The Return of the Amazon Customer Review

Okay, so they never went away – but they did from this blog. I had a grand old time a few years back tearing strips off homophobes, book burners, prudes, egotists, and those who think they know something about history and geography.

I wonder why I stopped. Too much fun? I do remember thinking that change was coming. After the Orlando Figes scandal, how could it not? No responsible retailer would allow its customers to be so grossly misled.

Sure enough, 2012 saw Amazon deleting all sorts of customer reviews. “My sister’s and best friend’s reviews were removed from my books,” sniffed self-published author M. E. Franco. “They happen to be two of my biggest fans.”

Now, there's a coincidence.

How many reviews did Amazon delete? The company was mum. Writing in the New York Times, David Streitfeld described the exercise as a "sweeping hazy purge". Neither friend nor family to M.E. Franco, I noticed nothing.

Then came 2013, a busy year in which Amazon's customer reviews cropped up in a trio of otherwise unrelated Canadian news stories.

The first concerned the resignation of Toronto District School Board director Chris Spence, who had been caught plagiarizing all sorts of things including – improbably – an Amazon customer review. Might it have been one by educator Rudy Patudy? Reporters were not so specific.

The Spence scandal was followed closely by a hysterical, media-created controversy over a print on demand publisher's sexy blonde Anne Shirley. Then came Stephen King, who just happened to give his latest the same title as a very fine 2006 graphic novel by Emily Schulz.

This in turn led to all sorts of nastiness from semi-literate folks who purchased the wrong book in error:

Good souls worked to repair the damage:

The author endured it all, recording her experience on a blog and coming out a winner with a refurbished MacBook Air for her suffering.

The current year had been much more quiet until I began receiving emails from a publisher encouraging me to ask family and friends to post reviews of my "books" on Amazon.

Before continuing, I want to make one thing clear: I have no books with this publisher. I have no book with this publisher. That said, I did play some small role in one tome's journey to print. This modest effort has resulted in messages such as these:

If you/your family and friends are unfamiliar with posting online reviews, we have included some guidelines below. Online reviews are a great way for authors and readers to interact online. Reviews are critical to both publishers and readers alike, and many consumers rely on these opinions when making purchases on Amazon. 

Lord knows this is anything but the golden age of publishing. I wish the publisher well. I wish the book well; it deserves to by widely read. But I cannot call on family and friends to plant online reviews. I cannot ask them to laud something they haven't read or encourage them to think better of a book because of some small connection to yours truly. Amazon customer reviews are unreliable and ill-informed as it is. Who wants to be part of that mess.

More anon.

Related posts:

Homophobes and Book Burners Weigh In

Amazon Customer Review: 'Reading Munroe'

Richard Rohmer Recycles (Again)

Starmageddon
Richard Rohmer
Toronto: Irwin, 1986

Starmageddon takes place in a future past. We know this because the Office of the Vice-President of the United States is held by a woman. The president calls her a bitch, primarily because she never supported Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative. It's the year 2000, seventeen years have passed since The Gipper initiated the program and – glory be – the thing works! Doesn't the VP have mud on her face!

Time, 4 April 1983

When an American general insults the South Koreans, the lady vice-president is sent off to do damage control. Air Force One has been booked by the Secretary of State, meaning she and her staff have to travel on a commercial airliner. Seats are booked on a 747 that will follow the very same route taken in 1983 by doomed Korean Air Lines Flight 007.

What could go wrong?

Plenty.

The captain is distracted by the vice-president, another pilot is distracted by the hot purser, and the first officer is legally blind. As a result, the wrong coordinates are entered into the navigation system and the 747 flies over a site where the Soviet Union is at that very moment testing its own strategic defence system.

Well, you can imagine.

Starmageddon is the twelfth book tackled as part of the Reading Richard Rohmer project. By now, I've come to expect a fair amount of self-plagiarism in the author's books. For the most part, this takes the form of passages, speeches, chapters and fictitious documents lifted from previous novels. Separation Two, the most egregious act of self-plagiarism in Canadian literature, is the most extreme example.

Starmageddon is something else altogether. Here Rohmer lifts and tweaks page after page from Massacre 747, his 1984 book on the Korean Air Lines disaster. Behold, fiction born of non-fiction:

Like a lumbering elephant, Flight 315 began to move down runway fourteen, accelerating rapidly toward the computer-precalculated speed of 196 miles per hour. When the speed was reached, the co-pilot called out "rotation"and the captain, both hands now on the wheel of the control column, hauled back smoothly and strongly. Instantly, the nose rotated up into the climb position, and the enormous aircraft, 196 feet between its blinking wingtip lights and 232 feet between nose and tail, leapt gracefully up into the black night. It was 2:02 on the morning of August 29.

— Starmageddon 

Like a lumbering elephant, Flight 007 began to move down runway 31L, accelerating rapidly toward the computer-precalculated speed at which the co-pilot would call for rotation. When the rotation came, the captain, both hands now on the wheel on the control column, hauled back smoothly and strongly. Instantly, the nose came up into the climb position, and the enormous aircraft, 196 feet between its blinking wingtip lights and 232 feet between nose and tail, leapt gracefully up into the black night. It was 12:24 on the morning of September 1.

— Massacre 747

August 29, not September 1. The flight and runway numbers are different, too. Again, Starmageddon is set in the future; albeit a future in which the lessons of Flight 007 are forgotten. Oh, people still remember the disaster, its a real topic of conversation, but that doesn't prevent this from happening:

At 5:53 the Soviet pilot reported: "804. I have executed the launch."
       In one second the lights of the rockets, as burning propellants thrust the missiles ever faster toward the target, had become mere pinpoints in the distance. The rockets headed unerringly for the brilliant navigation lights and the red rotating beacons of the target.
       Pilot 804 knew this his heart-seeking missile, if functioning properly, would have locked onto one go the river of intense heat that the target's huge engines pouring out into the frigid high-altitude air.

— Starmageddon 

At 18:26:20 the Soviet pilot reported: "805. I have executed the launch."
     In one second the lights of the rockets, as burning propellants thrust the missiles ever supersonically faster toward the target, had become mere pinpoints in the distance. The rockets headed unerringly for the brilliant navigation lights and the red rotating beacons of the target.
       The fighter pilot knew this his heart-seeking missile, if functioning properly, would have "locked on" to one go the target's huge engines pouring out a river of intense heat into the frigid high-altitude air.

— Massacre 747

One can understand Rohmer's temptation; Massacre 747 is one hell of a book, and it contains some of his very best writing:

The mortally wounded 747 cut through the night sky, illuminating it for miles around. With only one wing it slowly began to roll. It was like a comet. Its long, distinctive humplike cockpit and nose thrust ahead and clear of the ball of flame as if trying to run away, to avoid being consumed. Inside the roiling fire all was being engulfed or spit out by the explosion into the icy air. Bodies were torn apart. Blankets, luggage, seats, toys – everything movable or ripped away from floors and ceilings at the rear of the massive aircraft – were spewed out the hole where the tail had been.

— Massacre 747 

The flaming and mortally wounded 747 cut through the night sky, illuminating it for miles around. With only one wing, it slowly began to roll. Its long, distinctive humplike cockpit and nose thrust ahead and clear of the ball of flame, as if trying to avoid being consumed. Inside, the roiling fire engulfed all that was not spit out into the icy air by the explosion. Bodies were torn apart. Blankets, luggage, seats, toys – everything that was movable or had been ripped away from floors and ceilings at the rear of the massive fuselage – were spewed out the hole where the tail had been.

— Starmageddon

Who wouldn't want to revisit those images. Besides, it gave opportunity to fix that awkward sentence about the roiling fire.

Did anyone notice?

Books in Canada, May 1986

John Gellner, who wrote glowing reviews of both books for the Globe & Mail, didn't mention the self-plagiarism; as editor of the Canadian Defence Quarterly, you'd think he'd have noticed. But what interests me more is Irwin, which was then in its death throes. Did anyone there know that large portions of their big fiction offering where copied from a book being sold by a rival publisher?

Best sentence:

Pieces of the shattered engine blade penetrated the thin fuselage skin like a knife through gossamer.

— Starmageddon 

Pieces of the shattered engine blade penetrated the thin fuselage skin like a knife through gossamer.

— Massacre 747

Object: A 241-page hardcover in blue binding. The cover art by Peter Mossman reminds me of the very worst albums sold during my time at Sam the Record Man (1983-85).

Access: At eight, I count more copies in public libraries than academic libraries.

The hardcover first edition – there was no second printing – is more common than the mass market paperback. The only cover image I can find (right) comes courtesy of Toronto bookseller David Harris, who offers his copy for all of two dollars.

Worth every penny.

Related posts:

Recycling Richard Rohmer

Harlequin Librarians: So Many Secrets

Hospital Librarian
Margaret Malcom
1961

The Librarian's Secret Wish
Carol Grace
2009

The Librarian's Secret Scandal
Jennifer Morey
2010

What the Librarian Did
Karina Bliss
2010

Related posts:

Harlequin: The Love that Dare Not Speak Its Name

Suggestive Harlequins: A Romantic Threesome

Harlequin Blondes: Terror Struck Them Dumb

No he didn't.

He Learned About Women
Ted Greenshade [?]
Toronto: News Stand Library, 1949

Tex had lived long enough to realize he had more than average appeal to women. All his life they had either wanted to clutch him to their bosoms and mother him or have him clutch their bosoms and make mothers of them.

Oh, brother.

I won't say that He Learned About Women was News Stand Library's worst book, only that it's the worst of those I've read.

The publisher positioned its author – Ted Greenshade or Ted Greenslade – as a "soldier of fortune who knows whereof he writes", encouraging us all to consider this a roman à clef.

Let's hope it isn't.

He Learned About Women opens on Tex Lane, a mercenary in the employ Israel's "Jewish Army", belly down on the desert sand, facing an unforgiving "arab horde". As he awaits certain death, thoughts drift back to the women of his past.

"A THOUSAND NIGHTS, A THOUSAND WOMEN and ONE LESSON"

A THOUSAND WOMEN? I count twelve, beginning the Methodist Sunday School superintendent's daughter, who let teenaged Tex touch her during a clubhouse initiation. Sexy, sporty Peggy McLean is next; she capped a day at the beach by taking his virginity. Third is the wanton wife of his instructor at Sandhurst.

Wait.

Tex starts out as a lower-middle class, middling schoolboy from Hamilton, Ontario. How did he come to be accepted at England's most prestigious military academy?

More than a soldier of fortune, Tex Lane is a man of mystery. He moves about the globe – London, Paris, Shanghai, Montreal – with impunity. Inexplicably wealthy, Tex can become the rattiest of church mice when plot requires. By turns a journalist, an ad man, an actor, a captain and a carny, he is everyone and no one. Meanwhile, women come and go, each more fully formed than the protagonist. The most interesting to these eyes is Helen Demoskoff, a sympathetic young Doukhobor who was once arrested for removing her clothes as a form of protest.

Helen is a woman of conviction and character. Tex, on the other hand, is the sort of man who will sleep with a woman, then accuse her of being a slut. He's the type who will pressure a woman to give up her child because he isn't the father. Tex is the kind of guy who will abandon a woman, return, then feel betrayed that she has married.

In short, he's not a man you'd want to know.
 
Best sentence:

Looking into her worried face Tex felt like someone who has been caught putting a feather up the nose of a child in an iron lung.

Epigraph:

Ibid?

It's from the Book of Ezra (1 Esdras 4:22).

Speculation: The idea of the trapped soldier revisiting his past may owe something to James Benson Nablo's 1946 novel The Long November, which News Stand Library reprinted in two editions prior to He Learned About Women.

Trivia: Back cover copy refers to a "girl who died in the Cathay Hotel because of a millionaire's lust and passion." No such character features in the novel.

Object and access: A 160-page mass market paperback with cover art by Syd Dyke.

He Learned About Women is nowhere to be found on WorldCat. As of this writing just four copies are being offered by online booksellers. The lone copy of the Canadian printing looks to be in about the same condition as mine, but is a bargain at five dollars. The three Americans range from  US$2 (Reading Copy) to US$14 (Very Good - Fine).

Related post:

The Mysterious Mister Nablo

Of the German Attack on Nova Scotia, the Battle of New Jersey and the Edmonton Real Estate Market

One day after Canada's entry into the Great War, the Edmonton Journal works to sell papers.

Meanwhile, realtors recognize opportunity.

Update: Where I see misinformation, another sees misunderstanding. Mark Reynolds, son of Cole Harbour, writes:

Nova Scotia's shores are shelled: mussels, clams, snails – it's quite dangerous, you can cut your feet if you're not careful.

Coincidentally, Mark reviewed The Sixth of December, Jim Lotz's less than middling novel of the Great War, for this very blog.

The Great War: The Call

On this, the hundredth anniversary of Canada's entry into the Great War, patriotic verse drawn from Douglas Durkin's The Fighting Men of Canada (Toronto: McClelland, Goodchild & Stewart, 1918).

A professor of literature at the University of Manitoba, the poet did not answer the call.

Related posts:

The Great War: The Reveille of Romance

Remembrance Day (Bernard Freeman Trotter's 'Ici Repose')

Remembrance Day (Bernard Freeman Trotter's 'A Kiss')

Frank Prewett on Canvas and Paper

Remembrance Day (F.G. Scott's 'Armistice')

Victorian Psycho

The Devil's Die

Grant Allen

New York: F.M. Lupton, [1893]

271 pages

This review, revised and rewritten, now appears 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.

The Great War: The Reveille of Romance

Peregrine Acland, 1914

THE REVEILLE OF ROMANCE

(Written in early October, 1914, in mid-ocean, on board H.M. Troopship “Megantic,” of the fleet bearing the first contingent of the Canadian Expeditionary Force to England.)

     Regret no more the age of arms,
          Nor sigh “Romance is dead,”
     Out of life’s dull and dreary maze
          Romance has raised her head.

     Now at her golden clarion call
          The sword salutes the sun;
     The bayonet glitters from its sheath
          To deck the deadly gun;

     The tramp of horse is heard afar
          And down the autumn wind
     The shrapnel shrieks of sudden doom
          To which brave eyes are blind.

     From East and West and South and North,
          The hosts are crowding still;
     The long rails hum as troop-trains come
          By valley, plain and hill;

     And whence came yearly argosies
          Laden with silks and corn,
     Vast fleets of countless armed men
          O’er the broad seas are borne.

     All come to that gay festival
          Of rifle, lance and sword,
     Where toasts are pledged in red heart’s blood
          And Death sits at the board.

     Now Briton, Gaul and Slav and Serb
          Clash with the Goth and Hun
     Upon grim fields where whoso yields
          Romance, at least, has won.

     Though warriors fall like frosted leaves
          Before November winds,
     They only lose what all must lose,
          But find what none else finds.

     Their bodies lie beside the way,
          In trench, by barricade,
     Discarded by the Titan will
          That shatters what it made.

     Poor empty sheaths, they mark the course
          Of spirits bold as young:
     Whatever checked that fiery charge
          As dust to dust was flung.

     For terrible it is slay
          And bitter to be slain,
     But joy it is to crown the soul
          In its heroic reign.

     And better far to make or mar,
          Godlike, for but a day,
     Than pace the sluggard’s slavish round
          In life-long, mean decay.

                       * * * * * *

     Who sighs then for the golden age?
          Romance has raised her head,
     And in the sad and somber days
          Walks proudly o’er your dead.

Related posts:

Remembering Peregrine Acland

Alec Falcon, c'est moi
A Neglected Novelst's Neglected Grave
The Great Canadian Great War Novel

Leonard Cohen Erotica… and John Glassco Porn

Five glimpses of Leonard Cohen's short story "Barbers and Lovers", from the Spring 1971 issue of Ingluvin.

The artwork is by Susan Hales.

Five pages later, John Glassco offers "Saisons de l'avenir" and "The Marital Sex Education Film":

All three published once… and never again.

Quebec Gothic

The Temple on the River [Les Écœurants]
Jacques Hébert [trans. Gerald Taaffe]
Montreal: Harvest House, 1967

More novella than novel, I first read The Temple on the River a couple of hours before meeting the author. Picking it up twenty-eight years later later, I remembered little. A coming of age story, right?

Why The Temple on the River didn't stay with me must have to do with the speed at which it was read. A very entertaining story, it's infused with brilliant humour of the blackest sort.

The narrator and protagonist is François Sigouin of the Quebec City Sigouins. His father is a Superior Court judge, as was his father before him… that is until grand-père raped the niece of a Dominican father on the Plains of Abraham. The flames of scandal are quickly extinguished, but not before they kill proper, pearl-wearing grand-mère. The newly widowed judge retires to the village of La Malbaie, "where they can't believe that one of the Sigouins could be a dirty old man", never mind a rapist.

Young François is summoned to keep his exiled grandfather company, but spends most of his time in the company of housekeeper Sévérine, an elderly spinster:

She was still in the Legion of Mary at sixty-five, the kind of old woman that hangs around the sacristy, on the prier's skirts, all year round, a frog boiled to death in holy water. At her age she kept suing that she was a virgin and pure, though she didn't take two baths a year.

Under Sévérine's guidance François becomes an enthusiastic churchgoer, but this has everything to do with pretty Mireille, the beer-drinking labourer's daughter, who seems always to be sitting beneath a statue of St Anthony.

The Temple on the River is indeed a coming of age novel. Returning to it all these years later I was surprised to find that it takes place decades after the author's own youth. François watches television, dreams of destinations depicted in Air France travel posters and later, as a student at the Collège des Jésuits, listens jazz and bad poetry at a Quebec City beatnik club. His adolescence leads to the Quiet Revolution, when it could be argued Quebec itself came of age.

Hébert himself played a liberating role during those years. He was an old man of forty-three when the story of François Sigouin was first published, yet it demonstrates a true understanding of the younger generation.

That would be the generation before mine. I could be wrong.

Object: A 175-page paperback in Penguin orange, slightly wider than a typical mass market. It features ten full-page illustrations by Pierre Lusier. In 1985, I purchased my copy – then not inscribed – from a Montreal bookseller for 25 cents.

Access: The Temple on the River was published simultaneously in paper and cloth – then never again. Two paperback copies are currently list online – $9.99 and $19.95 – but I recommend the uncommon cloth. Both have dust jackets, both are inscribed, and at US$33.75 and US$39.00 aren't too far apart in terms of price.

The original French, Les Écœurants, was published in 1966 by Éditions du Jour. I've never seen a copy, so shamefully present this image (right), lifted from a Gatineau bookseller. He's asking only $10.00, which seems a very good deal. It was last reissued in 1987 by Stanké.

Most universities have a copy, as does Bibliothèque et Archives nationals du Québec, but Library and Archives Canada fails. The only public library that serves is that of the City of Vancouver. Curiously, the French-language original is much more common in English-language institutions.

Richard Rohmer's Retaliation: The Chairmen Rave

Retaliation

Richard Rohmer

Toronto: PaperJacks, 1983

298 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.

The Globe & Mail, 6 November 1982

The Gayest Femme Fatale

No Place in Heaven
Laura Warren
Toronto: News Stand Library, 1949

News Stand Library flogged No Place in Heaven as a scandalous memoir, but I think it's a work of fiction. Somehow I can't bring myself to believe that the manuscript of a repentant, dying woman ended up with a crooked, fly-by-night Toronto paperback publisher.

Laura Warren (née Fletcher) looks back on life from her deathbed, beginning with the miracle of her birth, not six months after her parents' marriage. Ma and Pa, vaudeville performers both, shoot for Hollywood stardom, but lose a race with a locomotive. Baby Laura is left to be raised by her Aunt Bessie who runs a New York rooming house catering to artistic types.

"Living in Aunt Bessie's rooming house [sic] was like taking the vow of chastity and then moving into the YMCA", says Laura. "You took a chance just bending over to pick up a bar of soap." It's a little hard to imagine our heroine growing to be such an innocent eighteen-year-old, but there you are. She gets a job as a hat check girl at the Kit Kat Club, where she meets Tony Warren. The reader pegs him as a good-for-nothing louse, but not Laura. She falls for him bad, he takes her virginity and then they marry.

But, wait, isn't he a louse?

Tony joins the Marines, is shipped out to fight the "Japs", and a baby is left on Aunt Bessie's doorstep. Laura cares for the child until old high school friend Marie Gibbs, she of the "moist hour glass [sic] figure", reveals herself as the mother and Tony as the father. Minutes later, Aunt Bessie tells Laura that the Japs have done in her husband. By her own admission, the poor girl goes a bit loopy:

     I sobbed to a shuddering stop.
     "Revenge is mine, saith the Lord," I giggled. "But don't forget Aunt Bessie, the world is full of Tonys… yep, the woods are full of them… like Japs. And little Laura is going out and shoot 'em down," I pointed my finger, "boom, boom, boom, like that, like I had a gun."

It's impolite but accurate to say that little Laura slays the "Tonys" by being a tease. She sends her first victims to find relief with a prostitute known as Syphilis Sal. Laura leads the wealthy wife of a kept man to believe that she is his mistress, and walks out on vain Max Arnott after convincing him that he is far too small to satisfy a woman. Her most interesting victim is gay bookseller John Ossington, whom she tortures by bedding, bedding, bedding and bedding the young object of his desire.*

All is done with a smile on her face.

No Place in Heaven is the fourth title tackled in a focused effort to uncover unrecognized Canadian novels buried in News Stand Library's pulp. While nothing here is reminiscent of NSL authors Hugh Garner and Ted Allan, I wouldn't rule out Thomas P. Kelley.

More than anything, No Place in Heaven brought to mind No Tears for Goldie, Kelley's pseudonymous 1950 novel, with Aunt Bessie sitting in for kind-hearted Aunt Maggie. Both are built of workmanlike prose enlivened by ribaldry – but then much the same could be said about many News Stand Library titles. I could be wrong. Could've been written by someone else. And there's always some slight possibility that Laura Warren was a real person. Hope not. I hate to think of her in hell.

Favourite passage:

     "You're the sexiest looking bast'd I've seen in ages," she slurred, "I'd like to sleep with yoooo."

Object: A poorly produced, 160-page mass market paperback, my copy was printed for the American market. The cover artist – unidentified – does not do Laura Warren justice.

Access: No listing on WorldCat. Two copies are currently for sale online – one Fair Canadian at US$7.95 and one Very Good American at US$20. Can't say which is the better buy. Get 'em while you can.

* "Bedding" isn't quite the word – the trysts take place in a boathouse – but you know what I mean. 

Related posts:

Milton Douglas, Canadian Author?

Heart of Goldie

Why You Shouldn't Feel Bad about the 100 Novels That Make You Proud to Be Canadian List (and why the CBC should)

"Depressing how few of these I've read," writes a friend. Minutes later, others begin chiming in with similar sentiment… and the list is shared. Such is the power of Facebook. The grey gloom generator is CBC Books' "100 NOVELS THAT MAKE YOU PROUD TO BE A CANADIAN".

Novels that make me proud to be Canadian? Do I really need help? After eight years of Harper Government™ rule, perhaps I do. But this isn't going to do it:

(cliquez pour agrandir)

(cliquez pour agrandir)

A remarkably democratic list, is it not?  No author is represented more than once except Margaret Atwood because… oh, I don't know… because she's Margaret Atwood? That fifty titles are by women and fifty are by men is, I am certain, no happy accident. Modest effort has been made toward regional balance, and the Canadian mosaic appears well in evidence – that is, until one realizes that there are only six French-language titles.

Six? And not one is The Tin Flute. What gives? The list's all too brief introduction may provide an explanation:

I see. Canada has a wealth of writers, and they're telling today's tales, and they're revisiting our past.

So, it's contemporary writers only then. Got it.

But wait, what's Hugh MacLennan doing on the list? And Robertson Davies? And Mordecai Richler? And Carol Shields? They're not "telling today's tales." Hell, Stephen Leacock is so long dead that his books have been in the public domain for nearly two decades.

(About the "novels are all in print" bit: Was that a criteria? Could this explain Margaret Millar's absence?)

Eaton's, Montreal, 1947

For anyone considering "everything from cultural impact and critical reception to reader response", The Tin Flute is an inescapable add. Such was the acclaim that the Toronto Eaton's – the Toronto Eaton's –advertised and sold the book in French. It won a Governor General's Award and the Prix Femina. It has been published in fourteen languages, adapted to film, is taught across the country and has never gone out of print. Go ahead, name another novel that has had greater cultural impact, name one that had greater reader response.

How about Anne of Green Gables?

Anne of Green Gables isn't on the list.

The muddled became muddied when guest host Suhana Meharchand opened discussion about the list on Cross Country Checkup. Forget all that stuff about  novels to make you feel proud, this was now "100 must-read Canadian novels", a list of "great Canadian novels" through which one would "become an expert in Canadian fiction [emphasis mine]". Ms Meharchand was then joined by CBC Books producer Erin Balser who revealed it to be nothing more than a list of 100 Canadian novels some CBC producers think everyone should read. She went on to say that the goal was to present "a balance of classic and contemporary books because we wanted to represent the whole history of Canadian literature."

If we're to consider novels written by those who "call or once called Canada home", the first up is Frances Brooke's The History of Emily Montague. It was published in 1769, one hundred and forty-three years before Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town, the oldest book on the list. A further thirty-three years pass before we encounter another.

Ms Balser's words to the contrary, there is no "balance of classic and contemporary". Over half the books on the list were published between 2000 and 2013 (there are no titles from 2014). Seventy-nine of the books were published in the last twenty years. Eight of the books were published in 2009 alone, more than the 'sixties and 'seventies combined.

"We all know that readers love lists," enthused Suhana Meharchand. True enough. Here's mine:

SIX NOVELISTS WHO "CALL OR ONCE CALLED CANADA HOME" NOT FOUND ON THE 100 NOVELS LIST

Saul Bellow

Mavis Gallant

Malcolm Lowry

Antonine Maillet

Brian Moore 

Gabrielle Roy

It was hoped that "100 NOVELS THAT MAKE YOU PROUD TO BE A CANADIAN" would "start a dialogue in this country", but this list is another opportunity wasted. Messy and poorly presented, it is nothing more than a grab bag of recent novels peppered with a few CanLit course mainstays. Predictably, for this is today's CBC, most of the Giller and Canada Reads winners are included.

For the record, I've read nineteen of the hundred.

That number doesn't depress me in the least.

An explanation (of sorts):

There's actually two Margaret Atwood novels. The second one is Handmaid's Tale [sic]. So there are only two because we felt there should only be two – even though we all love Margaret Atwood deeply.

– Erin Balser, Cross Country Checkup, 29 June 2014

Errata: A sharp-eyed reader points out that Joseph Boyden also has two titles on the list. Thank you, Edith!

Related posts:

CBC's Awful List, Radio-Canada's Disheartening List

and Perhaps the Best Book List I've Ever Seen

On the Disgrace That is CBC Books' 100 Young Adult Books That Make You Proud to Be Canadian

Canada's 100 Best Books? 102? 110?