The Dusty Bookcase

01 December 2020

Just like a paperback novel...

Released fifty years ago this month. Always chokes me up.

If I could read your mind, love

What a tale your thoughts could tell

Just like a paperback novel

The kind the drugstore sells

When you reach the part where the heartaches come

The hero would be me

But heroes often fail

And you won't read that book again

Because the ending's just too hard to take

12 November 2020

What to Do? What to Do?

The New Front Line

Hubert Evans

Toronto: Macmillan, 1927

291 pages

Hugh Henderson has returned from the Great War, but not to his Ontario home. During the conflict, his parents relocated to Vancouver, a city that seems nearly as foreign as those he encountered overseas. Now twenty-five, with four years of military service behind him, Hugh is expected to start in on a career. His parents have renewed their offer to "see him through" college, but Hugh doesn't think it's for him.

So, business it is! Or so thinks his father.

A higher up in a thriving plate glass company, Hugh's dad is in a good place to find his son a position. Over a lunch at a department store restaurant, he introduces Hugh to a builder named Canby, who happens to belong to a committee dedicated to finding employment for returning soldiers:

"I'm only too glad to do it, Mr. Henderson. I know what you boys went through—," the statement seemed to lose by over-emphasis— "but just the same it's a handful for a man that's got to hustle."He raised his glass of milk and drank deeply, his little finger sticking out like a frozen sausage.
"Course most of the boys appreciate it," he went on. "But a few don't and that kinda makes me sore. You were over there, Mr. Henderson, and you know s'well's I do that some pretty useless tools got into the army. And some of them got shot up for us too. Mind I don't forget that, but it's these sort of men that's hard to place."

As Canby rambles, Hugh gobbles up his meal, excuses himself, and makes for the crowded streets of Vancouver's downtown. Here he passes men, who like himself sport "FOR SERVICE AT THE FRONT" pins on their lapels, yet introspection lies closer to home:

He thought of Canby trying to "place" the returned men. Canby was like a man with one of those puzzle boxes, getting impatient with the pellets that wouldn't let themselves be rolled into place. The rolling pellets annoyed him.

Fortunately – perhaps not – Hugh's father considers his son's prospects a personal project. Ignoring sausage-fingered Canby, he's set his sites on an imminent opening at hardware wholesalers Mogg & Binwell. What Henderson père doesn't know is that fate has already played its part in the form of a chance encounter between his son and happy-go-lucky Sandy Briggs, with whom Hugh served in France. A BC boy, Biggs' was taken out of the war by shrapnel that surgeons could not remove. He rejoined his wife at Cedar City, somewhere north of Vancouver, where the two run a small general store. Briggs' invitation to come up and see him sometime – the fishing is great – is soon followed by a letter sharing that Vancouver surgeons are looking to remove some of the resurfacing shrapnel. He wonders whether Hugh would do him a favour by filling in on a part-time delivery job he has with the local shingle mill.

Against his father's wishes – "You'll lose out with Mogg and Binwell if you go traipsing up there." –Hugh sets out to help his old brother in arms. He finds that Cedar City is no city, rather a small, haphazard collection of houses and cabins separated by a creek from a similarly-sized Indian reserve. Hugh takes to his new surroundings in a way he did not in Vancouver. Evans devotes pages describing the natural beauty of British Columbia:

The sweep of the side-hill was broken in places by outcrops of granite. The lichens on these rocks were grey and brown, and where the rocks overhung and protected their faces from the weather, there were patches of brilliant green. Around these the moss and the strewn needles of the conifers fitted snugly. The sun, low now over the upper valley, sent its rays through the plumbed evergreens at right angles to the hill. It laid yellow light in strokes and curves across the ground, changing some colours, intensifying others. Hugh thought of the side-hill as some colossal canvas propped against the great lump of the upper mountain, and of himself as a toiling insect too minute to see the picture as a whole.

Hugh's father admires the industriousness of previous Hendersons in making something of themselves, each generation building upon the accomplishments of the last, and so finds it hard to accept that his only child would be attracted to a hard, physical life like that of his great-grandfather.

The New Front Line is a first novel, and first novels are so often romans à clef. Certainly, it features something of the author's own story – Evans grew up in small town Ontario, served in the Canadian Expeditionary Force and settled in rural British Columbia – but it has much more to do with his outlook on life, appreciation of nature, and affection for the people of the First Nations. My attraction to this novel had everything to do with the Great War and the treatment of returning veterans. Though these things feature in The New Front Line, they rank amongst the lesser elements; both all but disappear when Hugh leaves Vancouver for Cedar City. Looking over what I've written thus far, I see that I've placed too much emphasis on my own interests. To be frank, I'm still digesting this novel. The New Front Line is an unusual book. It is a remarkable book. There is no good reason it has been out of print these last nine decades.

Hubert Reginald Evans
9 May 1892, Vankleek Hill, ON -
16 June 1986, Roberts Creek, BC
RIP

Object: Bulky in blue boards, my copy was a gift from my friend military historian James Calhoun. It would appear to have once been presented to a man named Charles Cameron.

Might that Charles Cameron have been one of the forty Charles Camerons who served in the CEF? I don't suppose we'll ever know.

Access: As of this writing, no copies are listed for sale online. The novel can be found at Library and Archives Canada and four of our universities.

11 November 2020

Remembrance Day

Verse from the 1923 edition of Robert Stead's The Empire Builders.

HE SLEEPS IN FLANDERS

He sleeps in Flanders. Well he sleeps,

For Flanders' sleep is deep indeed;

About his bed the trench-rat creeps;

In some far home a woman weeps;

And the lone moon its vigil keeps

Above his sleep in Flanders.

No note shall break the silent sleep

That found him when his day was done;

No note is blown so loud and deep

That it can pierce the gates of sleep—

The earthen gates full damp and deep —

That guard his sleep in Flanders.

He saw not where his path should lead,

Nor sought a path to suit his will;

He saw a nation in her need;

He heard the cause of Honor plead;

He heard the call, he gave it heed,

And now he sleeps in Flanders.

Yet let this ray of light remain,

Though darkness cut him from our view;

We know the sacrifice, the pain

We cannot feel our faith is vain

We know the loss, but not the gain

Of those who sleep in Flanders.

31 October 2020

An Unholy Harlequin Halloween

This is the twelfth Dusty Bookcase Harlequin Halloween post. You know the drill by now: I share an old, odd, unsettling cover from the romance publisher's early years, and we all move on.

Here, for example, is the very first Harlequin Halloween post:

That was it.

Elizabeth Sanxay Holding's Speak of the Devil was my choice for this year. Still is. I mean, really, is there not something unnatural about that woman's index finger?

Published in June 1950, Speak of the Devil was the first Harlequin to feature "Devil" in its title. As far as I've been able to determine, the next was American Charles Stoddard's RCMP adventure Devil's Portage, which followed eight years later.

It isn't until 1975 that we find the third Harlequin to reference the Devil in its title:

The Devil's Darling
Violet Winspear
1975

I don't pretend to know what's going on with Harlequin, but can't help but note that with The Devil's Darling the Evil One came to take a regular place in its titles.

Devil in a Silver Room
Violet Winspear
1976

The Devil's Daughter
Marguerite Bell
1978

The Devil's Bride
Margaret Pargeter
1979

The Devil Drives
Jane Arbor
1980

Devil's Gateway
Yvonne Whittal
1980

The four decades since Devil's Gateway have seen:

Devil in Command - Helen Bianchin (1981)
Devil in Disguise - Jessica Steele (1981)
Devil's Mount - Anne Mather (1981)
The Devil Lover - Carole Mortimer (1981)
The Devil's Mistress - Sarah Holland (1982)
A Touch of the Devil - Anne Weale (1982)
Devil's Causeway - Mary Winnerley (1982)
Sup with the Devil - Sara Craven (1982)
Devil's Gold - Nicola West (1983)
The Devil Within - Catherine George (1984)
The Devil's Price - Carole Mortimer (1985)
Devil's Advocate - Vanessa James (1985)
Devil's Gambit - Lisa Jackson (1986)
The Old Devil Moon - Anne Logan (1986)
The Devil's Own - Sandra Brown (1987)
Devil Moon - Margaret Way (1988)
Devil and the Deep Sea - Sara Craven (1989)
Devil's Shadow - Sally Wentworth (1989)
The Devil's Dare - Jean Reece (1989)
Devil in Paradise - Joanna Mansell (1991)
Devil to Pay - Renee Roszel (1992)
The Devil Has His Due - Diana Hamilton (1992)
Dance with the Devil - Pamela Litton (1992)
Valley of the Devil - Yvonne Whittel (1992)
Dance to the Devil's Tune - Lucy Keane (1994)
The Devil's Lady - Deborah Simmons (1994)
Devil's Dare - Laurie Grant (1995)
Candle for the Devil - Susanne McCarthy (1995)
Saving the Devil - Sophie Weston (1995)
The Devil Earl - Deborah Simmons (1996)
The Devil's Kiss - Scott DeLoras (1996)
Lucky Devil - Patricia Rosemoor (1996)
Handsome Devil - Joan Hohl (1999)
Defense for the Devil - Kate Wilhem (1999)
The Devil's Due- Rachel Cain (2000)
The Devil's Mark - Joanna Makepiece (2000)
The Devil to Pay - Stephanie James (2000)
The Devil You Know - Laurie Page (2001)
The Devil to Pay - Michele Hauf (2002)
The Devil's Bargain - Robyn Donald (2002)
Date with a Devil (2003)
The Angel of Devil's Camp - Lynne Banning (2003)
Devil's Cub - Georgette Heyer (2003)
The Devil You Know - Laurie Page (2004)
The Devil's Hearth - Philip De Poy (2004)
The Devil's Bargain - Rachel Cain (2005)
The Devil's Waltz - Anne Stuart (2006)
The Devil's Footprints - Amanda Stevens (2006)
In Bed with the Devil - Susan Mallery (2007)
The Devil to Pay - Michele Hauf (2008)
The Devil and Drusilla - Paula Marshall (2008)
Devil in a Dark Blue Suit - Robyn Grady (2009)
The Sexy Devil - Kate Hoffman (2010)
Devil in Dress Blues - Karen Foley (2011)
The Devil Wears Kolovsky - Carol Marinelli (2011)
The Devil's Chord - Alex Archer (2011)
The Devil's Heart - Lynn Rae Harris (2011)
Lady with the Devil's Scar - Sophia James (2012)
The Devil and the Deep - Amy Andrews (2012)
The Devil and Miss Jones - Kate Walker (2012)
The Devil She Knows - Kira Sinclair (2013)
Daughters Unto Devils - Amy Lukavics (2015)
The Devil Takes a Bride - Julia London (2017)
The Devil's Bargain - Kira Sinclair (2020)
Dirty Devil - L.J. Shen (2020)

That I hesitate in sharing this discovery may have something to do with having been traumatized by Race with the Devil as a child.

It didn't end well.

Not to suggest that that a similar fate awaits, but to be safe I've written and scheduled my annual Christmas post.

Happy Halloween, I guess.

Merry Christmas, too.

Related posts:

A Harlequin Halloween

Another Harlequin Halloween

It's Harlequin Halloween Time!
The Horror! The Harlequin Horror!

The Harlequin Horror That Just Won't Die!
The Most Horrifying Harlequin Halloween Ever!
Night of the Living Harlequin Halloween Horror
Harlequin Halloween Horror Confusion

Will Harlequin Halloween Horror Never End?

No, Harlequin Halloween Horror Will Never End
Who Can Deny the Harlequin Halloween Horror!

26 October 2020

Nudism to Buddhism

Skin Dive

Joe Fisher

Markham, ON: PaperJacks, 1977

184 pages

His Holiness the Dalai Lama wrote the preface to Joe Fisher's third book, The Case for Reincarnation. It's said to be one of the better popular studies of the topic. Skin Dive is something else entirely. Fisher's only novel, it revolves around sad sack Clive Conroy, the proprietor of a failing downtown Toronto nudist club. Clive had borrowed good money to buy the place – The Blue Grotto – on a realtor's assurances that it was good investment. It wasn't. "NUDE MR. CABBY CONTEST," Clive's one idea for turning things around proves disastrous when Bertram Sheehy and his fellow brothers in the Taxi Driver's Association of Metropolitan Toronto threaten violence. "Cab drivers are serious people," says Sheehy, the Association's president, "a strata of society earning and deserving respect. If you think we're going to sit here and watch ourselves being deliberately slandered and humiliated you've got another think [sic] coming."

Clive is a serial sucker, the Blue Grotto being just the latest in a string of bad bets. As the club looks about to go under, Clive encounters Henry Bubbins, representative of Esquire Consultants Ltd, who encourages him to invest in the sale of fire detectors. Sucker that he is, Clive soon finds himself being transported in Bubbins' ageing Cadillac to a twelve-hour seminar at a suburban hotel. The whole thing stinks of a multi-level marketing scheme, but proves much the worse; Esquire Consultants Ltd disappears after Clive hands over a cheque for $2500 ($10,007.71 today).

I felt like a sucker myself. Back in 2014, I paid $20 ($21.76 today) for Skin Dive after reading the back cover copy:

Clive and Mary Anne do not "explore the mad world of Toronto's Sin Strip;" in fact, they're barely ever together.

No pun intended.

Mary Anne, who begins the novel as a Blue Grotto employee, encourages Clive to invest in a dating service cum brothel.

No pun intended.

Clive retreats to his rented flat, distancing himself from the Sin Strip, as money from Mary Anne's business flows.

Skin Dive promises something other than what it delivers. Going by cover copy, I'd expected a portrait, no matter how crudely drawn, of a time, a place, and its people, much like Hugh Garner had accomplished with Sin Sniper (which isn't much of a novel). Instead, Fisher takes a wealth of material and presents a novel composed of dull moments; the Esquire Consultants sales pitch runs seventeen pages.

I can't leave Skin Dive without remarking on the pub date: July 1977, the very same month as the Emanuel Jaques murder.

I was fourteen, two years older that the victim, and living in suburban Montreal, but I knew Emanuel Jaques' name well. His body was found on a Yonge Street rooftop, just across the street from the Eaton's Centre – and I'd been to the Eaton's Centre! In the summer of '77, the killers of Emanuel Jaques vied for column inches with the Son of Sam. His death brought the beginning of the end of Toronto's Sin Strip.

Skin Dive enjoyed no second printing, and is fairly uncommon. It's held by Library and Archives Canada and six of our universities.

No used copies are listed for sale online.

Given the timing, I'm guessing no one was much interested in a rollicking adventure set on the Sin Strip.

Object: A cheap mass market paperback bulked up by six pages of offerings from the PaperJacks catalogue; my favourite, of course, being The Last Canadian:

And doesn't this look interesting?

I read this at fifteen during a family vacation to Cape Breton:

Wish I still had a copy.

Brant Cowie is credited with the cover of Skin Dive. The uncredited model is overdressed.

Related post:

About Those Awful PaperJacks Covers

A Not So Nice Place to Visit

19 October 2020

Armand Durand; or, A Summer Project

Armand Durand; ou, La promesse accomplie

[Armand Durand; or, A Promise Fulfilled]
Madame Leprohon [Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon;
trans, J.-A. Genaud],
Montreal: Beauchemin, 1894
367 pages

In her time, Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon – Madame Leprohon – was more popular with francophones than anglophones, so does it not make sense to tackle this, her third novel, in translation? I thought so. It was my summer project. That the season ended weeks ago speaks to my inabilities, and is no reflection on the novel itself. The story is simple and has a rushed, rather predictable conclusion – but it is deftly told and is populated by fully-drawn characters who live in a Quebec the author knew well.

The novel begins with Paul Durand, descendant of the earliest settlers of New France, who has come to inherit a large and profitable farm in "the seigneurie of — Alonville we will call it — on the banks of the St. Lawrence."* Handsome and hardworking Paul has put off marriage so as not to impose upon his mother, who had lived many, many years in the Durand family farmhouse... until she didn't.

I shouldn't be so flippant. Mère Durand is depicted as a fine woman. After her death, son Paul looks to be in no hurry to take a bride — but then he encounters Geneviève Audut. Newly arrived from France, delicate Geneviève is employed as governess to a pair of thoroughly dislikable children related to the seigneur. Geneviève herself is a relation —a poor relation — whom no one treats her particularly well. Her charges are the worst: "Mamma says we will never learn anything till we have a tutor, and that she would get us one to-morrow, only she does not know what to do with you. No body will marry you as you have no dot."

After overhearing this little shit, Paul proposes to Geneviève, which in turn sends the women of Alonville into a tizzy:

What could he see in her, indeed, a little doll-faced creature with no life or gaiety in her, to bewitch him in such a manner? What made him marry a stranger when there were plenty of smart handsome girls in his own village that he had known ever since they wore pinafores?

Much to their delight, Geneviève proves a disaster in keeping a farmhouse, but Paul Durand loves her to the end... which comes when she gives birth to the titular character.

Again, I shouldn't be so flippant. Though I could see it coming, Madame Leprohon's description of Geneviève's death touches the heart.

Believing that his infant son is in need of a mother, Paul marries spinster Eulalie Messier, a plain-featured woman of good character, who had been generally recognized as Alonville's youngest spinster. His new bride loves and cares for the infant Armand Durand as her own, and Paul comes to love her as a result. Eulalie wasn't so old an old maid that she couldn't provide her husband with another son. They name him Paul, after his father.

And then, she dies.

I fear I've made Armand Durand seem gothic, when it is really a mélange of melodrama and literary realism. Its depictions of French Canadian traditions and society, which Mary Jane Edwards suggests is the reason behind Madame Leprohon's popularity, was just one element that kept me reading.

With Eulalie's death, focus shifts to the two Durand boys and their schooling at "the old Montreal College." Armand, the more retiring of the two, is the intellectual. Paul, though younger, is both literally and figuratively the bigger brother. He has confidence and brash. Poor Armand, so pretty and slight, becomes a target of his fellow classmates. "Miss Armand," as he's called, is bullied to a point at which he lashes out, bloodying the brute Rodolphe Belfond, after which the two become fast friends.

As the title suggests, Armand comes to take the place of the main character. Paul fis begins to fade with the end of their schooldays, returning to Alonville to help run the family farm. Armand remains in Montreal, working for a lawyer, with the goal of becoming one himself. It all makes sense, and works well until jealousy rears its ugly head. On visits to Montreal, Paul feels like a country bumpkin, and comes to resent the money their father sends to help support Armand. He begins a campaign of lies, implying that the funds are wasted on drink and dandyism. The scheming reaches its apex when Paul Durand pere lies in his deathbed as Paul fis intercepts letters addressed to his older brother. The upshot is that Armand Durand is disinherited.

Madame Leprohon's greatest challenge in writing this novel must surely have had to do with events following the father's death. Armand marries Delima Laurin, his landlady's niece. Written this way, the decision seems so rash, and yet this reader understood the proposal of marriage and its timing. Sadly, Armand and Delima soon prove themselves ill-suited.

I'll write no more for fear of spoiling things... and because I'm hoping you'll read it.

I found Armand Durand to be one the finest Canadian novels of the nineteenth-century.

Am I wrong?

Was something gained in translation?

* All quotes come from Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon's original text.

Object: A fragile volume printed on thin paper, bound in embossed scarlet boards, my copy once belonged to the Bibliotheque de Chénéville. It was purchased earlier this year from a Gatineau bookseller. Price: C$19.41. I see no evidence that it was a discard. Should I be concerned?

Access: Armand Durand first appeared as a serial on 1 October 1868 in the Montreal Daily News. That same year, the novel was published in book form by John Lovell. That edition can be read — gratis — through this link at the Internet Archive.

The novel is in print today, with introduction by Loraine McMullen and Elizabeth Waterston, as part of Tecumseh's Early Canadian Women Writers Series. It can be ordered here, thorough the press.

Pay no heed to print on demand vultures. Take it from a Montrealer, this isn't Quebec:

The Tecumseh edition aside, I see no copies of Armand Durand — English or French —listed for sale online.

As might be expected, this once-popular novel has come to be the stuff of academe. The only copy I see in a public library can be found in Toronto.

13 October 2020

M'Lord, I Am Not Guilty: Title, Cover, Confession

The new Ricochet edition of Frances Shelley Wees's I Am Not Guilty arrived in my rural mailbox last week, meaning that it is well on its way to the very best Canadian bookstores. A proud papa, I can't help but note that its publication coincides with the tenth anniversary of the Ricochet Books imprint.

Wees was one of this country's earliest and most prolific mystery writers, and yet she has no Canadian Encylopedia entry. Her name is not so much mentioned in the Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature. What I know about the author and her work was derived from old newspaper articles and reviews read on microfilm. In all that fast-forwarding and rewinding, it became clear that two of her novels, M'Lord, I Am Not Guilty (1954) and The Keys to My Prison (1956), had been particularly well received back in the day. I bought and read The Keys of My Prison five years ago. Ten months later, it was reissued as the eleventh Ricochet Books title.

After that, I turned my attention to Wees's 1958 mystery Where is Jenny Now? I'm a sucker for titles that ask a question. Is anything better than Trollope's Can You Forgive Her? Should I have ended that sentence with a second question mark? I don't think so. Who knows? In any case, Where is Jenny Now? turned out to be disappointing.

Next up was This Necessary Murder (1957). Another good title, but like Where Is Jenny Now?, it is not the author's best work.

M'Lord, I Am Not Guilty is the very opposite of a good title, which is why I avoided the novel for so long. It wasn't until last August, five years into my exploration of Wees's work, that I managed to turn the title page. What I found on the other side was a clever and intriguing tale of domestic suspense, every bit as captivating as The Keys of My Prison.

And so, I proposed M'Lord, I Am Not Guilty as the next Ricochet Book, all the while shuddering over the title. I considered reissuing the novel as I Am Not Guilty, but this only made me unhappy. Who am I to retitle a work? But then I found this, on the inside flap of the Doubleday first edition:

I was pleased, the author's estate was pleased, and so we progressed to the cover.

A series devoted to post-war Canadian noir, Ricochet covers use vintage artwork from decades-old editions. The options have at times been overwhelming – as in the case of John Buell's The Pyx – but not so with M'Lord, I Am Not Guilty. It was first published by Doubleday as a hardcover:

What do you think?

I quite like the dust jacket because it was so like a film noir title screen, all the while recognizing that it doesn't really lend itself to Ricochet's mass market format. My only complaint is that "A NOVEL OF SUSPENSE" isn't given more play.

Can you see it? It's there in the bottom right-hand corner.

The Doubleday edition found alternate life through the publisher's book club, after which it disappeared. Curiously, given Wees's low profile in this country, the novel next saw print in Northern Lights, a bulky 1960 Doubleday Book Club anthology devoted to Canadian fiction. It wasn't until 1967, a full thirteen years after M'Lord, I Am Not Guilty last saw print on its own, that it appeared in paperback. In keeping with the time, publisher Pyramid gave it the look of a gothic romance.

The novel is anything but a gothic romance.

So, which to choose?

I was pushing for the Doubleday, until I remembered that as Mylord, ich bin nicht schuldig the novel had enjoyed two German editions. Much as I like the author photo, the cover of the first, a hardcover published by Goldmann in 1960, didn't quite work.