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Flattened History
4 hours ago
28 September 2018
24 September 2018
The Return of John Buell's Four Days
John Buell is Montreal's most unjustly neglected novelist, and this is his most unjustly neglected novel. Four Days is so strong a work that it alone caused Edmund Wilson to declare Buell one of Canada's foremost writers. Beginning with the 1962 Farrar, Straus & Culahy, the novel enjoyed several editions and translations, then slipped out of print in the early 'nineties.
No more.
This week sees its return, following The Pyx, John Buell's debut novel, as the thirteenth Ricochet Book published by Véhicule Press. Montreal writer Trevor Ferguson, also known by his "John Farrow" pen name, provides a new foreword. As Ricochet series editor, I'm proud to have worked with publishers Simon Dardick and Nancy Marrelli in returning Four Days to print.
I first wrote about Four Days in this 2011 Dusty Bookcase review:
Four Days in Darkest QuebecIt is one of Canada's greatest novels.
Edmund Wilson would agree.
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| John Buell 1927 - 2013 |
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21 September 2018
17 September 2018
The Dustiest Bookcase: J is for Jacob
Short pieces on books I've always meant to review (but haven't).
They're in storage as we build our new home.
Patience, please.
One Third of a Bill: Five Short Canadian Plays
Fred Jacob
Toronto: Macmillan, 1925
140 pages
The tenth anniversary of this blog is less than four months away, so how is it that I haven't reviewed a single play? I was, after all, a child star. My involvement in the theatre stretches back to the second grade,when I played Big Billy Goat in a touring production (we once performed at a neighbouring elementary school) of Three Billy Goat's Gruff. In all modesty, I think I earned the role because I had the deepest voice of all the boys.
It hasn't changed since.
Had I not spotted its subtitle, Five Canadian Short Plays, I wouldn't have bought One Third of a Bill. Fred Jacob's name meant nothing to me. Though he once served as dramatic and literary editor of the Mail & Empire, he doesn't feature in The Canadian Encylopedia or W.H. New's Encyclopedia of Literature in Canada. The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature demonstrates its superiority in devoting a portion of a sentence to the man under the entry "Novels in English: 1920 to 1940":
There were also Victor Lauriston's Inglorious Milton (1934), a mock epic of small-town literati, and the first two novels by Fred Jacob (1882-1926) [sic] of a planned (but never completed) four-part satire of Canadian life in the first quarter of the twentieth-century: Day Before Yesterday (1925) about the decline of upper-class domination in a small Ontario town, and Peevee (1928), about the posturing and affectations of a rising middle class.I've since learned that the small town in Day Before Yesterday was modelled on Elora, Ontario, in which Jacob was born and raised. A roman à clef, it didn't go down well with the locals, as reflected in this online listing from Thunder Bay's Letters Bookshop:
Macmillan of Canada, Toronto, 1925. Hardcover. Condition: Very good plus. 1st Edition. 320pp; gilt black filled cloth, lacking jacket; 197 x 131 x 41 mm. The author's controversial second book, the introductory novel in a projected series of four studies of 19th-century rural Ontario communities; preceded the same year, by a collection of plays. A native of Elora, Fred Jacob (1882-1928), lacrosse afficianado, was employed as a Toronto Mail & Empire sports writer at the time of publication. Perceiving the story to be uncomplimentary to their forefathers, residents back home erupted in a torrent of condemnation for book & author alike, which inevitably led to less than favourable reviews. The author had nearly completed the somewhat redeeming second volume, PeeVee (1928), at the time of his untimely demise. Ink inscription on ffe, dated Jan 31st, 1926. Light wear to boards; with a touch of waterstain to a portion of the book-block at upper tip. Exceedingly scarce.Exceeding scarce is right!
The copy described above is one of only two listed for sale online. Unsurprisingly, the Wellington County Library, which serves Elora, doesn't have a copy (or any other Jacob title). Seems a candidate for acquisition. Here's the link to the Letters Bookshop listing:
Day Before YesterdayIncidentally, Letters gets right what The Oxford Companion gets wrong: the year of Jacob's death. Here's how the sad event was reported in the Mail & Empire:
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| The Mail & Empire 7 June 1928 |
16 September 2018
The Reverend Cody Cover Cavalcade
On this sunny Sunday, the third post concerning Reverend H.A. Cody this month, all part of an effort to atone for ignoring the man these past fifty years. Of his twenty-five tomes, I've read only The Girl at Bullet Lake, reviewed here last week.
I'm not entirely adverse to reading another. Any suggestions?
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| Under Sealed Orders New York: Doran, 1917 |
Not to be confused with the wonderfully entertaining Grant Allen novel of the same name.
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| The Touch of Abner New York: Doran, 1919 |
The spiciest title in the reverend's bibliography.
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| The Master Revenge Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1927 |
I'm guessing that crime has something to do with handsaws.
Has anyone else read Cody?
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12 September 2018
'Strangely Entangled in the Threads of Love'
The Girl at Bullet Lake
H.A. Cody
Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1933
304 pages
Nine years ago, I suggested that Isabel Ecclestone Mackay's Up the Hill and Over features "the most improbable coincidence in all of Canadian literature." I haven't changed my opinion – not yet, at least – but I will say, without reservation, that H.A. Cody's The Girl at Bullet River has more coincidences than any novel I've ever read. The first comes in the first scene, in which protagonist Robert Rutledge's doctor prescribes rest and relaxation away from the big city:
“Bullet Lake will do you fine. And there is a snug house on the shore, known as ‘Bullet House.’ It is not a very poetical name, I admit, but that will make no difference, Si Acres will charge you something, but it will be worth it. There is excellent fishing there, too.”There follows a steady stream of improbabilities. Their number is so great that they consume much of my review of The Girl at Bullet Lake, likely the first in 85 years, which was posted today at the Canadian Notes & Queries website. You can read it here:
“Where is this wonderful paradise, doctor?”
“It is not far away, only a few miles back from the river at Glengrow. You surely must know the place.”
“I know Glengrow, for my sister lives there.”
Little More Than CoincidenceC'est gratuit!
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10 September 2018
The Dustiest Bookcase: I is for Irwin
Short pieces on books I've always meant to review (but haven't).
They're in storage as we build our new home.
Patience, please.
Kak, The Copper Eskimo
Vilhjalmur Stefanson and Violet Irwin
New York: Macmillan, 1924
253 pages
Yes, I is for Irwin... and not for Stefansson. My reason for buying this book has everything to do with her and nothing to do with him. To be honest, I'm not much interested in Kak, the Copper Eskimo – I bought it because I saw it. The Violet Irwin book I really want to read is her first novel, The Human Desire (Boston: Small, Maynard, 1913). I've never come across a copy and have never read a review. All I know about The Human Desire comes from advertisements for the 1919 Hollywood adaptation.
Silent films took great liberties with source material. I don't know how faithful Hollywood's 1919 Human Desire was to Irwin's novel, but I'm interested in finding out.
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| The McGill Daily 10 October 1919 |
Fun fact: Kak, the Copper Eskimo was never adopted by Hollywood, but it was translated into Yiddish: Ḳeḳ - der ḳleyner esḳimos (Ṿilne : Naye yidishe shul, 1939). The only copy of which I know is held in New York at the Yivo Institute for Jewish Research.
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