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Alain Robbe-Grillet’s The Voyeur
1 hour ago
13 May 2018
Verse for Mother's Day by Dorothy Livesay's Mum
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| Florence Randal Livesay 1874 - 1953 RIP |
Florence Randal Livesay was a good mother.
This verse is one of four Florence Randal Livesay poems included in editor John W. Garvin's Canadian Poems of the Great War (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1918):
Being the the hundredth since the end of the Great War, I couldn't let this Mother's Day pass without acknowledging the fact and adding this verse by Isabel Ecclestone Mackay, which is also taken from Canadian Poems of the Great War:
War is over if you want it.
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07 May 2018
The Dustiest Bookcase: A is for Adams
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.
S: Portrait of a Spy
Ian Adams
Toronto: Virgo, 1981
196 pages
I wrote a great deal about S: Portrait of a Spy in my first book Character Parts, which is pretty much the reason I haven't covered it here. An intriguing novel of political intrigue concerning a member of the RCMP who is suspected of being both a KGB and CIA mole, S generated headlines through my college years. Most came courtesy of Toronto Sun publisher Peter Worthington, who pushed the idea that Leslie James Bennett, former head to the RCMP's Russian Intelligence Service Desk, was the model for the title character. Worthington encouraged Bennett to sue, which is exactly what he did, going after Adams and original publisher Gage for $2.2 million.
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| S: Portrait of Spy Ian Adams Toronto: Gage, 1979 |
"A curious resolution, as the disclaimer republished the alleged libel even as it discredited it," noted lawyer Douglas J. Johnson.
Agreed.
The Virgo edition also includes a good deal of information on Bennett, much of it gleaned through court testimony. Transcripts are provided.
Bennett described Adams' novel as "a typical KGB-type operation" and went so far as to claim that his life was under threat from an RCMP "death squad."
He died in Melbourne of kidney failure on 18 October 2003, four days after the publication of Character Parts. I deny any responsibility.
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01 May 2018
Packing Up the Dusty Bookcase(s)
Never done that before.
Packing up my collection of obscure, not-so-obscure, and quite common Canadian literature – all 3895 books – has become a depressing chore. So many I've been meaning to read remain unopened; so many I'd planned on reviewing here remain untouched. Leading this sad parade is Turf Smoke, John Coulter's lone novel, published in 1945 by Ryerson.
Who remembers that John Coulter wrote a novel?
Who remembers John Coulter?
Once our foremost playwright, I first encountered his name in a university course titled Introduction to Canadian Drama. Coulter's big play, Riel, was assigned but couldn't be read because it wasn't in print. Instead, we studied an excerpt that had been included in The Penguin Book of Modern Canadian Drama, Volume One (Toronto: Penguin, 1984).
There has never been a Volume Two.
I've always been drawn to novels more than drama, which explains how it was that in 1985 I spent four dollars, over half my hourly wage at Sam the Record Man, on this first and only edition of Coulter's first and only novel. I suppose it says something about my reaction to Riel that I've still not read Turf Smoke.
I'm being horribly ungrateful because it was in packing and unpacking Turf Smoke that the idea of a series focussed on forgotten Canadian writing by forgotten Canadian writers first took hold. If my count is correct, my copy has survived fourteen moves, and has twice made it to Vancouver and back. This move, nearly all of my books will be packed away until our new home is built. There'll be no more scanning the shelves in the wee hours, standing in semi-darkness, wondering what next to read.
Decisions must be made now!
And so I find myself putting aside books I hope to reading over the next eighteen months, while boxing up others.
Coulter's novel didn't make the cut. Yesterday, it joined my Ronald Cocking collection, my H.A. Cody collection, my Ralph Connor collection, and a pristine copy of Prelude to a Marriage: Letters & Diaries of John Coulter & Olive Clare Primrose (Ottawa: Oberon, 1979) in a box destined for storage.
Packing it away for the fifteenth time, Turf Smoke inspired a sub-series, The Dustiest Bookcase, which will focus on forgotten books I've long meant to read and review (but haven't).
The Dustiest Bookcase appear from time to time until we've built our new home and I unpack Turf Smoke.
I vow to read it when I do.
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| John Coulter 1888 - 1980 RIP |
27 April 2018
Further Along The Lane That Had No Turning
The Lane That Had No Turning
and Other Tales Concerning the People of Pontiac;
Together with Certain 'Parables of Provinces'
Gilbert Parker
New York: A.L. Burt, [n.d]
359 pages
In his six-page – six-page – dedication to Sir Wilfrid Laurier, Gilbert Parker writes that he'd first intended to title this collection Born With a Golden Spoon. He gives no reason for the change of heart, but I think it may have something to do with knowing where its strength lies. The title story, with its mix of madness, murder, deformity, and suicide, is so fantastic, so entertaining, that that I felt it warranted its own review. I wrote that review in 2012, posted it here, then pulled it down and rewrote it for inclusion in The Dusty Bookcase book, published last fall by Biblioasis.
What I didn't do is continue on. The twenty-five other tales and parables remained unread. There was little point. The two Parkers I'd bothered with – The March of the White Guard and Tarboe – had me convinced that nothing would be nearly as good as "The Lane That Had No Turning." Picking up this volume six years later, I see that I was spot on, which is not to say that the rest of the volume doesn't offer anything worth your time. These are my three favourite tales:
Voyageur Luc Pomfrette curses his baptism – "Sacré baptême!" – bringing hushed shock to the people of Pontiac. The Curé demands Pomfrette repent, but he refuses. The little bell of honour worn around the his leg, conferred out of respect by the other voyageurs, comes to serve as a signal of his approach. Restauranteurs will not serve him and shopkeepers will not sell to him. Though Pomfrette learns to be resourceful, milling his own flour and fashioning clothes from rags, he wastes away. Why will he not repent? And what caused him to blaspheme in the first place?
'The Tragic Comedy of Annette'
Log driver Bénoit, the most attractive and charismatic man in all of Pontiac, avoids the girl to whom has promised marriage. The shortest story in the collection, it would spoil everything to describe much more.
'An Upset Price'
As a tale of drug addiction, "An Upset Price" is uncommon for its day. Secord, its main character, left Pontiac to serve as a physician in the American Army. His delicate, indicate operations were praised in the Lancet, and he could've practiced anywhere, but chose to return to his small Quebec hometown. Coincidentally, I saw the doctor's downfall reflected last night in an episode of the German period drama Charité.
This is not to suggest that the other stories aren't without interest, rather that that interest will depend on the individual. For example, "Uncle Jim," concerning a hardworking farming couple who accept the return of their son, now married to a "designing milliner," will appeal to modern readers who wring their hands over boomerang children. The gothic "Parpon the Dwarf" is recommended to readers of the genre and anyone studying dwarfism in literature. Parpon features throughout much of the book and, it should be noted, is the sole person to stay loyal to the damned Luc Pomfrette.
Parker concludes his dedication to Laurier by announcing that the volume contains his last tales of Quebec. I can't say that they're the last I'll read. This volume may be a mixed bag, but I am curious about The Seats of the Mighty, Parker's historical romance of the Conquest. In 1896 it followed Francis Hopkinson Smith's Tom Grogan and A Lady of Quality by Frances Hodgson Burnett as the third biggest selling novel in the the United States.
Though we're loath to admit it, Canadians love it when Americans pay us notice.
Fun fact: In 1899, Doubleday & McClure published a volume of Gilbert's tales of the Pontiac and parables of the provinces – sans "The Lane That Had No Turning" – under the title Born With a Golden Spoon.
Object: A remarkably attractive cloth-bound hardcover featuring four plates by Frank E. Schooner. To think it came from a budget publisher. I bought my copy in 1998 at a Toronto Goodwill store. Price: $1.50. If the scrawl on frontispiece is to be believed, it once belonged to J.P. Butler of Walden, Massachusetts.
Access: The complete collection (see: Fun Fact above!) was first published in 1900 by Morang in Canada, Doubleday, Page in the United States, and Heinemann in Great Britain. Other editions followed, most notably as Volume 11 in the Imperial Edition of the Collected Works of Gilbert Parker (New York: Scribner's, 1913).
Online listings begin at US$2.99 and extend all the way to €86.00. The collection can be read online – gratis – through this handy link to the Internet Archive.
As always, print on demand vultures are to be ignored.
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23 April 2018
Amazon Customer Review: NHL Playoffs Edition
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18 April 2018
In 1977, I Hope I Go to Heaven
The Box Garden
Carol Shields
Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1977
213 pages
In 1977, I finished Edgar Rice Burrough's Pellucidar series and was a regular reader of The Savage Sword of Conan. A novel about a middle-aged woman's trip to Toronto would not have appealed to my adolescent self.
In adulthood, I met Carol Shields exactly three times. The first was at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, an unusual event in which she shared the bill with realist painter Mary Pratt. This was followed a few years later by the Toronto launch for Larry's Party. The last was at a Random House reception held in a forgotten pub. Toronto or Vancouver? All I remember was that Mordecai Richler was also there. Maybe Michael Ondaatje.
McGraw-Hill Ryerson positioned The Box Garden as a woman's novel, but I vaulted over the gender barrier with ease, aided by this first paragraph:
What was it that Brother Adam wrote me last week? That here are no certainties in life. That we change hourly or even from one minute to the next, our entire cycle of being altered, our selves shaken with the violence of change.The narrator is protagonist Charleen Forrest, a divorcée living in Vancouver with her teenage son Seth. Ex-husband Watson's child support cheques, sent from an Ontario commune, are punctual. Charleen keeps it all afloat through editorial work for the quarterly National Botanical Journal.
Her new man is orthodontist Eugene Redding. He holds certain attraction to Charlene as another damaged survivor of another failed marriage. "We are losers," says our heroine. "The hapless rejects, the jilted partners of people stronger than ourselves." Charleen looks for confirmation of her worth in every story Eugene shares about his ex:
"She was always something of a bitch," Eugene said about his wife, Jeri, shortly after I met him, "but at least in the early days she confined her bitchiness to outsiders. Like waiters in restaurants. The first time I took her out to dinner – I'd only known her a week or so then and I wanted to take her somewhere, you know, impressive. To show her that country boys don't necessarily dribble soup out of the corners of their mouths. We went to the Top of the Captain and she sent the rolls back because they were cold."Dialogue that is all too real, all too mundane; what makes it live is "delightedly" and "greedily."
"No!" I gasped delightedly. "Really?"
"Really. She said that she thought more people should take that kind of responsibility when the service wasn't up to standard. Sort of a battlecry with her."
"And you married her after that! Oh, Eugene, how could you?"
"There's one born every minute, you know."
"What else did she do?" I asked greedily.
Though Eugene is unaware, the most important man in Charleen's life is Brother Adam – he of the novel's very first sentence – who once submitted a paper to the Journal. The subject was grass. A generous correspondent, he is ever ready with words of advice sent from "The Priory" in far-off Toronto. The Box Garden begins as Charleen makes final preparations to visit that very city. Her widowed mother is getting married. Eugene accompanies her on the trip, which happens to coincide with a orthodontist convention. Son Seth is left in the care of old friends Doug and Greta Savage. This appears a good thing – what with Eugene, Charlene, sister Judith, and Judith's husband, the old family home is a bit tight. Concerns over sleeping arrangements and the supply of sliced bread look to dominate the two days leading to the wedding. And then Charlene's life is thrown.
Not this time.
Because The Box Garden was read for its 1977 pub date, I couldn't help but focus on its time. Vancouver, a city I'd visited for the first time the year before (I'd end up living there through much of the nineties and aughts), was much smaller then. Seth is fifteen, the age I turned that summer. Reading the novel, I was alert to fashion, decor, and money, all of which are referenced more than in most novels. This scene in which Charleen has her hair done at Mr Mario's Beauty Box is a favourite:
Light spills through the shirred Austrian curtains and twinkles off the plastic chandeliers. Little bulbs blaze around the mirrors reminding me of movie stars' dressing rooms. Pink hairdryers buzz and air conditioners churn. The wet, white sunlight of the street is miles away. I wait for Mr. Mario in a slippery vinyl chair, suddenly struck with the fear that this rosy elegance might hint at unkempt of prices. Much more than fifteen dollars, maybe even eighteen. Or as much as twenty. Twenty dollars for a hair cut, am I crazy? I turn to the kidney desk in panic, but the receptionist eyes me coldly, leanly. "Now," she says.This focus made me wish it was possible to revisit the Canada of my youth, if only to compare to today. Women wore dresses more often back then, bus drivers gave change, long distance phone calls were a big deal, and Pierre Trudeau, not Justin, was prime minister. I wonder, was it really possible to support oneself working mornings at an academic journal?
The Box Garden is recommended. I'll be reading more Carol Shields, beginning with Small Ceremonies, her debut novel, which concerns Judith, Charleen's sister. Readers seem to like that novel more. Does it have something to do with the writing? The plot? Or is it simply that Judith is more interesting? I must find out, but I won't be writing about it here; Carol Shields has no place in a blog devoted to Canada's neglected, forgotten and suppressed. I'm discussing The Box Garden today because I'm not sure I would've gained entry to the 1977 Club with my scathing review of the September 1977 Savage Sword of Conan.
Object: A bland hardcover from a publisher that was just about to give up on fiction. The cover illustration is by Alan Daniel. I purchased my copy – a true first edition, then unsigned – in 1992 from a Montreal bookseller. Price: $25.
Access: The McGraw-Hill Ryerson edition (one printing) was followed by a 1979 Totem mass market (one printing), after which it disappeared from bookstores. The novel was revived in 1994 by Vintage Canada after The Stone Diaries took the 1993 Governor General's Award for English-language fiction. Interestingly, Fourth Estate published the first British edition the same year. The first American edition, a Penguin paperback, followed The Stone Diaries being awarded the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
I know of only one translation: the Bulgarian Nebesni tsvetia (Varna: Kompas, 1999). How strange.
The Box Garden is easily found in our larger public libraries. Not strange at all.
12 April 2018
Dorothy Dumbrille is Accepted By the Communists
All This Difference
Dorothy Dumbrille
Toronto: Progress, 1945
208 pages
Progress Books, publishing arm of the Communist Party of Canada, announced April 15, 1945 as the publication date of Dorothy Dumbrille’s All This Difference. I’ve found no evidence that the novel hit the shelves on that day, that month, or in the three months that followed. The earliest reviews — and there were many — are from early August of that year. I can’t help but wonder whether its delay had something to do with the publication of Two Solitudes, which occurred a few weeks before All This Difference was to have been released.
MacLennan's novel was received not as a book of the season, but a book for all time. Globe and Mail literary editor William Arthur Deacon’s April 7 review begins:
Spectacular as was Canadian achievement in the novel in 1944, Hugh MacLennan of Montreal has opened 1945 with greater power. In light of Two Solitudes, the excellence of Barometer Rising diminishes to the level of an apprentice piece. The promise of the first book is justified abundantly in the second. Considering style, theme, characters, craftsmanship, significance and integrity, Two Solitudes may well be considered the most important Canadian novel ever published.
The English press praised the book, as did the French, and sales were strong. By that October, MacLennan’s novel had sold 45,000 copies and was in its sixth printing. I can’t say I’ve ever visited a used bookstore in this country that didn’t stock a copy. And yet, though I kept an eye out, it was years before I first saw a copy of All This Difference. The first was at the home of my Montreal friend Adrian King-Edwards, owner of The Word bookshop. A couple of years later, I spotted another on a dollar cart outside Attic Books in London, Ontario. I haven’t come across another since.So begins my review of All This Difference, posted yesterday at Canadian Notes & Queries online. You can read the whole thing here:
Dorothy Dumbrille's Communist ManifestationHer second novel, but first to be published in book form, it's a highly ambitious work, as reflected in this publisher's advert:
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| The Globe & Mail 4 August 1945 |
The only other edition of All This Difference followed eighteen years after the first. Lacking the McCormick illustrations, it came from a very different publisher.
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| Toronto: Harlequin 1963 |
It also holds the distinction of being the only "HARLEQUIN CANADIAN."*
Wish they'd kept that up. Would've made my work a whole lot easier.
* My friend bowler informs that one other title, Kate Aitken's Never a Day So Bright, also bears the "HARLEQUIN CANADIAN" label.
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