The Dusty Bookcase

17 June 2013

Reverend Kerby Warns Against the Dime Novel

This second part of my review of George W. Kerby's The Broken Trail 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.

Ernest Cashel
c. 1882 - 1904
RIP

13 June 2013

Reverend Kerby Treads Carefully

The Broken Tail

George W. Kerby

Toronto: Briggs, 1909

189 pages

This first part of my 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.

10 June 2013

The Year L.M. Montgomery Became Lucy Maud

The Canadian Bookman, January 1909

I have Erica Brown of the wonderful Reading 1900-1950 to blame for time wasted this past weekend. It was she who demonstrated just how much fun can be had with the Google Ngram Viewer, a tool used in charting words, names and phrases found in the 5.2-million books that the corporation has digitized.

Prof Brown, whose work focusses on the history of popular fiction, used the GNV to trace the rise of the term "middlebrow". I began with "Ontario Gothic" (as with all, click the graph to enlarge):

An interesting result, though one that should be viewed with a cautious eye. As Prof Brown points out, "5.2 million books digitized sounds great – and it is – but it isn’t everything, and it is skewed towards US publications." I'll add that the tool doesn't capture anything published after 2008, and that any ngram that occurs in fewer than 40 books will deliver a rather deceptive 0% flatline. Still, while not entirely accurate, I think it goes far in reflecting trends.

Here, for example, is a search that charts the shift away from "L.M. Montgomery" to "Lucy Maud Montgomery". Interesting to note that the two lines converge in the mid-nineties, when most of her work entered the public domain.

The real fun comes in drawing comparisons between writers. Here, for example, are Canada's Booker Prize winners:

How about this graph featuring mentor Irving Layton and pupil Leonard Cohen:

Better yet, Irving Layton versus Louis Dudek:

Here we see the careers of rivals Ernest Thompson Seton and Charles G.D. Roberts:

The declining interest in Seton and Sir Charles made me curious about Sir Gilbert Parker, our biggest fin de siecle author.

Sobering. Wonder how I'm doing.

Oh.

07 June 2013

Pamela Wallin Issues a Challenge

Read over my morning coffee:

Despite all the motives attributed to us, journalists seldom set out to uncover human flaws or scandal just for the sake of creating pain, or embarrassment, or defeat. But we do quite deliberately look for contradictions and incompetence, which sometimes leads us to uncover the aforementioned. And I'll challenge those who would question our pursuits and our legitimate curiosity about those who seek to lead us to explain why, as citizens, the less we know the better we are able to make choices.

— Pamela Wallin, Since You Asked, p. 58

Related post:

Speaking of Pamela Wallin

05 June 2013

Frank L. Packard's Wire Thriller (and others)

My review of Frank L. Packard's The Wire Devils, newly reissued by the University of Minnesota Press, is now up on the Montreal Review of Books website. You can read it here.

How good it is to see Packard return to print. Yes, some of the man's work has been available from POD publishers, but just how much confidence can one have in things like this "Frank L. 1877-1942 Packard" edition from Nabu Press.

Wait, isn't that Montreal's Spiš Castle? You know, the one built by 12-century Hungarians?

Amazon.ca sells Nabu's The Wire Devils for $31.54, and the new University of Minnesota Press edition at $12.96. I recommend the latter – and not because I'm cheap. The UMP's is not only free of the "missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc." that plague Nabu, but includes a very fine Introduction by Robert MacDougall of the University of Western Ontario.

Prof MacDougall describes the novel as a wire thriller, late 19th and early 20th-century works that use the railroad, telegraph and telephone "as a backdrop for adventure." Dime novelist Frederick Van Rensselaer Dey penned Fighting Electric Fiends (1898) and his Street & Smith stablemate Franklin Pitt served up Brothers of the Thin Wire (1915), but I think it was Canadians, in Packard and Arthur Stringer, who dominated the genre.

The Wire Devils first appeared as a serial that ran over six issues in The Popular Magazine (20 March - 7 June 1917), was published in Canada by Copp Clark, the US by George H. Doran and A.L. Burt, and in the United Kingdom enjoyed two Hodder & Stoughton editions.

Messrs Dey and Pitt would've envied Frank L. Packard's success, but I'd argue that the true King of the Wire Thrillers was the handsome, savvy Arthur Stringer.

As far as I can tell his first foray into the genre was a short story, "The Wire Tappers", published in the August 1903 issue of Smart Set. I've not seen it, but am willing to bet that it was the basis of Stringer's 1906 novel of the same name.

The next year brought Phantom Wires. By far the most commercially successful wire thriller, it saw editions from Little, Brown, Musson, McClelland & Stewart and Bobbs-Merrill, It's likely that the last, a cheapo from A.L. Burt, appeared in 1924.

Even in 1906 and 1907, when first editions of The Wire Tappers and Phantom Wires sat on bookstore shelves, the wire thriller must have seemed a touch old-fashioned. "Look!" exclaims the heroine of the latter "they're talking with their wireless!" Stringer anticipated the future by following the two with The Gun Runner, a novel in which a wireless operator from Nova Scotia plays hero.

Whither the fax thriller?

The Wire Tappers
Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1922

03 June 2013

Funny Money and Legal Tender

Colby Cosh is right, I should really be paying attention to last week's court ruling about the Conservative Party database being used in voter suppression. It's just that the mass of Mike Duffy has so much pull. The fall of "Old Duff" – a term of endearment I've heard from his mouth but no other – mixes Leacockian whimsy with black humour and conspiracy worthy of a Richard Condon novel. Each day a new chapter.

Given all the excitement, our overtaxed journalists can be forgiven for having paid so little attention to the Bank of Canada's attempt to suppress the image above. The work of cartoonist Dan Murphy, I thought it silly fun, until I read this email he received from a bank employee:

(cliquez pour agrandir)

Good morning to you, too!

I dare say that Ms Jenkins' claim would not stand up in court. But don't take my word for it, look instead to Ariel Katz of the University of Toronto's School of Law.

There's not much I can add to Prof Katz's observation, except to say that Senior Analyst Jenkins is not so senior that she can remember 2006, when Ralph Bucks began appearing on the streets of Calgary, Edmonton and Red Deer.

The Alberta currency was just another example of a Canadian tradition that stretches back at least half a century.

If Ms Jenkins is correct, even the old Progressive Conservative Party ran afoul of the law.

My favourite of all these faux bills is that 80¢ True Dough. I grabbed the image – "Copyright: Unknown" – from the Library and Archives Canada website. Ms Jenkins may wish to send them a letter. Better yet, why not visit? The LAC is just across the street from the Bank of Canada, located conveniently next to the Supreme Court.