18 November 2014

Basil King's Silent Unseen World



I'm not sure just why, but I've come to associate Basil King with the Christmas season. Perhaps it has something to do with my Church of England upbringing. An Anglican priest, this forgotten son of Charlottetown once led flocks in Halifax and Cambridge. It wasn't until failing eyesight brought early retirement that the reverend turned to writing novels. Given the his affliction, it seems an odd decision, though it's very much in keeping with what must surely rank as one of the strangest literary careers this or any other country has ever seen.

I've written here about King before, beginning with this post on the mystery and controversy surrounding his sixth novel, The Inner Shrine (1909), and his sudden elevation to bestsellerdom. He's one of those writers whose life is more interesting than his books, yet I find much more enjoyment reading his work than that of any Canadian contemporary, including his fellow Islander L.M. Montgomery.

Sacrilege, I know.

My favourite King book is The Abolishing of Death (1919). Very much an artifact of the Great War, it assured grief-stricken parents – Arthur Conan Doyle, for one – that communication with the fallen was possible. The reverend, who had neither child nor dog in the conflict, writes that the war dead live on in a psychedelic paradise he describes as "the new Heaven". Blown off limbs have grown back, disfigurement has been erased, and everyone looks simply marvellous.

Not exactly Anglican doctrine.

King had fallen under the spell of an attractive young woman, identified only as "Jennifer", through whom he became convinced he could communicate with those who had moved on to the new Heaven. One such soul, "a woman who had never been married, and in whom we supposed the earthly springs of maternity to have dried up, told him that she was now a mother."

Such joy!

As if a sign that he was on the right path, King's greatest commercial and critical triumph quickly followed with his script for Earthbound, a film  described in the November 1920 issue of Screenworld as "the highest achievement in the history of Motion Pictures."

Motion Picture News, September 1920
San Jose's Evening News was so entranced that it lost the ability to spell.
.
4 April 1921
Frederick Palmer, the Robert McKee of his day, praised Earthbound in his 1922 Palmer Plan Handbook:
"Earthbound," written by Basil King and produced by Goldwyn, has immortality as its theme – life after death. This is perhaps the most fascinating subject that ever engaged the attention of mankind – this greatest of all mysteries. And it will continue to be so until the mystery is solved. Out of the miseries of the late war arose a tremendous heart-hunger for more light – more definite knowledge concerning the hereafter. In response to this feeling such pictures as "Earthbound" were produced. Other photoplays dealing with the same subject but with less dramatic power followed in rapid succession.

That same year – 1922 – Palmer provided this synopsis in his Photoplay Plot Encyclopedia:

(cliquez pour agrandir)
I include Frederick Palmer's dry description because Earthbound is a lost film, and there's no other synopsis so detailed. The movie ranks with A Daughter of the GodsLondon After Dark, Convention City and The Miracle Man as those I most want to see.

But I can't.

Not in this world.

So, I study images such as these:


And I hold out for a Christmas miracle.

Update: Earthbound found!

A bonus: American Robert Bullock was so inspired his movie-going experience that he composed this poem, which was later included in his self-published Voices of Silence (Los Angeles, 1921):


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12 November 2014

Chasing Down a Thriller Writer's Hidden Verse



Poems
Arthur Henry Ward [pseud. Richard Rohmer]
Don Mills, ON: Musson, 1980

It all began late last year when I noticed a seemingly foreign title in Wikipedia's Richard Rohmer entry:


Poems of Arthur Henry Ward? Rohmer as anthologist? Of poetry? A joke, right? And who the hell is Arthur Henry Ward?

Turns out that Arthur Henry Ward is Sax Rohmer's real name. I didn't know this because my knowledge of British mystery writers is next to nonexistent. I understand that his novels aren't half bad.

I could be wrong.

In any case, the discovery gave rise to a question: If Ward is Rohmer, could it be that Rohmer is Ward?

Further investigation revealed that Poems of Arthur Henry Ward was added to the entry by someone using the name "General Richard Rohmer". To date, the Wikipedian has made only one other edit – this to the very same entry. More have been made under the username "Richard rohmer [sic]"; IP addresses traced to the general's adopted hometown of Collingwood, Ontario (pop. 19,241), have also been used.

Richard Rohmer, right?


So convinced am I that Poems is the work of the man who gave us Ultimatum, Exxoneration and Separation that I purchased the lone copy listed for sale online. The investment paid off in the receipt of what is now the most unusual volume of verse in my personal library.

The slim tome's first poem, "Critic", begins:
I am a Critic!
As such I render competent artists incoherent, impotent
through my unfeeling castration of
talented painters, sculptors, authors, actors and
the beautiful disorderly horde of intuitive creators of
intellectual art
Ninety-four lines follow, but I'll stop here because I was lost on first reading. Still am. I don't quite get why the castration of the talented renders the competent impotent. Were they standing too close? Did the castrator's knife catch? Is psychological trauma to blame? More than anything, I'm left wondering whether castration is ever done with feeling. I should write Joni Ernst.

That first stanza is the easy one. This, the fourth, is more typical:
but of course, if you are a critic and therefore a
perverted, certified insanist with no relationship
to the real world, it is agreed by all who are
not mercenary critics and therefore by the whole
of those humanly afoot/abroad that critics are as
above described —
Rohmer was never the critics' darling. Before John Gellner's incompetent reviews of Massacre 747, and Starmageddon, I'm not sure he'd ever received positive notice. Rohmer once sued Larry Zolf and various higher-ups at the Gazette over a review of Balls! I'm not sure even Erwin Rommel was so great an enemy as William French, whom Rohmer once described – unjustly  as "the most skilled literary critic (so-called) in Canada when it comes to putting down Canadian authors."

The Gazette, 22 September 1979
Oh, but then a lot of authors hate critics. It wasn't until the first eight lines of the second poem, "Smoker", that I knew for certain that Ward was really Rohmer:
Polluters
contaminators who foul the already grit-crud filled
atmosphere of a crowded world, chemical waste
pouring into steams, rivers, lakes, oceans upward
into the moving air masses that insidiously fly
parasitical minute particles of man-generated
poisons to be lowered imperceptibly, secretly
enveloping the unsuspecting body
Smokers, you see, crowd Rohmer's novels, invariably falling into one of two camps: the weak and the villainous.

Some will take exception to me and "General Richard Rohmer", pointing to words like "already grit-crud filled / atmosphere", "chemical waste / pouring into steams, rivers, lakes, oceans", and the "parasitical minute particles of man-generated /  poisons". They will ask how these could come from Rohmer, a man who has spent decades arguing for aggressive expansion of the oil and gas industry in our far north. To these doubters I say there have always been contradictions within Rohmer's writing.

Consider his 1979 big bestselling Balls! In the novel, his fifth, a natural gas monopoly shuts off supply to the City of Buffalo without warning. Twenty thousand people die as a result – the President of the United States included – though everyone agrees that Congress is at fault for not imposing stringent industry regulations. The new president sets things right, spending billions to purchase and retrofit several dozen oil tankers. These in turn are handed over to the very same corporations that had caused the crisis. As the vice-president explains, the government is a great believer in private enterprise. So is Richard Rohmer.

I dwell on Balls! because it was the first Rohmer from General Publishing. In 1979, the company paid $35,000 for the privilege. A year later, it gave Rohmer $75,000 ($210,000 today) as an advance on Periscope Red, Patton's Gap and Triad.

I doubt one of those books earned out.

Poems was set loose by Musson, the General imprint that had forty years earlier published Memory Hold-the-Door. I suggest that its existence has at least something to do with the company's desire to please its bestselling author.

Rohmer the poet is much different than Rohmer the bestseller. The language is different. A man who typically dictates his books  Generally Speaking while driving his car  I suspect he actually wrote Poems; hence "thence" and  hundred or so other words not found in his prose. His style is best described by my Reading Richard Rohmer colleague Chris Kelly, a more accomplished certified insanist than I:
What’s the difference between a poem and an angry diary entry? A poem has arbitrary line breaks. Also, in a poem, whenever you get to something you know two other words for, use all three.
     That way people know you won’t be silenced, censored, cowed.
I haven't encountered a more angry book. Only once, in "Flyer", does one detect another emotion:
I fly
airborne!
free, up
a bird machine
strapped to my ass
in my hands, under
the coordinates of my
concentrating brain 
Poems cannot be easily dismissed. Months have passed since its purchase, and I've still not made my way through the twenty poems contained within its cardboard covers. It is not possible to read one after another; it is not possible to read one stanza after another. My reading for today comes from the eighteenth poem, "Woman", stanza six (of twelve):
womankind, whose exclusive role of potential/actual
re-creation brings usually therewith a
lesser strength, physical, emotion but superior
determined doggedness peppered with erect, stiff,
bitchiness not overpowering for the mate but oftentimes
precipice teetering as equality syndrome
balloons prickly proofing deflatable on the edge-push
of the drive of woman to be her own person,
but just only/merely/something more than a semen
receptacle
Again, I'm lost.

T & A?: Poems by Arthur Henry WardPoems by Arthur Henry Ward Jr.Poems by Arthur Henry Ward, Jr.? I'm going with the Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data.


Object: A slim, 60-page trade-size paperback. Part of Musson's short-lived, not-much-missed Spectrum Poetry Series. The Robin Taviner cover design appears to have been adopted as a logo.


My copy – a review copy – was purchased earlier this year from Paris bookseller Nelson Ball.


I've not been able to find a single review.

Critics!

Access: For a thirty-four-year-old book from a major Canadian publisher, Poems is surprisingly scarce. No copies are currently listed for sale online. Library and Archives has a copy, as does the Toronto Public Library and twelve of our academic libraries. That's it.

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11 November 2014

Remembrance Day


Maurice John Busby
Pointe Claire, Quebec, 1943

My father… not forgotten.



10 November 2014

A Great War Poem by Peregrine Acland's Father



"The World's Honour Roll" by F.A. Acland, from the December 1914 number of The Canadian Magazine. At the time, son Peregrine was training in the mud and muck of Salisbury Plain.

The same issue features this less accomplished verse, which was accompanied by an illustration by J.E.H. MacDonald.


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08 November 2014

Harlequins, Ranchers and Redheads: A Threesome


The Rancher and the Redhead
Rebecca Winters
Toronto: Harlequin, 1993
The Rancher and the Redhead
Susannah Davis
Toronto: Harlequin, 1995
The Rancher and the Redhead
Allison Leigh
Toronto: Harlequin, 1998
A bonus:

Deux femmes et un rancher [The Rancher and thé Redhead]
Susannah Davis
Toronto: Harlequin, 1996
Related post:

04 November 2014

Nothing Says Violence Like Harlequin



Violence sells but I'm not buying, which may be why it's taken me so long to see just how much it was used in pushing early Harlequins.

As near as I can tell, the publisher began using violence as a selling point with its third book, Howard Hunt's Maelstrom. We remember Hunt today as one of Richard Nixon's plumbers, forgetting that the man was once awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship (whereas Truman Capote and Gore Vidal were not). His third novel, Maelstrom, was first published in 1948 by no less a house than Farrar Straus. Sure, the dust jacket was garish, but c'mon, Farrar Straus!

By contrast, the Harlequin edition issued the following June (four months before Hunt joined the CIA), seems bland… that is, until you read the tagline:


Harlequin used 'violence" in flogging all sorts of titles, no matter how unlikely. Its cover copy for Ben Hecht's Hollywood Mystery promises a plot in which "violence and murder intermingle with wacky situations." Lady – Here's Your Wreath by Raymond Marshall is a "story of violence, mystery and sudden death". Marshall's Why Pick On Me? was pitched with promises of "Punch, Action, Violence!" And, in event that you missed it the first time, Harlequin uses the word twice  in consecutive sentences  in describing James Hadley Chase's No Orchids for Miss Blandish:
This is a fast moving very shocking crime story, which tells of a young and glamorous heiress, whose beauty excites a gang of brutal mobsters to such an extent that they leave a trail of death and destruction in their efforts to kidnap and debauch her. The detective, Dave Fenner, is called in to crack the case, and matches the sadistic brutality of the gang with his own particular brand of violence. This is definitely not a book for the faint-hearted who cannot stand explosive violence and action.
Chase is a special case. With I'll Bury My Dead, we're promised a tale of "murder and violence". Figure It Out for Yourself finds hero Vic Malloy "snarled up in a vicious vortex of murder, glamorous women and violent non-stop action". Twelve Chinks and a Woman, the title Harlequin would really like us all to forget, finds sleuth Dave Fenner descending into a "merciless violent Underworld".


Then there are the covers.

The Harlequin cover for Manitoba boy A.E. van Vogt's The House That Stood Still ranks with News Stand Library's Love is a Long Shot and The Penthouse Killings as the most disturbing and violent ever produced in this country. But those News Stand Library books are anomalies; in truth, the covers of Harlequin's early rivals rarely depicted violence. The typical New Stand Library book promises sex. On rare occasions  as with Too Many Women or Overnight Escapade  the two very nearly intersect, but never do. These News Stand Library covers suggest the possibility of violence, while those of Harlequin depict actual acts or the bloody results of same.

The ten Harlequins that follow give good example, each one typical of a time in which the publisher put forth brutal sagas of love and violence  and not slight stories of brutal love.

Maverick Guns
J.E. Ginstead
1950
The Case of the Six Bullets
R.M. Laurenson
1950
The Cold Trail
Paul E. Lehman
1950
Fall Guy
Joe Barry
1950
She Died on the Stairway
Knight Rhodes
1950
Wreath for a Redhead
Brian Moore
1951
The Dead Stay Dumb
James Hadley Chase
1951
False Face
Leslie Edgley
1951
Hunt the Killer
Day Keene
1952
The Body on Mount Royal
David Montrose
1953

01 November 2014

'Naughty Johnnie Frost'



NAUGHTY JOHNNIE FROST

                              "Little Leaf," said young Jack Frost,
                                   "Pretty Leaf," said he,
                              "Tell me why you seem so shy,
                                   So afraid of me?
                              I protest I like you well—
                                   In your gown of green
                              You're the very sweetest Leaf
                                   I have ever seen!"

                              "Run away," said little Leaf,
                                   "Prithee, run away!
                              I don't want to listen to
                                   Anything you say.
                              Mother-tree has often said:
                                   'Child, have naught to do
                              With young Johnnie Frost' — I think
                                   That, perhaps, he's you!"

                              "Nay, believe me, little Leaf,
                                   Pretty Leaf '! Indeed
                              To such silly, idle tales
                                   You should pay no heed!
                              I protest a leaf so fair
                                   Need not bashful be—
                              There's no reason why you should
                                   Feel afraid of me."

                              "Well, perhaps," said little Leaf,
                                   "I will let you stay—
                              If you're really very sure
                                   You mean all you say?
                              Do you truly like me best— "
                                   "Yes, oh yes!" he said,
                              "And, to prove it, pray accept
                                   This new dress of red !"

                              Very proud was little Leaf,
                                   Whispering with a smile,
                              "'Tis a sweetly pretty gown,
                                   'Twill be quite the style!"
                              Then she chanced to glance around!
                                   "Oh!" and "Oh!" she said
                              Every leaf upon the tree
                                   Wore a dress of red!


The Shining Ship and Other Verse for Children
Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
Toronto: McClelland, Goodchild & Stewart, 1918

27 October 2014

Loving the Mayor of Toronto



Firebrand
Rosemary Aubert
Toronto: Harlequin, 1986
Breathless, she couldn't say anything, and taking her silence as acquiescence, he kissed her again, whispering, "I'll call you tomorrow."
     Then he was gone. Before she went in, Jenn took a good look at the spot on her front porch where she'd just been kissed – twice – by His Worship, the mayor of Toronto.
 
Municipal elections take place across Ontario today, meaning Rob Ford's time as Toronto's mayor is nearly over. Given the man's current health struggles, it may be unseemly to feel good about this, but I do. Ford did considerable harm to Toronto. Barring the election of his brother, which is unlikely, the city will be better off.

Fifteen years ago, when I was living in Toronto, a clownish figure named Mel Lastman was its mayor. Come election time I cast my vote for transgender rights advocate Enza Anderson. She came in third.

Enza Anderson and Mel Lastman, Toronto, 1999
Toronto politics seems to swing wildly between the conventional and unconventional  – or maybe that's just me. In 1986, the year Firebrand was published, the city's mayor was Art Eggleton. Then in the third of his four terms of office, he'd go on to Ottawa, where he served as President of the Treasury Board, Minister of Infrastructure, Minister of International Trade and Minister of National Defence.

When he was through, Lastman returned to his Bad Boy furniture stores.


Michael Massey, the hunk at the centre of this novel is more like Eggleton than Lastman, though I'm betting on John Sewell as the model. Like Sewell, Mike starts out as an activist politician, gets his face smacked by a fellow alderman, and rises to become mayor of our largest city.

The Globe & Mail, 14 March 1972
We first meet Mike in a police van after he's been picked up for disrupting the demolition of an old house (see: Sewell, John). Seated across from him is tearful Jenn MacDonald. Mike got himself arrested on purpose – something to do with bringing attention to the cause, I think – but Jenn is along for the ride only through a misunderstanding. Whatever will husband Bobby think? Fast friends, Mike and Jenn spend the night in neighbouring cells, are freed in the wee hours, and part on the Gerrard Street Bridge. It's not that Mike isn't attracted, but that Jenn is a married woman.

The second chapter begins fifteen years later. Jenn has split from Bobby, and is now working as a librarian at Toronto City Hall. After all this time, her thoughts drift back to the innocent evening spent with Mike. It wasn't that she wasn't attracted, but that she was married.

Mike got married himself – to a Rosedale ice queen – but is recently divorced. Now mayor of Toronto, Jenn sees him from time to time walking through the lobby, but he never sees her. Then, one day, they happen to stand next to each other while watching skaters on Nathan Phillips Square.  


Firebrand being my first Harlequin Superromance, I had no idea what to expect. Still, these things surprised:
  • Elizabeth II as a character.
  • Ribaldry.
  • A debate over whether the Toronto Police Service should be armed with Uzis.
  • A rally against arts cut-backs (with allusion to the cancellation of The Friendly Giant).
  • A sex scene that takes place in the mayor's office.
Yes, a sex scene in the mayor's office. What's more, it takes place before expansive windows overlooking the city:
Suddenly the room behind her was plunged into darkness, and the square outside seemed to spring into full vibrant light. The fountain in the middle gleamed beneath its lighted arches. Queen Street and Bay Street glowed from Saturday night traffic. The clock tower of Old City Hall shone the hour with benign dignity, while all around, office buildings, banks, insurance companies and hotels cast glitter from myriad windows into the night. And above it all shone the full moon, golden, warm, familiar, seductive.
Firebrand is as much a novel about the love between Jenn and Mike as it is the author's love for her hometown. This is no brilliant observation on my part.


The couple stroll through Chinatown, drive along the Danforth, and sneak out of a ball at the King Edward Hotel. There are times it's all a bit forced, though I'm ready to blame an editor's heavy hand for sentences such as this: "She was in The Room, the most exclusive boutique in Simpsons, a huge department store on Yonge Street not far from City Hall."


"I love you, you big heap of brick and concrete," Jenn cries out one morning as she gazes upon the city. The greatest threat to the budding romance between mayor and librarian is found in their disagreement over the future of the Leslie Street Spit. That obstacle evaporates unresolved; others, promised by cover copy, prove no more intrusive than Timothy Eaton's left toe, and things move along toward the usual conclusion. Like City Hall itself, Firebrand alternates between the conventional and the unconventional. Or maybe not. It's my first Superromance.

Note to cleaning staff:
Before her, all six-foot-four of him glowing in the soft window light, stood Mike, fully and gloriously a man. Hungry for her with a hunger that was obvious in every part of his huge body. She dropped her eyes, suddenly shy.
     That gesture of shyness pushed him right over the edge of longing. He wanted her so much. He took a single step closer.
     And she fairly ran into his arms. Sweet, wise, willing Jenn. She had his heart, his soul, his body and his love.
     Tenderly he lowered her onto the deep, soft rug.
Dedication:


Trivia: The man who slapped John Sewell was Alderman Horace Brown, author of The Corpse was a BlondeThe Penthouse Killings, Murder in the Rough and Whispering City.


Object: A 306-page mass market paperback with and additional four pages of advertising. Today's bibliophiles will regret having missed out on this exciting offer:


My copy was given to me by Amy Lavender Harris, author of the acclaimed Imagining Toronto. I have Amy to thank for bringing this novel to my attention.

Access: Published in April 1986 – and never again – it's held only by Library and Archives Canada. There are plenty of used copies available online, ranging in price from 1¢ to US$44.60. Pay no more than one dollar.

The only translation of which I'm aware is Um homem inatingível [An Unattainable Man], published in 1986 by Brazil's Editora Nova Cultural.

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