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| The Toronto Star, 6 March 1984 |
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Death in High Heels (1941) by Christianna Brand
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07 September 2015
31 August 2015
Langevin's Masterpiece; McClelland's Disappointment
Orphan Street [Une Chaîne dans le parc]
André Langevin [trans., Alan Brown]
Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1976
287 pages
This review now appears, revised and rewritten, in my new book:
The Dusty Bookcase:A Journey Through Canada'sForgotten, Neglected, and Suppressed Writing
Available at the very best bookstores and through
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25 August 2015
Toronto, Life, the Subliminal Seduction of the Innocent and a Morley Callaghan Mystery
Toronto Life, vol. 4, no. 7 (7 June 1970)
There are jokes to be made about Toronto Life having to travel two hours outside the city for a cover story, but this Montrealer is above all that. What's more, this Montrealer deserves credit for saving this magazine from the pulper.
Just look at that cover!
It would've been displayed at United Cigar Stores four years before I made the leap from Allancroft Elementary to Beaconsfield High. A to B, it was at the latter that I encountered Wilson Bryan Key's Subliminal Seduction, the closest thing the school library had to a dirty book.
SEX on ice? I couldn't see it – and as a twelve year-old I was really looking. That said, my fifty-two year-old self did notice something about the cover of this old Toronto Life.
Do you?
Different times, right? This is the issue's subscription card:
Forty-five years have passed. "Stratford As You'll Like It", the promised "Fun guide to Stratford the turned-on town", is now as dated as author David Smith's wardrobe.
Smith's hook, dull and lacking a lure, is all about how much the town has changed since the Stratford Festival's 1953 beginning:
Boutiques now line Ontario Street where the dry goods shops used to be. The "hippies" on the street are probably townspeople. Stratford even has its own topless dancer, at 56" more for your money than anywhere else I know.It doesn't say much that Smith failed to interest the local historian in me, though I did enjoy the photos, like this one of nearby St Marys, where I now live.
Like something from another century… which, of course, it is. And look, here's the author in Olin Brown's, "where confectionary is still made by hand – and tastes delicious."
Toronto Life informs that David Smith is a "Toronto couturier".
Odd how few recognizable names feature in the bylines. This Toronto Life is no Montrealer: no short stories, no poetry, no book reviews; though you will find an automotive column, a cooking column and a column concerning interior decoration.
Not to say that literary types didn't contribute. Our very own E.L. James, Marika Robert, whose lone novel A Stranger and Afraid I read last year, has a travel piece on Rome. Eric LeBourdais, nephew of Gwethalyn Graham, provides a very long article: "Why We Need the Spadina and How It Can Lead Toronto into the 21st Century", in which he draws on a study by automotive industry front General Research Corporation of Burbank, California.
Heather Cooper's illustrations did not convince, though I did marvel at those demonstrating how the proposed expressway "would skirt Casa Loma and provide a partial interchange at Davenport":
"READ ON FOR FACTS ABOUT THE SPADINA AND THE FUTURE" encourages the magazine, between ads for General Motors, Shell, Chrysler, Chevrolet, Maserati and a Lincoln Mercury dealership.
To be perfectly fair, the same issue features a snap of novelist David Lewis Stein making the rounds in his fight against the very same project.
I'm afraid that the only other sign of Toronto's literary scene comes through a recycled press release:
Thumbs Down on Julien Jones – note correct title – "his first book in seven years", was never published; I've been keeping an eye out for decades. Callaghan began the novel in 1942 as his follow-up to More Joy in Heaven. Twenty-one years later, he told the New York Times that it was a month from completion. And here it is again in 1970, presented as something on the cusp of publication.
Callaghan read four excerpts on CBL. Some of it was adapted and published in 1973 as a short story, "The Meterman, Caliban, and Then Mr. Jones", in son Barry's Exile. The following year, the same was dramatized in an episode of the CBC's The Play's the Thing.
I keep expecting Thumbs Down on Julien Jones to be published; Library and Archives Canada holds several drafts. Of And Then It All Came Together, described in Toronto Life as a novel in progress, there is no trace; nothing with that title is found amongst his papers. Throughout the latter half of 1970, Callaghan talked about the work as something he wouldn't talk about.
Maybe not talking about it was enough.
Could be I've said too much.
I'll shut up.
RIP
I would be remiss not to recognize that Morley Callaghan died twenty-five years ago today. His was the last death of which I learned by way of a newspaper. I was walking across Square St-Henri when I read the news on the front page of the Gazette.
Different times, right?
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21 August 2015
The Neverending Story without a Name
A follow-up to Monday's very long post on The Story without a Name. Was it the longest? I can't be sure. This one will be shorter. Promise.Meet Laverne Caron, winner of the contest to give name to the story without a name… or is it that he renamed The Story without a Name? Anyway, he won with Without Warning.
Pauline Pogue of Ulvalde, Texas, placed second for Phantom Powers. Third prize went to Victor Carlyle Spies of Barrett, California. He suggested The Love Dial, which was easily the worst title of the lot. Yes, worse than The Courage of Alan Holt, The Secret of Alan Holt and The Adventures of Alan Holt, all of which made the short list and were awarded cash prizes.
Thomas M. Malloy of Quebec City was the lone Canadian winner. I regret to report that his suggested title, Rays of Death, wasn't terribly imaginative; after all, the story revolves around the invention of a death ray. The Death Beam was another finalist.
Laverne Caron deserved to win. Without Warning was by far the best title. It suggests immediacy, action, and – bonus – recycles a word from The Story without a Name.*
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| Photoplay, September 1926 |
In spite of his youth, Mr. Caron has already won a prize in the Author's League contest. He used the money won in that contest to take a course with the Palmer Institute of Authorship.And that's the last we've ever heard of Laverne Caron.
His ambition is to obtain a position as a staff scenariast and make picture-writing his life work.
Russell Holman had a better time of it. An ad man, he had a steady gig at Paramount that lasted well into the 'fifties. The Story without a Name was his second and final collaboration with Arthur Stringer. As with the first, Manhandled, the Canadian provided the basic story and a few chapters; Holman did the rest.
Stringer's initial contributions, untouched by Holman's hand, ran August through November 1924 in the pages of Photoplay. Neglected American illustrator Douglas Duer provided the pictures. He did a good job in capturing the melodrama of it all, though I do wonder about that second October illustration. Could be that he saw the episode as just too silly. I know I did.
Enjoy!
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| August 1924 |
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September 1924
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| 19181 Dunbury Ave, Detroit, home of the man who named The Story without a Name. |
* Might Caron have been influenced by the conclusion to chapter eleven (of twenty-six)? Seems a stretch, but I'm putting it out there:
Related post:"Better grab some sleep now, buddy," he said grimly to Alan. "Because you're in for a big day. And no more monkey-shines or I'll blow your head off without giving you the warning I did the last time."
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