An Invitation to the Heart Accepts It All Launch

E is for Early Work

I once met Barbara Gowdy at a Chapters Inc annual shareholders meeting; I owned stock, she was signing copies of The White Bone. Anyone who finds this at all peculiar is advised to revisit their memories of the 'nineties. The very same meeting saw the launch of a short-lived, ill-conceived venture, immortalized through laminated bookmarks slipped into copies of Ms Gowdy's novel:

The White Bone was free to anyone willing to stand in line. I took my place, but what I really wanted was Ms Gowdy's signature on the book pictured above. Published in 1988, Through the Green Valley was her first. I've not read it – 'tis a historical romance – though I am intrigued because it is so very different from the rest of her oeuvre. Where Falling Angels, the author's sophomore novel, is in print Through the Green Valley has been unavailable for a quarter century.

"I'm not sure I want to sign this," said Ms Gowdy.

I felt bad.

Brian Moore disowned his earliest novels. For three decades, friend Mordecai Richler kept his debut, The Acrobats, out of print. In university, this paperback copy made the rounds of my friends like a Bowie bootleg.

(Am I alone in being amazed by the speed with which it returned to print after Richer's death?)

I've been thinking of early work and all associated embarrassment ever since receiving a query brought by last week's post on doppelgängers:

You wrote that you used to write as Brian John Busby. Someone called Brian John Busby wrote for a Canadian TV show called "Time of Your Life". Are you that Brian John Busby?

Yes, I am. A low-budget, low-rent teen soap, Time of Your LIfe was my first paid writing gig.

The correspondent adds: "Great show!"

Wish I could agree, though I'll allow that the stray bits posted online point to something that is not nearly so horrible as I remember.

As for Ms Gowdy... I didn't press, and she proved to be a good sport.

Addendum (for my nieces):

Margaret Millar's Michigan Murder Mystery

Vanish in an Instant

Margaret Millar

New York: Dell, [1953]

224 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

Biblioasis, Amazon, Chapters/Indigo, and McNally-Robinson.

D is for Doppelgänger

There was a Brian Busby who lived two blocks from the house in which I grew up. Our paths never crossed – he was eight years older – but I was aware of his presence and remember the day his family moved. There was also a Brian Busby who attended our church and another who worked for the CBC. I can't tell you what the latter did, but his name did leap out as credits rolled. I came to the illogical conclusion that while "Busby" wasn't terribly common, "Brian Busby" was.

All this is to explain why I used my full name on my early writing.

Austin Clarke did something similar at the beginning in his career to set himself apart from Irish poet Austin Clarke.

Amongst Thistles and Thorns
Austin C. Clarke
Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1965

Collected Poems
Austin Clarke
London: Allen & Unwin, 1936

A New Canadian Library reissue of Amongst Thorns and Thistles aside, the last I've seen "Austin C. Clarke" used by a North American publisher was on McClelland & Stewart's 1967 first edition of The Meeting Place – thus avoiding further confusion with this man:

2001: A Space Odyssey
Arthur C. Clarke
New York: New American Library, 1968

  
You wouldn't think a name like Austin Clarke would cause such trouble. Thomas King, I can understand...

King's Explanatory Arithmetic
Thomas King
London: The Author [c. 1920]

Lisa Moore and William Gibson, too.

Merveilleux Voyage
Lisa Moore
Toronto: Harlequin, 1986

A Vision of Faery Land and Other Poems
William Gibson
Boston: Munroe & Co., 1853

Even John Metcalf.

Milk for Babes; or, A Catecism in Verse
John Metcalf
Northampton, MA: The Author, 1840

But Clarke seems a particularly, peculiarly problematic surname for Canadian publishers. Forget publisher Clarke Irwin, consider my friend, poet George Elliott Clarke...

Execution Poems
George Elliott Clarke
Kentville, NS: Gaspereau, 2009

... who has followed fellow Canadians George Herbert Clarke...

The Hasting Day
George Frederick Clarke
Toronto: Dent, 1930

...and George Frederick Clarke.

That would be the same George Frederick Clarke who wrote David Cameron's Adventures.

David Cameron's Adventures
George Frederick Clarke
London: Blackie & Sons, [1950]

Some British readers may prefer this edition:

David Cameron [David Cameron's Adventures]
George F. Clarke [W. Joosten, trans.]
Amsterdam: De Verkenner, 1953

Go, Dog, Go!

Addendum: Don't get me started on Robert Finch.

C is for Canada Monthly

The October 1912 issue of Canada Monthly, purchased late last year for the humour – black humour – of its cover:

Agnes Deans Cameron's Last Article

"THE THAMES BY CANADIAN CANOE"

In fact, Miss Cameron survived, dodging sailboats and steamers, only to succumb to pneumonia shortly after her return home to Victoria.

"The liveliest, most entertaining, most thoroughly Canadian of the magazines published in Canada" was owned, edited and published by Herbert Vanderhoof, a Chicago publicity agent who made his fortune pushing land in our four westernmost provinces. The District of Vanderhoof – "Geographic Centre of British Columbia" – was named in his honour.

It makes perfect sense that Miss Cameron was one of Herbert Vanderhoof's writers; she spent much of her forty-eight years encouraging western settlement. That trip down the Thames was made possible in part by an Ottawa that was eager to promote British immigration.

Agnes Deans Cameron isn't the biggest name in this particular issue; Isabel Ecclestone Mackay contributes a particularly bad poem. For my money – I paid $2.80 – the most interesting offering is this bit o' verse by Dorothy Livesay's mother:

Most writers in this "most thoroughly Canadian of the magazines published in Canada" are American. Lesser names like Wilbur D. Nesbit, best remembered for "A Song for Flag Day", a jingoistic ode to the Stars and Stripes, populate its pages. Canada Monthly was never intended to be a showcase for this country's writing, but as a means to sell the West. Nesbit's countryman Arthur I. Street contributes "How Many More? What the Business Man Can Make in Canada", in which he appeals to our greed:

An increase of nine and three-quarter millions in population, a million and a half in dwellings, and three-quarters of a million in the number of farms would mean an increase in farm values of nearly two billions. And that's your particular "baby", isn't it? Increase your land values? Isn't that where you make your money? Isn't that the temptation that leads you into a new country?

A century later the West is still chasing that "increase of nine and three-quarter millions in population".

The caption on this accompanying W.C. Sheppard [sic] illustration reflects Street's optimism...

...as do the advertisements.

Twenty-two months later, on August 4, 1914, everything changed. It seems oddly appropriate that the pitch for property in Fraser Lake is followed by this advert for the infamous Ross rifle:

"You Buy a Rifle to Last Your Life-time..."

The cruelest joke of all.

The Heart Accepts It All in the Rural Mail

Copies of The Heart Accepts It All: Selected Letters of John Glassco, edited and annotated by yours truly, arrived at our home on Friday – brought, appropriately, by the rural mail. Expect to see it in all of our finest bookstores by early next month.

Featured are 147 letters written by Glassco between 1929 and 1980 to family, friends, foes and fellow writers, including:

Rosalie Abella

Bernard Amtmann

Margaret Atwood

Alma Balster

Henry Beissel

Beatrice Bishop

Kay Boyle

Brian Brett

Glendon Brown

Marilyn Bowering

Philip Core

Malcolm Cowley

Viginia Dehn

Louis Dudek

Leon Edel

Marian Engel

Douglas Fetherling

Andrew Field

Sheila Fischman

Hugh Ford

Northrop Frye

Michel Garneau

Gary Geddes

Donna George

Gera

Paul J. Gillette

Maurice Girodias

Beatrice Glassco

Elma Glassco

Michael Gnarowski

Gérald Godin

Eldon Grier

Ralph Gustafson

Gilles Hénault

Daryl Hine

Milton Kastilo

Margaret Laurence

Irving Layton

Jean Le Moyne

Sandra Martin

Seymour Mayne

Robert McAlmon

Al Purdy

Stephen Scobie

F.R. Scott

A.J.M. Smith

F.M. Southam

Fraser Sutherland

John Sutherland

Ronald Sutherland

Julian Symons

William Toye

Gael Turnbull

Geoffrey Wagner

George Woodcock

and a transvestite from Chibougamau named Carmen.

The book also features previously unpublished photographs and verse, including "For A.J.M. Smith", written by Glassco on occasion of his friend's seventieth birthday.

My thanks go out again to Carmine Starnino and Simon Dardick, publisher of Véhicule Press, for their good work in making this book possible.

            Scraping the crumbling roadbed of this strife
            With rotting fenceposts and old mortgages
            (No way of living, but a mode of life),
            How sift from death and waste three grains of duty,
            O thoughts that start from scratch and end in a dream
            Of graveyards minding their own business?

            But the heart accepts it all, this honest air
            Lapped in green valleys where accidents will happen!

                                                     — John Glassco, "The Rural Mail"