared on The Current to speak to the financial hardship incurred by today's military families.

Yes, the PM is more aware than most of the challenges facing our military. The funding provided by his hockey book will, I'm sure, be welcome. It's just a pity that he isn't more prolific.

Related posts:

Ignatieff's Ink and Harper's Hockey Book
The Harper Hockey Book Watch (Updated!)
Harper Hockey Book Watch: Year Eight, Day 253
Harper Hockey Book Watch: Year Nine, Day 39
Harper Hockey Book Watch: Year Nine, Day 222
Harper Hockey Book Watch: Year Nine, Day 237
Harper Hockey Book Watch: Year Ten, Day 27
Harper Hockey Book Watch: Year Ten, Day 77
Harper Hockey Book Watch: Fin (et raison d'être)

A Comic Book Artist's Absurd Murder Mystery

Artists, Models and Murder

Tedd Steele

Toronto: News Stand Library, 1948

141 pages

This review 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.

Miss Cameron Does Mrs Mackay an injustice

Following Thursday's post on The House of Windows by Isabel Ecclestone Mackay:

An adventurer, educator, lecturer and suffragette, there's so much to admire in Agnes Deans Cameron (1863-1912) that I'm willing to overlook her membership in the Women's Christian Temperance Union. Sadly, I have today discovered another flaw, this in the form of her review of The House of Windows from the July 1912 issue of Canada Monthly:

Isabel Ecclestone Mackay's new book does something of a tardy justice to the romance of Canada's Pacific Coast. Men like London, Service and Hough have written of Alaska. But although Victoria and Vancouver breathe romance, and the sea-battered isles of the coast hide fantastic stories, they have as yet got but little into print. It is too bad that Mrs. Mackay has not emphasized more the locale of "The House of Windows" (Cassell & Co., Toronto) and made it manifestly impossible for the story to have happened anywhere but on the shores of Burrard Inlet. The scene is laid in a coast city, and then is carried afield to a curious, rambling old roadhouse on an inland highway. The heroine is a slip of a clerk in a department store, and her adventures are exciting enough, comprising a mystery of birth, a secret love affair, a revenge, an abduction and a rescue. The girl herself is pleasantly drawn, and her lover is a convincingly adequate young man with the resource of the west. Curiously enough, the impression that remained longest with the reviewer was that of old Granny Bates clawing in the ashes of the fire to find Christine's little grey silk glove.
   The book is charmingly written, and moves smoothly, but there is yet to come the writer who will paint with bold strokes Vancouver as the reviewer saw it in a certain May.

You see, The House of Windows doesn't take place in Vancouver. We know this because Mark, Miss Cameron's "convincingly adequate young man," is sent there by family so as to get him away from "pleasantly drawn" Christine. The fleeting glimpses of the city are limited to a couple of letters he sends back east, one of which forms the whole of a chapter entitled, appropriately, "From Vancouver."

The mystery of birth, the secret love affair, the revenge, the abduction and the rescue, all take place in and around an unnamed eastern city, which as I've noted, appears to have been modelled on Toronto. This is all so obvious, one can only conclude that Miss Cameron didn't read the novel. I will allow that she thumbed through it's 338 pages, encountered "Vancouver" a few times, and read the scene in which old Granny Bates searches for Christine's little grey silk glove.

And yes, that scene is memorable.

The Hell That is Retail: 1912 Edition

The House of Windows
Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
London: Cassell, 1912

Writing on Ontario, opium and cocaine in Isabel Ecclestone Mackay's 1917 Up the Hill and Over, I reported that the novel featured "perhaps the most remarkable and improbable coincidence in all of Canadian literature." The House of Windows challenges in an entirely different way. Here the reader must believe that all characters remain blind to coincidence, conduction and consonance, and are each incapable of concomitance.

Mrs Mackay's story begins in the ribbon department of Angus and Sons, a fictitious department story in a fictitious city that appears to have been modelled upon Toronto. It's the day of the semi-annual sale,

with frenzied women causing chaos through collapsing displays. "SACRIFICE OF ALL RIBBONS WITHOUT RESERVE," the adverts announce, "EVERYTHING SLAUGHTERED!" At the end of it all, the shop-girls – known as "Stores" – wade through paper from the unwound bolts to find an abandoned go-cart with baby girl within. There's some talk of calling the police, but the newest Store, Celia Brown, comes forward to care for the child as she would a sister.

Not one of the shop-girls, good-hearted Celia included, gives so much as fleeting consideration of the news dominating the city's dailies. Baby Elice, daughter of wealthy Adam Torrence and wife, has been kidnapped. This tragedy will soon lead to the premature death of poor Mrs Torrence. Devastated widower Adam, bereft of wife and child, will take young Mark Wareham, a not so distant relative, to be his ward.

As Christine Brown, the abandoned baby is raised by Celia and her blind sister Ada. She grows to become a beautiful young woman, while spinster Celia loses looks and energy. Angus and Sons is to blame for the latter's decline. The work of a Store – ten hours a day, six days a week – is hard. Everyone knows that the stools behind the counters are just for show.

You musn't blame Celia's employer – who, as it turns out, is Adam Torrence. This man of wealth pays little attention to the store, and even less to the Stores, because the money they bring flows so steadily. Thoughts that stray in the direction of Angus and Sons invariably concern propriety. Adam is firm that all shop-girls hired have additional sources of income lest they turn to... become... find themselves... Oh, he cannot bring himself to express his fears.

Crisis comes to the cramped Brown flat when Celia suffers a nervous breakdown. It's unfortunate, of course, but her timing is good in that Christine has secretly been job hunting. During her search she meets Adam's unofficially adopted son Mark. The moment, which takes place when he pushes a man to the ground for daring to talk to her, is captured in illustrator Dudley Tennant's frontispiece.

Mark falls for Christine in such a way that the throb escapes no one. Disapproving his dalliance with someone named "Brown", someone who is plainly of the lowest class, the Torrence family – Adam and elder sister Miriam – dispatch Mark to Vancouver.

Adam is next to happen upon Christine. For a moment he gives consideration that this Miss Brown might be the same  young woman in whom Mark is interested – but then Brown is such a very common name of very common people. That said, Adam is distracted, bothered and fairly won over by Christine. She is very much a lady, despite her lowly family. The mere description of her hair – "honey blonde" – brings to mind that of his dear late wife. And, oh, doesn't Christine have the same eyes, laugh and smile of his dear departed sister.

Sixteen years into the story, everyone meets everyone else, which I suppose can be put down to coincidence. It's at this point that another plot, a nefarious plot, is revealed. We learn that Christine (née Elice) had been kidnapped all those years ago by an old crone who believed her daughter was ruined in working at Angus and Son. The poor Store turned to... became... found herself... Oh, I cannot say.

Weirdly, improbably, the crone thought that by leaving Elice in the ribbon department the girl would grow up to work in the store. Weirdly, improbably, she was right.

Christine – Elice, if you prefer – is kidnapped a second time. More coincidences ensue. I recognized them all.

Query: How is it that the Stores made no connection between kidnapped Baby Elice and the infant that had left in the ribbon department? Celia explains it all:

"We read it in the papers. But we did not feel especially interested. We did not know who Mr. Torrence was. He was just a name. We did not know he had any connect with the Stores. And this baby – so evidently a neglected and unwanted child! – it would have been a miracle if the coincidence had struck us."

Object and Access: My copy, inscribed by the author, was purchased just last month for US$25 from an Illinois bookseller; I'm thinking it's a first edition. While there are four copies currently listed online, each from sellers who claim the same, at least two lack the elegant monogram pictured above. I suggest that these are at best second state. Either way, expect to pay between US$50 and US$100.

Being in the public domain, print on demand vultures are all over this one. Nabu, General, Pranava and Repressed bring their usual ugliness, but the worst comes from the confusingly-named Book on Demand of Miami, Florida:

This book, "The house of windows" [sic], by Isabel Ecclestone 1875-1928 Mackay [sic], is a replication. It has been restored by human beings, page by page, so that you may enjoy it in a form as close to the original as possible. This item is printed on demand. Thank you for supporting classic literature.

You're welcome. Now, if you could just put some human beings to work on that cover.

Nearly all our universities have copies, as do the public libraries of Toronto and Vancouver. Library and Archives fails yet again – given current policy, one wonders whether it will ever procure a copy.