11 December 2010

And These Were Her Magnificent Breasts



This was Joanna
Niel [sic] H. Perrin [pseud. Danny Halperin]
Toronto: News Stand Library, 1949

Of all the novels read this past year, not one has left so great an impression as Neil H. Perrin's The Door Between. In the second of two posts about the book, I described it as "one of the most peculiar Canadian novels I've ever read". Here I reconsider: The Door Between might well be the most peculiar Canadian novel I've ever read. It's portrayal of 1948 Toronto as a dark, sexual sin city, populated by stricken, agonizing souls certainly runs counter to the staid and sober images that linger in popular culture.

These same sorry sods would find fit in This was Joanna, which was published twelve months earlier. We never actually meet Joanna – she's found dead on page one by an unnamed fisherman, as depicted on the cover of the publisher's American edition: "...for one witless moment he looked down on the haunting perfection that was Joanna, the closed eyes in a kind of rapture, the long, strained throat, twisted torso, magnificent breasts, profound hips, proud legs, crouched in death like a supple cat."

Profound hips...

This is not the dead woman's story, rather it concerns an ex-lover, a nameless newspaperman who attempts to solve the mystery that was Joanna. His quest brings him into contact with her other past paramours. As with The Door Between, sexual disfunction and perversity pervade. We see this on Joanna's wedding night, as described by her husband Charles:
At last she stood nude before me. When I looked at her I was shocked to see the most brazen smile on her face.
Then, without hesitation, her fingers sure, carefully, slowly, she began to undress me. I went slightly hysterical then. I began to shudder to laugh, to giggle, to squirm. I simply went berserk. In the grip of nameless emotions that shook my whole body and dazed my mind I began to fight with her, to hit her, to drag her toward the bed.
What Joanna thought of this I don't know. We have never discussed it. I only know that later, all passion spent, as I lay beside her in the muttering gloom, I realized that on our wedding night I had gone mad, had beaten my wife and had virtually raped her.
Joanna never forgives Charles, whose desperate attempts to win her back render him a cuckold. The tryst with the newspaperman is just the first in a series of extramarital flings. It's with penultimate lover Ted Wrisley that Joanna's amorous adventures come to a climax. A sensualist who owes much to J.-K. Huysmans' Jean Des Esseintes, Wrisley introduces Joanna to "the arts of which immortal Ovid and the Marquis de Sade have written." He takes delight in showing his "chamber of horrors" to the newspaperman:
On the walls of the room were hung all sorts of gadgets of torture; long needles, small, hairy whips, knouts, knives sharp as razors, silken threads of unbelievable length. Over the mantlepiece were afixed two large peacock feathers; the end of one was a rubber stopper, the end of the other a handgrip. I dared not ask the significance of these feathers for fear of being told.
Suspended from the ceiling were two long cords, obviously used to hold a person up from the floor by his (or her) thumbs. On the floor, as if alive, lay the stuffed corpse of a sinuous cobra. The most unspeakably evil paintings adorned the walls and, in one corner of the room under a blue light, sat the grinning statue of Priapus, the phallic symbol of the ages.
This was Joanna was banned in Ireland.

Wrisley's playroom – which, incidentally, is soundproof – stands as Priapus in what is otherwise a remarkably flat environment. Like an American soap opera, This was Joanna is set in a neutral everyplace that is populated by the pampered and privileged. How bland compared to the torrid Toronto of The Door Between! I can't help but compare – had it not been for one I would not have read the other – and yet... and yet I still recommend the novel. This was Joanna might not be the most peculiar Canadian novel I've ever read, but it's up there.

Trivia: News Stand Library's American edition of This was Joanna, published in November 1949, two months after the Canadian, marks the last time the book saw print. Why Halperin's pseudonym was changed from Neil H. Perrin to Grant R. Brooks remains a mystery.

Object: A mass market paperback that is typical of News Stand Library's shoddy production values. Streaks of black ink run along the edges of a dozen or so pages, making for challenging reading. The author's name is misspelled on the cover and title page (but is correct on the spine and back cover). "I before E, except after C", I suppose.


Access: Only the University of Calgary has copies (both the Perrin and Brooks editions). This was Joanna might be all but absent from libraries, but that doesn't mean it's expensive. Ten copies – all fairly decent – are currently listed online at between US$7.50 and US$30. One bookseller describes his offering as "a bit misscut [sic]". Par for the course, really.

07 December 2010

Many Happy Returns



The Ottawa Citizen, 3 December 1960

McClelland and Stewart's Christmas offerings from half-a-century ago. Only This Side Jordan is in print today. Pity that, Robertson Davies' A Voice from the Attic is a particularly good match for a snowy winter's day. "A witty, robust and wonderfully opinionated book on the joys of reading and the author's own offbeat likes and dislikes." There is truth in advertising.

Which of this fall's McClelland and Stewart titles will be in print in 2060, I wonder. I'm betting against Ezra Levant's Ethical Oil (and even 2009's Shakedown, which I was once told "belongs in the category of Uncle Tom's Cabin".)

My recommendations for this season's gift-giving favours presses that are hard at work mining the neglected riches of our past.

First up, Véhicule, which this fall launched its Ricochet Books series of pulp fiction reprints. (Full disclosure: I'm consulting editor for the series.)

The Crime on Cote des Neiges
David Montrose
The series debut, returning Montrose (Charles Ross Graham) to print after after an absence of more than four decades. Originally published in 1951, this edition includes a foreword by yours truly.

Two blondes, one brunette, a roadster and a whole lotta Dow. It doesn't get much better.


Murder Over Dorval
David Montrose
Foreword by Michael Blair
"In one hand she held a plane ticket to Montreal, in the other a wad of greenbacks. She was a gorgeous looking redhead. For the sake of her lovely green eyes, Russell Teed took the plane and the money. But it wasn't long before h realized that whatever she had offered, it wasn't worth it."


Recognition of Dundurn's Voyageur Classics series is long overdue. For four years now it's been "bringing forward time-tested writing about the Canadian experience in all its varieties." This year's titles:

Hugh Garner
Introduction by Paul Stuewe








Scott Symons
Introduction by Christopher Elson







Wyndham Lewis
Introduction by Allan Pero








Grey Owl
Edited and introduced by Michael Gnarowski








Note the handy links to the publishers' websites. Of course, all are also available from booksellers, whether online or not, but I'm not playing favourites.

Related post: Books are Best

04 December 2010

The Healing Hands of Rocke and Locke



The third part of my review of The Canada Doctor by Clay Perry and John L.E. Pell now appears, revised and rewritten, in my new book:
The Dusty Bookcase:
A Journey Through Canada's
Forgotten, Neglected, and Suppressed Writing
Available at the very best bookstores and through


Related posts:

01 December 2010

The Canada Doctor: Second Visit




The second part of my review of The Canada Doctor by Clay Perry and John L.E. Pell now appears, revised and rewritten, in my new book:
The Dusty Bookcase:
A Journey Through Canada's
Forgotten, Neglected, and Suppressed Writing
Available at the very best bookstores and through

29 November 2010

The Canada Doctor: First Visit



The Canada Doctor
Clay Perry and John L.E. Pell
Boston: Hale, Cushman & Flint/[Toronto]: Thomas Allen, 1933
361 pages

This review now appears, revised and rewritten, in my new book:
The Dusty Bookcase:
A Journey Through Canada's
Forgotten, Neglected, and Suppressed Writing
Available at the very best bookstores and through

Related posts:

26 November 2010

James at 100 (Jasper at 62)



As a kid, Jasper was everywhere – the daily newspaper, Maclean's, postcards, T-shirts, buttons and ball caps – but now he's seen nowhere outside the national park that gave him his name. Out of sight, out of mind, I hadn't thought of the bear in years until stumbling over the fact that today marks the centenary of Jasper creator James Simpkins' birth.

A commercial artist, Winnipeg born and bred, Simpkins' talent extended much farther than Jasper. Here's one example, a 1956 postage stamp:


And then there were other cartoons, like Simpkins' Montreal:

The Gazette, 29 August 1962

But the bear was pervasive; a friend's parents had Jasper salt and pepper shakers, he had a copy of McClelland and Stewart's 1972 Jasper. Was it the same as Ryerson's similarly titled 1954 collection or the one published by Rinehart six years later? I have no idea. Jasper books are so very hard to come by these days, all the more reason why a revival – very much overdue – would be welcome. Drawn and Quarterly? Seth?

22 November 2010

A Neglected Author's Forgotten Novel



Gambling with Fire
David Montrose [pseud., Charles Ross Graham]
Don Mills, ON: Longmans Canada, [1969]

Until this year, I had no idea that Gambling with Fire existed; most Montrose bibliographies – few and far between – don't recognize the title. Easy to see how it's missed. Where the author's other novels – The Crime on Cote des Neiges, Murder Over Dorval and The Body on Mount Royal – were cheap paperback originals from the early 'fifties, this hardcover landed in shops at about the same time as Abbey Road. I wonder if anyone was waiting. I wonder whether anyone noticed.

I've seen nothing more than a very brief Saturday Night review, and no adverts. There must be something else out there – in Quill & Quire, perhaps – but it appears that Montrose's fourth and last novel just drifted by, meeting the same fate as his pulps: a single printing. It could not have helped sales that the author died while it was in press.

Let's assume for a second that there was a Montrose fan out there, someone who had waited those fifteen years for the next novel. I imagine there would have been some initial disappointment. Gone is private detective Russell Teed, the good-natured, mildly quirky hero of the first three novels. In his place we have impoverished Austrian aristocrat Franz Loebek, a displaced person in a post-war world. Loebek is so very staid, less likable, and less of a character, though he does share Teed's appreciation of interior decoration and a love for what was then Canada's largest city:
Here was this great city of Montreal, old and seeming as educated in vice as European cities; berthed in her docks, ships of the world. Bars like London, churches like Paris, narrow streets that could be Marseilles, neon streets that could be New York.
Yes, this was Montreal – in many ways it still is – but the metropolis one encounters in Gambling with Fire pre-dates the novel's publication. Montrose presents us with a city that is "one-third English. Of which part, perhaps one-thousandth are the controllers of the industry, the business, the financial houses, the banks." This is a Montreal untouched by Jean Drapeau, the Quiet Revolution, the FLQ and Expo 67. In keeping with previous Montrose novels, this is very much an English metropolis. That said, though the French speaking characters are few in Gambling with Fire, they have a much greater presence. There's Nicole Porter-Smythe (née Desmarais), Loebeck's great love; Julius Trebonne, Loebeck's loyal cabby ; and Rosaire Beaumage, Loebeck's mortal enemy.

It is Beaumage's murder of Loebek's old friend Morris Winter that sets all in motion. I won't go on for fear of spoiling the plot. Gambling with Fire is worth a read. In fact, approaching the end, I was prepared to describe this as the best-written of the four Montrose novels. What prevented me is the final chapter which seems a grasping, hurried attempt at tying up loose ends and providing redemptive, happy endings for each and every character. I have no reservation in declaring these twelve pages the weakest the author ever published. A sad conclusion to a wonderful oeuvre... but, oh, the aftertaste!

Dedication: "To my most compassionate friend, LEV CHIPMAN". Stepping onto a limb, I suggest that the dedicatee is a descendant of Leverett de Veber Chipman of the Nova Scotia Chipmans.

Access: Toronto's public library comes through, though all others fail. Gambling with Fire can also be found in eight of our university libraries, but not any located in Montreal. For shame. Regular readers will not be surprised to learn that Library and Archives Canada doesn't have so much as a listing. Only two copies are currently on offer from online booksellers – at US$15 and US$18.75. As an old prof used to say, "run, don't walk".

Related post: