THE HEART ACCEPTS IT ALL
SELECTED LETTERS OF JOHN GLASSCO
BOOK LAUNCH
Wednesday, 14 August 2013, 7:30 p.m.
THE WORD
467 Milton Street
Montreal
14 August 2013
12 August 2013
F is for First Statement
The editor of this mag, John Sutherland, is a very decent chap, about 30, a pretty good drinker too...The April & May 1945 issue of influential Montreal little magazine First Statement. Irving Layton, A.M. Klein, Patrick Anderson, Ralph Gustafson, Miriam Waddington... amongst the lesser-known writers we find Wingate Taylor, "a farmer in the Eastern townships [sic] of Quebec." He's better remembered – though, in truth, he's barely remembered at all – as Graeme Taylor, the man who shares many adventures with John Glassco in Memoirs of Montparnasse.
– John Glassco, letter to Robert McAlmon, 16 August 1944
I've long been fascinated by Taylor, in part because he was expected to do such great things. Writing in the 'twenties, Leon Edel described him as one of the three premier Canadian writers of his generation, while A.J.M. Smith recommended his writing to anthologist Raymond Knister. I read nothing of Taylor's that would justify such praise, but it appears Edel and Smith weren't alone in seeing something; while living in Paris, Taylor's writing appeared in This Quarter and transition, sharing pages with James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, Paul Bowles and William Carlos Williams.
Taylor's lone contribution to First Statement, "The Horse-Stall" broke a fifteen year silence, marking his first appearance in print since those days in Montparnasse. It was also his last.
"The Horse-Stall" isn't a short story, but an excerpt from a lost, unpublished novel titled Brazenhead. The twelve pages in First Statement is all that survives – an apt reflection of a man who, as Michael Gnarowski has written, "remains unrealized and obscure to the present day."
A shorter, earlier version of this piece was cross-posted at A Gentleman of Pleasure.
07 August 2013
05 August 2013
E is for Early Work
I once met Barbara Gowdy at a Chapters Inc annual shareholders meeting; I owned stock, she was signing copies of The White Bone. Anyone who finds this at all peculiar is advised to revisit their memories of the 'nineties. The very same meeting saw the launch of a short-lived, ill-conceived venture, immortalized through laminated bookmarks slipped into copies of Ms Gowdy's novel:
The White Bone was free to anyone willing to stand in line. I took my place, but what I really wanted was Ms Gowdy's signature on the book pictured above. Published in 1988, Through the Green Valley was her first. I've not read it – 'tis a historical romance – though I am intrigued because it is so very different from the rest of her oeuvre. Where Falling Angels, the author's sophomore novel, is in print Through the Green Valley has been unavailable for a quarter century.
I felt bad.
Brian Moore disowned his earliest novels. For three decades, friend Mordecai Richler kept his debut, The Acrobats, out of print. In university, this paperback copy made the rounds of my friends like a Bowie bootleg.
(Am I alone in being amazed by the speed with which it returned to print after Richer's death?)
I've been thinking of early work and all associated embarrassment ever since receiving a query brought by last week's post on doppelgängers:
You wrote that you used to write as Brian John Busby. Someone called Brian John Busby wrote for a Canadian TV show called "Time of Your Life". Are you that Brian John Busby?Yes, I am. A low-budget, low-rent teen soap, Time of Your LIfe was my first paid writing gig.
The correspondent adds: "Great show!"
Wish I could agree, though I'll allow that the stray bits posted online point to something that is not nearly so horrible as I remember.
As for Ms Gowdy... I didn't press, and she proved to be a good sport.
Addendum (for my nieces):
01 August 2013
Margaret Millar's Michigan Murder Mystery
Vanish in an Instant
Margaret Millar
New York: Dell, [1953]
224 pages
This review now appears, revised and rewritten, in my new book:
The Dusty Bookcase:A Journey Through Canada'sForgotten, Neglected, and Suppressed Writing
Available at the very best bookstores and through
29 July 2013
D is for Doppelgänger
There was a Brian Busby who lived two blocks from the house in which I grew up. Our paths never crossed – he was eight years older – but I was aware of his presence and remember the day his family moved. There was also a Brian Busby who attended our church and another who worked for the CBC. I can't tell you what the latter did, but his name did leap out as credits rolled. I came to the illogical conclusion that while "Busby" wasn't terribly common, "Brian Busby" was.
All this is to explain why I used my full name on my early writing.
Austin Clarke did something similar at the beginning in his career to set himself apart from Irish poet Austin Clarke.
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| Amongst Thistles and Thorns Austin C. Clarke Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1965 |
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| Collected Poems Austin Clarke London: Allen & Unwin, 1936 |
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| 2001: A Space Odyssey Arthur C. Clarke New York: New American Library, 1968 |
You wouldn't think a name like Austin Clarke would cause such trouble. Thomas King, I can understand...
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| King's Explanatory Arithmetic Thomas King London: The Author [c. 1920] |
Lisa Moore and William Gibson, too.
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| Merveilleux Voyage Lisa Moore Toronto: Harlequin, 1986 |
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| A Vision of Faery Land and Other Poems William Gibson Boston: Munroe & Co., 1853 |
Even John Metcalf.
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| Milk for Babes; or, A Catecism in Verse John Metcalf Northampton, MA: The Author, 1840 |
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| Execution Poems George Elliott Clarke Kentville, NS: Gaspereau, 2009 |
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| The Hasting Day George Frederick Clarke Toronto: Dent, 1930 |
...and George Frederick Clarke.
That would be the same George Frederick Clarke who wrote David Cameron's Adventures.
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| David Cameron's Adventures George Frederick Clarke London: Blackie & Sons, [1950] |
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| David Cameron [David Cameron's Adventures] George F. Clarke [W. Joosten, trans.] Amsterdam: De Verkenner, 1953 |
Addendum: Don't get me started on Robert Finch.
24 July 2013
C is for Canada Monthly
The October 1912 issue of Canada Monthly, purchased late last year for the humour – black humour – of its cover:
In fact, Miss Cameron survived, dodging sailboats and steamers, only to succumb to pneumonia shortly after her return home to Victoria.Agnes Deans Cameron's Last Article"THE THAMES BY CANADIAN CANOE"
"The liveliest, most entertaining, most thoroughly Canadian of the magazines published in Canada" was owned, edited and published by Herbert Vanderhoof, a Chicago publicity agent who made his fortune pushing land in our four westernmost provinces. The District of Vanderhoof – "Geographic Centre of British Columbia" – was named in his honour.
It makes perfect sense that Miss Cameron was one of Herbert Vanderhoof's writers; she spent much of her forty-eight years encouraging western settlement. That trip down the Thames was made possible in part by an Ottawa that was eager to promote British immigration.
Agnes Deans Cameron isn't the biggest name in this particular issue; Isabel Ecclestone Mackay contributes a particularly bad poem. For my money – I paid $2.80 – the most interesting offering is this bit o' verse by Dorothy Livesay's mother:
Most writers in this "most thoroughly Canadian of the magazines published in Canada" are American. Lesser names like Wilbur D. Nesbit, best remembered for "A Song for Flag Day", a jingoistic ode to the Stars and Stripes, populate its pages. Canada Monthly was never intended to be a showcase for this country's writing, but as a means to sell the West. Nesbit's countryman Arthur I. Street contributes "How Many More? What the Business Man Can Make in Canada", in which he appeals to our greed:
An increase of nine and three-quarter millions in population, a million and a half in dwellings, and three-quarters of a million in the number of farms would mean an increase in farm values of nearly two billions. And that's your particular "baby", isn't it? Increase your land values? Isn't that where you make your money? Isn't that the temptation that leads you into a new country?
A century later the West is still chasing that "increase of nine and three-quarter millions in population".
The caption on this accompanying W.C. Sheppard [sic] illustration reflects Street's optimism...
...as do the advertisements.
Twenty-two months later, on August 4, 1914, everything changed. It seems oddly appropriate that the pitch for property in Fraser Lake is followed by this advert for the infamous Ross rifle:
"You Buy a Rifle to Last Your Life-time..."
The cruelest joke of all.
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