The Very Best Reads of 2022: Ladies First

Late last night, as Christmas festivities drew to a close, I pulled Victor Lauriston's The Twenty-first Burr (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1922) from the shelves. It seemed appropriate way to end the holiday. One hundred years earlier, my copy was presented by the author to a woman named Olive Shanks.

I enjoyed the first four of its twenty-eight chapters, but know I won't be finishing the novel before year's end, meaning it's time for the annual Dusty Bookcase recap of best reads, books to be revived, etc.

This was a year unlike any other in Dusty Bookcase history. For the first time, women wrote a majority of the titles; twelve of the twenty-two reviewed here and in the pages of Canadian Notes and Queries.

Sara Jeannette Duncan's A Daughter of To-day and Joanna E. Wood's The Untempered Wind stand well above the other twenty. Both are available in Tecumseh's Early Canadian Women Writers Series, which goes some way in explaining how it is that only male authors feature in my annual selection of the three books most deserving of a return to print:

Philistia
Grant Allen

London: Chatto & Windus,

   1901

It was publisher Andrew Chatto who encouraged Allen to try his hand at fiction. This debut novel, first published in 1884, furthers the author's writing on philosophy,  naturalism, religion, and socialism. Ironically, its ending was spoiled by Chatto's intrusion. 

Whispering City
Horace Brown
Pickering, ON: Global

   Publishing, 1947

A noir thriller set in Quebec City, Whispering City pre-dates Hitchcock's I Confess by five years. Both have their weaknesses. Brown's adaptation of the former – likely the first novelization of a Canadian feature film – improves upon its source material.

Moonbeams from the

   Larger Lunacy

Stephen Leacock
Toronto: S.B. Gundy, 1915

Leacock's legacy suffered a blow this year when McGill announced that the building named in his honour, would be renamed after a venture capitalist who had pledged $13 million to the the university.

It's the stuff of a Leacock story.

As series editor of Véhicule Press's Ricochet imprint, I was involved in reviving Arthur Mayse's 1949 debut novel Perilous Passage. 'Telling the Story,' the introduction provided by the author's daughter, Susan Mayse, is one of my favourite in the series. Reprinted in Canadian Notes & Queries, it can be read through this link.

Recognition this year goes to England's Handheld Press for its reissue of Marjorie Grant's 1921 novel Latchkey Ladies.

I knew nothing of Marjorie Grant or Latchkey Ladies before reading this March 22 review in The Times. 

Finally, sadly, I report that the New Year's resolutions made last December didn't go far:

• I resolved to focus more on francophone writers, yet read just one: Philippe-Joseph Aubert de Gaspé (and then only in translation).
• I resolved to feature more non-fiction, and yet this writer of non-fiction reviewed nothing but fiction.
• I resolved to keep kicking against the pricks. This was easily done. Witnessing the  miscreants of the Freedom Convoy roll past on its way to Ottawa gave extra incentive.

This December I make no resolutions.

Here's to the New Year!

Bonne année!

Related posts:
The Very Best Reads of the Second Plague Year (2021)
The Very Best Reads of a Plague Year (2020)
The Very Best Reads of a Very Strange Year (2019)
Best Books of 2018 (none of which are from 2018)
The Year's Best Books in Review - A.D. 2017
The Year's Best Books in Review - A.D. 2016
The Year's Best Books in Review - A.D. 2015
The Christmas Offering of Books - 1914 and 2014
A Last Minute Gift Slogan, "Give Books" (2013)
Grumbles About Gumble & Praise for Stark House (2012)
The Highest Compliments of the Season (2011)
A 75-Year-Old Virgin and Others I Acquired (2010)
Books are Best (2009)

An Egotist of Yesterday

A Woman Who Did
Spoiled by a Publisher

Quebec City Noir

Lunar Attractions; or, The Leacock I Like

Just Kids

West Coast Canadian Noir

'Christmas' by S. Frances Harrison

CHRISTMAS

      Who will sing the Christ?

                  Will he who rang his Christmas chimes

                  Of faith and hope in Gospel ray,

                  That pealed along the world's highway,

                  And woke the world to purer times—

                              Will he sing the Christ?

                  Or that new voice which vaguely gives—

                  One day its song for Rome—the next,

                  In soul-destroying strife perplext

                  For England's faith and future lives

                              Shall he sing the Christ?

                  Or the sweet children in the schools,

                  That hymn their carols hand-in-hand

                  All purely, can they understand

                  The wisdom that must make us fools—

                              Can they sing the Christ?

                  Or yearning priest who to his kind

                  From carven pulpit gives the Word,

                  Or praying mother who has erred,

                  And blindly led her erring blind—

                              Have they not sung the Christ?

                  "Lord! I of sinners am the chief!"

                  One, seated by his Christmas fires,

                  Hearkens the bells from distant spires,

                  But hangs his head in unbelief—

                              He cannot sing the Christ.

                  Grant to such, Lord, the seeing eye!

                  Grant as the World grows old and cold,

                  All hearts Thy beauty may behold.

                  Grant, lest the souls of sinners die—

                              That All may sing the Christ.

—From S. Frances Harrison's Pine, Rose and Fleur de Lis (Toronto: Hart & Co, 1891)

Merry Christmas from our home to yours!

Related posts:

'A Child's Song of Christmas' by Marjorie Pickthall

'A Mother at Christmas' by Edna Jaques

'A Christmas Fantasy' by Bernard Freeman Trotter
'When Christmas Comes' by Verna Sheard

Great War Christmas Verse from a Century Past

'Christmas 1916' by Robert Stanley Weir

A Century-Old Prayer for Christmas
Timely Verse from a Christmas a Century Past
Christmas Greetings from Gay Page

'Christmas in Heaven' by Isabel Ecclestone Mackay

Arthur Stringer Pines for Christmas
Miss Machar's 'The Call of Christmas - 1914'

Christmas Verse by the Master of All Poets

The Ten Best Book Buys of 2022 (plus gifts!)

This year will be forever remembered as the one in which Sexpo '69 was added to my collection. An elusive book, published in 1969 by Brandon House of North Hollywood, I spent at least two decades on its trail. My pursuit ended this past summer. The book set me back over one hundred dollars.

I'm betting it was worth every penny and that Lisa and considerate, gentle, sophisticated Bobbie will not disappoint.

"What?" I hear you say. "You mean you haven't read it!"

No, I have not. Too busy.... so busy that I didn't visit the Strand during last month's trip to New York. I did find time for Trump Tower, but only because it was so close to my hotel. I expected to be underwhelmed, and was more than underwhelmed. This was during the weekend of the New York City Marathon, and yet the place was nearly deserted. 

The length of my tie is not a political statement.

Each of this year's ten best book buys was found online, which is a sad state of affairs given recent travels. These are the remaining nine:

Behold the Hour

Jeann Beattie
Toronto: Ryerson, 1959

Jeann Beattie won the Ryerson Fiction Award for Blaze of Noon (1950), her debut novel. Behold the Hour, her second and last, is set in the early days of CBC television. I didn't think much of the novel, but illustrator Ken Elliott's dust jacket is a favourite.

A Daughter of To-day

Mrs Everard Cotes (Sara

   Jeannette Duncan)
New York: Appleton, 1894

Not at all what I expected.

What did I expect? At twenty-one, I read Duncan's classic, The Imperialist, but remember nothing.

Not only a beautiful volume, but one of the year's two best reads.

One-Way Street
Dan Keller [Louis Kaufman]
London: Hale, 1960

Flee the Night in Anger, Keller's first novel, is unique as the only post-war pulp to be set in both Montreal and Toronto. There's a fair amount of travel back and forth. This second and last novel, a very attractive hardcover, begins with a man arriving in Toronto from Montreal. Will he return? The title may provide a clue.

Murder by Accident

Leonie Mason [Joan Suter]

London: C & J Temple, 1947

Following East of Temple Bar (below), Murder By Accident was the second novel by Joan Suter. Both were published the year she divorced her first husband, left England for Canada, married again, and began writing as Joan Walker. The author hid her first two novels. Why she did is a mystery. This novel is another.

And the Town Talked

Martha Ostenso

Toronto: News Stand Library, 1949

Ted Allan and Hugh Garner were published by News Stand Library under pseudonyms – not so Martha Ostenso! And the Town Talked first appeared in a 1938 edition of McCall's. Where it doesn't appear is in any Canadian reference book.

The Blowtop

Alvin Schwartz

New York: Dial, 1948

The author's first novel. Published twenty years before he gave up the United States for Canada, it is set in Greenwich Village and concerns fallout stemming from the murder of a local pusher. Did I read somewhere that one of the characters is based on Schwartz's friend Jackson Pollack?

East of Temple Bar

Joan Suter

London: C & J Temple, 1946

Another favourite cover, it graces the hidden debut novel of a woman who would one day win the 1954 Stephen Leacock Medal for Pardon My Parka and the 1957 Ryerson Fiction Award for Repent at Leisure. I liked the novel for its depiction of a time and place in which one could make a decent living as a writer.

Lost House

Frances Shelley Wees

Winnipeg: Harlequin, 1949

As Ricochet Books series editor, I've returned two Wees novels to print. Lost House, a gothic thriller involving drug runners in remote British Columbia looked to be a possible third. Sadly, it is not one of the author's best.

The second book ever published by Harlequin!

A Question of Judgement
Phyllis Brett Young

London: Allen, 1970

Phyllis Brett Young published six books between 1959 and 1969 — and then nothing in the remaining twenty-seven years of her life. One wonders what happened. A Question of Judgement, her last, was first published in 1969 by Macmillan of Canada. This British edition, which appeared the following year, has the better cover.

This year the Dusty Bookcase received several gifts and review copies.

I'd long been an admirer of Dick Bourgois-Doyle's exploration of Leacock Medal winners. After reaching out, the author not only sent a signed copy of What's So Funny? (Burnstown, ON: Burnstown Publishing, 2016), but invited me to speak on Joan Walker and Ted Allan. 

Quebec history and literature enthusiast Helen Meredith gave me this copy of Kurt W. Stock's All Quiet on the Russian Front (Richmond Hill, ON: Pocket, 1973), which she spotted at a Montreal Salvation Army Thrift Store. Another in the Simon & Schuster's short-lived "series of original Canadian books." I'd never seen a copy.

Novelist Lee Goldberg, publisher of California's Cutting Edge Books, sent three newly-reissued novels – initially published between 1948 and 1961 – with Canadian settings: Muriel Elwood's Heritage of the River, Robert McCaig's The Burntwood Men, and The Tall Captains by Bart Spicer.

Karyn Huenemann of Canada's Early Women Writers gave me a copy of The Ninth Vibration and Other Stories (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1922) by Theosophist and mystic L. Adams Beck. Like Sexpo '69, The Ninth Vibration and Other Stories sits near the top of my TBR pile.

Here's looking forward to next year's book purchases.

Here's hoping some will be found in physical book stores.

Related posts:

The Ten Best Book Buys of 2021... and much more!
Ten Best Book Buys of 2021 (& Three Great Gifts)
The Twenty Best Book Buys of 2019
Best Book Buys of 2018 (four of which were gifts)
Ten Best Book Buys of 2017 (one of which was a gift)

The Ten Best Book Buys of a Very Bad Year (2016)

Ten of the Best; Spanking Good Book Buys of 2015

Done With Buying Books (2014)

An Egotist of Yesterday

Accidents Never Happen in a Perfect World

Martha Ostenso's Forgotten Masterpiece?
A Forgotten Novelist's Hidden Debut
On the High Heels of Pleasure
The Incomplete Repent at Leisure

Dope. Danger. One Doll
Talking Joan Walker with Dick Borgeois-Doyle

Talking Ted Allan with Dick Bourgeois-Doyle 

Ten Kicks at the Can for A.E. van Vogt

Destination: Universe
A.E. van Vogt
New York: Signet, 1958

160 pages

I began this book wondering if I hadn't been too hard on A.E. van Vogt. Science fiction was an adolescent passion, and like so many abandoned in adulthood – superhero comics being the prime example – I can be overly critical.

I didn't read van Vogt as a kid; had I known he was Canadian I would've. In middle age, his novel The House That Stood Still (1950) served as my introduction. It begins well, reading like a decent pulp thriller, but things take an abrupt turn, the writing changes, and then comes a second turn, more changes, and near complete disintegration. I agree with Fletcher Pratt, who wrote in the 17 December 1950 New York Times that "it is frequently impossible to understand precisely what is going on."

And Pratt liked the novel.

I was similarly baffled, was less impressed, and even more confused by his other 1950 "novel" Masters of Time, my second van Vogt. 

A decade passed. I felt no urge to give van Vogt another try, which is not to say that I wasn't curious. Surely he couldn't be so bad a writer as all that; after all, the man was a graduate of the Palmer Institute of Authorship.

Popular Mechanics, June 1949

And so in March, I made a commitment to read van Vogt's short story collection Destination: Universe before year's end.

A master of time myself, I finished with three weeks to spare.

Destination: Universe proved to be one of 2022's weakest books, but was not nearly so difficult to get through as Jeann Beattie's Blaze of Noon or Mrs Savigny's A Romance of Toronto. Most of its ten stories get off to a running start, propelling the reader for at least a couple of pages. But they soon become bogged down in a problem faced by the protagonist and his various attempts to find a solution. There's a good amount of repetition, explanation, and description of some future technology or other.

'Enchanted Village' concerns the first landing on Mars – a crash, really – which leaves one lone survivor who stumbles upon an uninhabited village that attempts to reconfigures itself to his needs. The visitor is repeatedly frustrated by his inability to communicate with his new home. I found the story memorable for the unnecessary twist in the penultimate paragraph.

'A Can of Paint,' provided a welcome touch of humour. In this story, space explorer Kilgour defies Earth's laws in voyaging to Venus, thus becoming the first human to visit the planet. He emerges from his cigar-shaped spaceship into a field of long green grass,  breathing in the air, "tinglingly sweet and fresh and warm." and almost immediately spies a cube – note: not "can" – containing paint. It spreads over his body, endangering his life as he races against time to find a means of removing it.

The 1953 first Signet edition.

Of the ten, the stand out story is the first, 'Far Centaurus.' Its plot centres on a five hundred year voyage to Alpha Centauri undertaken by acquaintances and friends Pelham, Blake, Renfrew, and narrator Bill. Pelham, has invented a drug, Eternity, which enables humans to live in non-degenerative hibernation for decades on end. Throughout the centuries, the four return to consciousness, but only briefly and never at the same time. Bill, the first to emerge, finds Pelham's decomposing corpse. On his second awakening, 150 years later, he finds a note from Blake expressing concern about Renfrew's mental health. Bill is awoken a third time by an alarm. Through viewers, he sees another spaceship on fire, but can do nothing to help, and so takes another hit of Eternity. Bill awakens for the fifth time as the spaceship is reaching its destination, only to discover that the planet they'd thought might be habitable had been settled centuries earlier. Travel between Earth an Alpha Centauri now takes three hours.

Renfrew loses his mind and van Vogt loses his way.

Of the ending, Colin Wilson wrote that van Vogt had "no idea of how to finish his story." 

I suggest that van Vogt had no idea of how to finish any story. The main thing I've learned in reading the man is that he could have a good idea for a beginning, and might even craft a pretty good middle, but that is it.  Am I wrong? I ask because I have only twelve examples to go on.

I'm not interested in reading a thirteenth.

Bloomer:

"He turned. His horny body towered above the man."

Trivia: In 2004, sixty years after it was first published in the pages of Astounding Stories, 'A Can of Paint' was adapted to the screen in a 24-minute short. 

 

Object and Access: The third Signet printing, my copy, a gift from a friend, is a bit worse for wear. The Stanley Meltzoff cover illustration imagines a scene not found in the book. 

Within the pages of my copy I found this bookmark for Canadian Children's Literature. It appears to date from 1997.

A receipt suggests that it was once purchased for $3.50 at Ottawa's Book Bazaar.

The collection was first published by Pellegrini & Cudahy in 1952 as Destination: Universe! Signet dropped the exclamation mark for this printing. There have been many other editions from many other publishers over the years, but as far as I can determine the collection is currently out of print.

Used copies are numerous and cheap.

Destination: Universe! has been translated into French (Destination univers), Italian (Destinazione universo), Romanian (Destinat̨ia univers), and Swedish (Destination universum).

Related posts:

The Dustiest Bookcase: V is for van Vogt
SF, not S/M

Wasting Time With A.E. van Vogt

The Dominatrix of Time (and other fantasies)

The Homoerotic A.E. van Vogt

This Blog Brought to You by General Electric

Maclean's, 1 November 1920

Best Books of 1922: Amidst a Flood of Mediocrity

Published one hundred years ago today, the 1922 Globe round-up of the year's noteworthy books doesn't display much by way of enthusiasm. The three pages – previous years had five – begin with a reference to something once said by long-dead Englishman George Crabbe. It really sets the tone:

The trend may be away from fiction, but fiction makes for nearly half of the Globe's list. And I can't help but note that not one science title features.

The newspaper's greatest focus is on "GENERAL FICTION," by which it means fiction that is not Canadian. Babbit is recognized as the year's big title. I can't quibble because I still haven't read it. I have read The Beautiful and Damned, which doesn't feature.

My copies of the first Canadian editions

The big work of "CANADIAN FICTION" is Ethel M. Chapman's God's Green Country, a novel that is new to me. Here's what the Globe has to say:

God's Green Country is long out of print, as is every other Canadian fiction title selected by the Globe:

The Return of Blue Pete - Luke Allan [Lacey Amy]

Flowing Gold - Rex Beach

Chalk Talks - J.W. Bengough

Indian Legends of Vancouver Island - Alfred Carmichael

God's Green Country - Ethel M. Chapman

King's Arrow - H.A. Cody

Caste - W.A. Fraser

Pagan Love - John Murray Gibbon

D'Arcy Conyers - Bertal Heeney

Mortimer's Gold - Harold Horn

The Timber Pirate - Charles Christopher Jenkins

The Bells of St Stephens - Marian Keith

The Dust Flower - Basil King

The Twenty-first Burr - Victor Lauriston

Openway - Archie P. McKinshie

Over 'ere and Back Home - P. O'D

Tillicums of the Trail - George C.F. Pringle

Poisoned Paradise - Robert W. Service

Neighbors - Robert Stead

The Prairie Child - Arthur Stringer

Salt Seas and Sailormen - Frederick William Wallace

The Shack Locker - Frederick William Wallace

Ignore Flowing Gold; a Texas adventure by American Rex Beach, its inclusion is a mistake. Of the twenty-one truly Canadian titles, I've read only Basil King's The Dust Flower.  It may be the author's weakest novel – I have ten left to tackle – but I'm not surprised that it made the cut. What does surprise is the absence of Bertrand W. Sinclair's The Hidden Places, which may just be the best Canadian novel of 1922.

My collection of the Globe's 1922 Canadian fiction titles.

Four that didn't make the list.

In its selection of Canadian fiction titles, the Globe demonstrates a certain preference. Hinted at in the praise of God's Green Country, it is stated plainly in the description of D'Arcy Conyers.* 

We get all too few of such?

Really?

Most Canadian novels dating from this time have rural settings.

More, please?

The Globe is most complimentary in its opinion of Canadian verse, but not before taking a dig at the Mother Country: "In Britain, during the past year, deflation has not been confined to finance, and poetry scarcely rises above the horizon." But Canada, young Canada, imbued with "national sentiment stimulated by the war, receives refreshing satisfaction from the study of the poet's message."

Nine of the fourteen volumes of verse are Canadian:

Jean Blewett's Poems - Jean Blewett

Complete Poems of Wilfred Campbell - Wilfred Campbell

Contrasts - Lawren Harris

Complete Poems of Archibald Lampman - Archibald Lampman

Fires of Driftwood - Isabel Ecclestone Mackay

The Woodcarver's Wife and Later Poems - Marjorie L. Pickthall

Christ in the Strand and Other Poems - James A. Roy

Verse and Reverse - Toronto Women's Press Club

Impressive... until one realizes that Complete Poems of Wilfred Campbell and Complete Poems of Archibald Lampman do not exist. Going by the descriptions, I'm sure what's being referred to are The Poetical Works of Wilfred Campbell and yet another edition Archibald Lampman's Poems (first published by Morag in 1900). I own two earlier editions of the latter and a very nice copy of Isabel Ecclestone Mackay's Fires of Driftwood. Am willing to trade all three for a first of Lawren Harris's Contrasts.

We Canadians don't do nearly as well in the rest of the list, nearly falling flat in the "JUVENILE" category – two titles in a list of thirty-four – but we hold our own overall in contributing 47 of the Globe's 167 titles.

Of the forty-seven, Over Prairie Trails by Frederick Philip Grove is in print today as a New Canadian Library title. New Canadian Library being no more, it's old stock now housed somewhere in a Penguin Random House warehouse.

What else is in print?

Nothing?

Oh, Canada.

* In researching Bertal Heeney's D'Arcy Conyers, I stumbled upon the work of British actor, director, and screenwriter Darcy Conyers (1919-1973). Amongst his many accomplishments is the screenplay for the 1961 comedy The Night We Got the Bird. The IMDb summary promises an evening of good fun:

Cyril's family is unaware that he and his cabinet-maker employee are making and selling false antique furniture. It is only when he dies and his salesman Bernie marries his widow Julie that the truth comes out through Cecil re-appearing as a parrot, puzzlingly given as a wedding gift. When a local Brighton heavy realises he's been conned the family band together to try and fix things. 

Related posts:

The 1921 Globe 100 206: Don't Mention the War 

Best Books of 1920: Beware the Bolshevik Poets

The Globe 100 One Hundred Years Ago: Poets are Struck Dumb

and Capitalism Proves Embarrassing (1919)

The Globe 100 178 of 2018

The Season's Best Books in Review - A.D. 1917:

The String of Canadian Patriotism is Fingered

The Season's Best Books in Review - A.D. 1916

The Season's Best Books in Review – A.D. 1915;

Featuring the Best Canadian Book Ever Published

A Gentleman's Gentleman Cultivates a Lady

Sex, Betrayal, and the Scars of the Great War

'December' by S. Frances Harrison

An old poem for the New Month by daughter of Toronto Susie Frances Harrison (née Riley; a/k/a Seranus). This version comes from her second collection, Pine, Rose and Fleur de Lis (Toronto: Hart & Co, 1891).

DECEMBER

I long for a noble mood. I long to rise,

Like those large rolling clouds of ashen pink

That deepen into purple, over strife

And small mechanic doings. How superb

That landscape in the sky to which I walk,

And gain at will a spacious colour-world,

In which my finer self may feel no fear!

The distance far between that goal and me

Seems lightly bridged; breathless, I win that goal—

The shores of purple and the seas of gold.

Below, how flat the still small earth—a sphere

That only the leaden soul takes solace in!

The long pine stretches, barred in sombre black,

Cross at right-angles fields that are gray with snow—

Not white, but gray, for all the colours is here,

Colour—a new sacrament—melted gems,

The hearts of all water-lilies, the tips of their wings—

Young angels', plumed in topaz, garnet, rose—

The dazzling diamond white, the white of pearl.

How poor a place the little dark world appears,

Seen from this gold-cloud region, basoned in fire!

Only a step away, and nothing is seen

Of the homes, huts, churches, palaces it bears

Upon its dry brown bosom. There remains

But the masterful violet sea, that angrily

This moment somewhere gnashes its yellow teeth

Against a lonely reef. What's most like God

In the universe, if not this same strong sea,

Encircling, clasping, bearing up the world,

Blessing it with soft caresses, then, for faults,

Chiding in God-like surges of wrath and storm?

But the ocean of cloud is placid, and the shores,

Rolled up in their amethyst bulk towards the stars,

Fade noiselessly from pearl to purple dark.

The shades fall even here. Here—not exempt

From death and darkness even these shining airs—

The night comes swifter on than when on earth.

The fringes of faintest azure, where the bars

Of paler cloud are fading into gray,

Are dulled and blotted out. Opaque has grown

The molten in one moment; fleecy pale

And ghastly all the purple lonely then,

And awed to horror of those glacial peaks,

I bridge the vaporous barrier once again,

And tread the despised earth. Then how too dear

Doth the rude, common light of earth appear—

That of a street lamp, burning far, but clear!

The sign of human life, of human love,

Of habitation sweet, of common joys

And common plans, though precious, yet not prized,

Till in a moment's fancy I had lost them.