06 November 2015

Ezra Levant and the Crude Art of Bowdlerization



The Rainmaker: A Passion for Politics
Keith Davey
Toronto: Stoddart, 1986

Pity Ezra Levant, not nine months ago he was making good money hosting his own show on the Sun News Network. True, ratings hovered around five thousand, but Brian Lilley and the rest of his stablemates fared no better. It was a dream job. Sun stood by its man as he smeared, misinformedinsulted, fabricated and spewed racist vomit. Job security seemed guaranteed. Separatist Pierre Karl Péladeau was committed to the "unapologetically patriotic" network… until he wasn't. There were no takers when it was up for sale.

Ezra Levant, Pierre Karl Péladeau and Rob Ford,
Sun News Network Launch, Toronto, 1 April 2011.
Levant has since turned to the internet, following Glenn Beck into irrelevance with a website supported in part by ads for mail-order brides. He calls it "The Rebel". Write him if you're interested in contributing. Don't bother if you expect to be paid (those ads for mail-order brides don't bring in much).


I'm not sure what The Rebel has by way of staff. Last May, Levant put out a call for an intern. Salary: $1000 a month with free lunches at McDonald's. Clearly, there's no researcher. Just last week, in an effort to expose Liberal bias, Levant told us that this man, James Armstrong Richardson, after whom Winnipeg's airport is named, sat in Pierre Trudeau's cabinet.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau was a teenager when James Armstrong Richardson died. The airport was named under Stephen Harper.

This week has Levant claiming that "Justin Trudeau is demanding that 24 Sussex Drive be totally rebuilt before he moves into it." This isn't a cock-up so much as another of Levant's fictions. Trudeau is demanding nothing, rather he's following the recommendations of a seven-year-old Auditor General's report that Harper chose to ignore. Maybe Rona Ambrose told him that asbestos isn't all that dangerous.


Levant makes no mention of the Auditor General's report, which deemed the renovations urgent, nor concerns coming from the National Capital Commission. Using his very best indoor voice, he tells us that the idea is Justin Trudeau's alone:
This is his first real fight – fighting for his own perks. Well, what was Pierre Trudeau, his dad, like when he was prime minister living in 24 Sussex? Was he a spoiled millionaire, too? Pierre Trudeau, like Justin Trudeau, inherited millions of dollars when he was born. He didn't have to work a day in his life.
Yep, didn't have to work a day in his life – except that he did. What follows is Levant at his most disingenuous and deceitful:
Let me read to you from Keith Davey's account of how Pierre Trudeau demanded a swimming pool at 24 Sussex Drive and threw a tantrum until he got one. Davey was a Liberal senator and senior campaign advisor to Trudeau. So, I'm going to quote now Davey's account. I'm just going to read it.
Bullshit.

What Levant reads is a bowdlerized passage from Davey's memoir with all words, sentences and paragraphs that challenge his narrative removed. Here is the late senator's true account of what transpired, with the words Levant struck out:


So, there you have it, Keith Davey's account of "how Pierre Trudeau stamped his feet and had a tantrum like a spoiled child just like his millionaire son is doing now."

Pity Benjamin Harper, son of millionaire Stephen Harper. How long before Ezra Levant passes judgement?

Who am I kidding.

Levant won't say a word. After all, he's never gone after this billionaire's son.


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02 November 2015

Sugar Pills and a Nurse Named Molly



Rx for Murder
Jane Layhew
Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1946

I've read Rx for Murder, but I'm not sure about anyone else; certainly the person responsible for this newspaper advertisement hadn't:

The Gazette, 30 August 1946
Nor D.S.S. Mackenzie, who reviewed the book for Montreal's Gazette (30 August 1946):


Ditto J.W. Hurlow, who wrote this in the Ottawa Citizen (8 February 1947):


And most definitely not the person who wrote the book's dust jacket copy:


I know this because the heroine's name is Molly, not "Mollie".

D.S.S. Mackenzie is right about one thing: Rx for Murder opens in a hospital – and much as described. Nurse Molly Thompson is on duty at Vancouver's Hamilton Memorial when arrives accident victim Mrs Mabel Landover. The poor woman, a widow, was walking along a city street when she was struck by a car. There's no crime here, rather Mrs Landover, lost in troubled thoughts, had wandered into traffic.

Perfectly understandable.

As we soon learn, lovely Landover daughter Clara is missing, possibly abducted. She's found soon enough, locked up in an apartment in Clifton (read: Abbotsford). The body of a man named Graves lies on the other side of the door. For no good reason, pretty Clara is suspected of murder… and for no good reason, Mrs Landover offers Molly's fiancé, chemistry student Larry Stone, $1000 to prove her daughter's innocence.

Larry stumbles about – sometimes with Molly, sometimes without – in an effort to figure out just what the hell happened. Lawyer pal Ronald Raft helps out. The trio benefits from remarkably talkative witnesses and absurdly detailed newspaper stories. Good thing too, because Mrs Landover is of no help whatsoever. Sure, she's concerned for her daughter, but that doesn't mean she's willing to share her suspicions about the murdered man. Larry's left in the dark… again, for no good reason. Or is it simply that Jane Layhew, a first-time novelist, believed she could create suspense through inexplicable obstruction.

Molly and Larry are novice sleuths under the influence of a novice mystery writer writing madly off in all directions. With a few exceptions, progress takes place off-stage, and is reported when next the betrothed meet. In this passage, Larry informs Molly that Clara was indeed abducted:


Publisher Lippincott positioned Rx for Murder as a mixture of homicide and humour. Return to the jacket copy above and you'll see "Mollie [sic] and Larry are as appealing, keen-witted and wisecracking a pair  of detective youngsters as ever bubbled through the pages of mystery fiction. Readers will chuckle with them and share their adventures with absorbed interest."

There are no chuckles to be had in Rx for Murder. Molly and Larry's idea of humour rests solely on stilted speech and caricature. The combination is never more tiresome than here:
"Come my sweet, at last we sleep," he carolled.
     "Oh, sweetheart mine, speak lower, I entreat," Molly responded tunefully.
     "There's none to hear my words, my own, my sweet," he finished the song. "None but Ronald, who has ears but hears not. We, the workers of the world, have many great deeds to do tomorrow while you sleep. Let us to our downy nests.'
     "Very well" Molly said, rising, "though to speak of my humble hospital cot as a downy nest is a euphemism of the most optimistic. Only such an expert slumberer as myself could even achieve a recumbent posture upon it."
     "Ah, well," Larry consoled her, "some day – after we're married, of course – you will share my bed, and I do insist on comfort. You must just be patient until that happy time."
Mine eyes fairly glazed ov'r, but not so much that I didst not witness this:
"You alarm me," Molly murmured. "Are you addicted to brawling?"
     "Can't take it, huh? Life in the raw doesn't appeal to you? Want everything to be a bed of roses, I suppose. Well, I'm a hard-drinkin', hard-fightin' man, Miss Thompson," Larry intoned, "and my wumman will just have to get used to being beat up a few times a month."
     "Ah, the price of romance," said Molly tenderly. "I'll learn to be brave; honest I will."
     "Well, I won't put you to the test right now."
This is Molly's reaction upon seeing the bruised and beaten face of her fiancé. Until that moment she had no idea that straight-laced, presumably straight-A student Larry had been roughed up. Her lack of surprise or concern might seem suspicious, but don't read anything into it, the author's just going for yucks.


In a strange way, I began to feel sorry for Larry. All that running around with such little payoff – and a beating to boot – for no other reason than his creator has no idea what she's doing. In the eighteenth chapter, poor Larry encounters a kid named Wilson, but has no idea why. Our amateur sleuth can't help but compare himself with others:
Who of all his favorite characters would not by now have a complete case against someone? by [sic] now they would be working only for the collection of incontrovertible evidence; their theories would be such that a casual intruder like Wilson would be fitted into his place without a ripple. In fact, they would probably have been expecting his advent. Larry sighed with wholehearted dissatisfaction.
I too sighed with wholehearted dissatisfaction. Yet, I persevered through the remaining eighty-one pages.

As I say, I've read this novel.

The most regrettable passage: 
"I'm disappointed in Mr. Pearson," Molly said ruefully. "He seemed so friendly and pleasant, I had no idea he had a nigger in the woodpile."
A real mystery: The 30 August 1946 Gazette reports that Mrs. Layhew is at work on another "blood and thunder". Rx for Murder is her only book, though she did publish something titled "Prescription for Murder" in the 22 March 1947 edition of the Standard. I presume it's a bowdlerized version, but can't say for certain.

Object: A 252-page hardcover, published as part of Lippincott's Main Line Mystery series. The paper is a bit cheap, but the binding is good. I bought my copy online from a Shropshire bookseller this past summer. Price: US$22.50.

The uncredited dust jacket image depicts a scene that does not feature in the novel.

Access: Six copies are currently listed for sale online. The cheapest jacketless copy is listed at US$7.50. The cheapest with jacket costs US$30.00. No one is asking more than US$48.50.

The novel never enjoyed a paperback edition – not as Rx for Murder anyway. In 1950, a French translation was published in paper by Éditions des deux mondes under the title Meurtres aux rayons X? Note the question mark. X-rays are mentioned only fleetingly, and there isn't so much as a suggestion that they played a part in the murder. Le Meurtre de Roger Ackroyd? would have been just as appropriate a title.

Toronto Public Library, the University of Toronto and the University of British Columbia have copies. You won't find it at Library and Archives, but you will find Meurtres aux rayons X?


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01 November 2015

Archibald Lampman's 'In November'


from The Poems of Archibald Lampman
Toronto: Morang, 1905

26 October 2015

The Most Depressing Canadian Novel of All Time?



The new issue of Canadian Notes and Queries has landed in my Wellington Street post office box, bringing with it my thirteenth Dusty Bookcase column.

Lucky thirteen.

The subject this time is The Wine of Life, Arthur Stringer's dispiriting 1921 novel about the doomed marriage of Owen Storrow and Torrie Thorssel. Substitute Arthur Stringer for "Owen Storrow" and Jobyna Howland for "Torrie Thorssel" and you get some idea.

If this in any way seems familiar, it may be because some months back I mentioned my discovery of twenty-three uncollected illustrations the great James Montgomery Flagg undertook for the novel's newspaper syndication.

The Pittsburgh Press, 23 December 1921
Like Owen and Torrie's, the Stringers' relationship played itself out in the papers. Together they were fêted as New York's handsomest couple; apart they were irresistibly tragic figures.

The Times Dispatch [Richmond], 23 March 1913
The Times Dispatch [Richmond], 8 November 1914
"Peculiar Romance-Tragedy of an Actress and a Poet", which appeared in newspapers across the United States the year after the couple split, paints Stringer "a man of sorrows":
For know you, all girls and women who have wept and glowed and smiled over the poems of Arthur Stringer, that he is living a romance as sad and as surcharged with longing love as ever were any of his poems.
The new CNQ has me thinking about The Wine of Life again. In truth, the book never left me. It's hard to forget such a depressing a novel – doubly so a roman à clef. I won't mention Mencken's descriptions of the latter day Jobyna; it would only spoil your day.


But just look how sunny Seth's cover is! Sure to cheer you up. Also contributing to the new CNQ are:
Caroline Adderson
Chris Arthur
Marc Bell
Emily Donaldson
Kathy Friedman
Douglas Glover
Jason Guriel
Kim Jernigan
David Mason
Susan Olding
Peter Sanger
Robin Sarah
Carrie Snyder
JC Sutcliffe
Jess Taylor
Anne Marie Todkill
As always, subscriptions can be had through the CNQ website. A bargain!

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20 October 2015

Trudeaumania II



One prime minister weeps over the coffin of another. I doubt anyone at McClelland & Stewart was thinking this back in 2000 when they put together that cover. It's not something I saw coming – not until last month, anyway – and certainly not in so decisive a victory. The results aren't quite what I would've liked, but I'm thrilled just the same. 

And so, the country's darkest decade ends with Stephen Harper defeated by the son of a man he'd demonized leading a party he'd vowed to destroy. There's a certain justice in that.

In recognition and celebration, ten favourite books by and about Trudeau père from my collection.

Trudeau
Ottawa: Deneau, 1984
A souvenir from the 1984 Liberal convention at which Pierre Trudeau stepped down as party leader. I bought my copy at a local Goodwill at precisely 4:00pm on 28 September 2000 – I kept the receipt – then arrived home to learn that Trudeau's death had just been announced on the CBC.

Federalism and the French Canadians
Pierre Elliott Trudeau
Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1968
Ex-libris John Robarts, 17th Premier of Ontario.

Sex and the Single Prime Minister
Michael Cowley
[Don Mills, ON]: Greywood, 1968
The first of three pieces of similar silliness published during Trudeau's first term. Glimpses of each can be found here and here.

PM/Dialogue
Keswick, ON: High Hill, [1972?]
A mysterious book I picked up sixteen years ago at a United Church book sale in Merrickville, Ontario. I've never seen another copy.

Conversations with Canadians
Pierre Elliott Trudeau
Toronto: University of Toronto, 1972
A signed first edition, excavated just last year in a local thrift store. Price: $1.00. 

The Trudeau Question
W.A. Wilson
Montreal: Montreal Star, 1972
Written "to make both the issues and the politics more comprehensible to the voters who will make their judgement this year."
Thanks, Montreal Star!

A Time for Action:
Toward the Renewal of the Canadian Federation
Pierre Elliott Trudeau
[Ottawa]: Minister of Supply and Services Canada, 1978
Found amongst a pile of newspapers left behind by the previous owner of our first house. Bonus!

Trudeau and Our Times
Volume 1: The Magnificent Obsession
Stephen Clarkson & Christina McCall
Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1990

"He haunts us still." Great first line. I was mistaken for Alexandre Trudeau at the launch.

Memoirs
Pierre Elliott Trudeau
Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1993
Signed.

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17 October 2015

Ian McGillis on Montreal's Writers' Chapel



In today's Gazette, a full page devoted to Montreal Writers' Chapel penned by Ian McGillis. Yours truly is quoted.

You can read it online here. And there's a video!

13 October 2015

The Most Offensive Author's Bio of All Time?



Time has been tight, so tight that I've read no more than the front and back flaps of Jane Layhew's Rx for Murder, next up in my stroll through Canada's suppressed, ignored and forgotten writing. The author's debut, it wasn't suppressed, nor was it ignored – the novel was reviewed widely – but it is forgotten.

There may be good reason for this; the front flap doesn't describe any book I'd want to read. The most memorable thing about it is a typo – which isn't something you see every day on dust jackets.

In contrast, the back flap is unforgettable:


The 8 February 1947 edition of the Ottawa Citizen informs that the "small village" is Alert Bay, which would make the "Indian reservation [sic] whose inhabitants were only two generations removed from the days of scalping parties" that of the Kwakwa̱ka̱’wakw.

The Ottawa Citizen, 7 February 1947
Jane Layhew never published another novel. Nearly everything I know about her is found in the above, though I can add that the author eventually returned to British Columbia, where she served for a time as Head Nurse of the Medical Ward at Prince George Regional Hospital. Here she is in the May 1970 issue of The Canadian Nurse, showing off her unique method for moving bedside lockers:


The last trace I've found of Jane Layhew is in an ad that lists supporters of Prince George alderman Phillis Parker (The Prince George Citizen, 13 November 1986).

There's a Jane Layhew Nursing Bursary, which is awarded annually to a worthy British Columbia nursing student.

Further digging will bring more, I expect, but as I say, time has been tight… and, to be frank, I'm not sure I care.

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02 October 2015

Mavis Gallant Memorial Plaque



Cast earlier today at Alloy Foundry in Merrickville, Ontario, a plaque honouring the great short story writer Mavis Gallant. Next Friday,  October 9th, will see its installation at Montreal's Writers' ChapelSt James the Apostle Anglican Church.

John Metcalf and Claudine Gélinas-Faucher will be speaking.

The Venerable Linda Borden Taylor will officiate.

All are welcome.

Friday, 9 October 2015, 6 p.m.

Church of St James the Apostle
1439 St Catherine Street West (Bishop Street entrance)
Montreal

A wine and cheese reception will follow.

 Join us in celebrating the life and work of this great writer!


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28 September 2015

Ricochet! Ricochet!



Arriving in bookstores as I write, books seven and eight in Véhicule's Ricochet Books series. Following visits to Niagara Falls (James Benson Nablo's The Long November) and Toronto (Hugh Garner's Waste No Tears), we're returning to Montreal with:

The Mayor of Côte St. Paul by Ronald J. Cooke, the strange story of Dave Manley, a struggling writer drawn into the world of slot-machines and rum-running by a good looking gal who wants nothing so much as to open a lingerie store in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. Both work for the Mayor, a sadistic crime boss who takes pleasure in murdering people with darts.

Printed once by pre-romance Harlequin in June 1950, the Ricochet edition is the first in more than sixty-five years.

Hot Freeze by Douglas Sanderson, post-war Canada’s greatest noir novel, introduces "inquiry agent" Mike Garfin, ex-RCMP (he made the mistake of bedding a suspect's wife). In this first of three or four adventures, he's hired to figure out what exactly is going on with one of Westmount's spoiled bisexual teenaged sons.

Published in 1954, by Dodd, Mead (New York) and Reinhardt (London), then in 1955 by Popular Library (New York), this edition is the first in sixty years.

Both The Mayor of Côte St. Paul and Hot Freeze feature Introductions by yours truly – my first since David Montrose's The Crime on Cote des Neiges (or, if you prefer, Meurtre à Westmount).

Long-time readers will recognize both titles. I first wrote here about Hot Freeze in the earliest days of 2011. The Mayor of Côte St. Paul consumed not one, not two, but three posts later that same year.

The Mayor of Côte St. Paul and Hot Freeze are available from the usual online sources, better bookstores and, of course, Véhicule itself.
I would be remiss in not recognizing the role played by Greg Shepard of Stark House Press in the Hot Freeze reissue. In recent years, Stark House has reissued six Douglas Sanderson novels, including A Dum-Dum for the President, the third – or is it fourth?  Mike Garfin thriller. 
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26 September 2015

Not Any Old Author, a Canadian Author


Night Without Darkness
Kenneth Orvis [pseud Kenneth Lemieux]
New York: Pan, 1968

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21 September 2015

'A Relentless Story of the Hell of Drug Addiction'



The Damned and the Destroyed
Kenneth Orvis [pseud. Kenneth Lemieux]
London: Dobson, 1962

How many novels begin with the protagonist being summoned to a mansion on Mount Royal? This very thing happens in Murder without Regret, the last book I read. Off the top of my head, I can think of a couple of others: David Montrose's The Crime on Cote des Neiges and Hot Freeze by Douglas Sanderson. Not so The Damned and the Destroyed – here the reader has to wait for the third page. The first two set the stage: The year (unstated) is 1954. Thirty-eight-year-old Jean Drapeau (unnamed) has just been elected mayor of Montreal. His party, the Civic Action League (named), looks to close down the open city of Al Palmer's Montreal Confidential.

Private investigator Maxwell Dent is more than familiar with the city's unseemly underside, which is not to say he's of it. Straight-laced and upstanding, Dent studied law at McGill, then served in the Korean War where he took down "an enemy ring supplying narcotics to U.N. forces for the purpose of troop demoralization."

Huntley Ashton, the man whose mansion the PI visits, knows all this stuff: "I've had you checked, Dent. Screened thoroughly. I respect what I found." Ashton's due diligence is understandable. As one of the city's most respected businessmen, he has to make certain that Dent can be trusted. The case is a sensitive one. Ashton's daughter Helen has turned heroin addict, and he wants Dent to smash the drug ring:
"I know that is a big order. A huge undertaking. Nevertheless, I want the people that are selling blackmarket drugs to my daughter run out of business and jailed. I want them punished to the full."
Good Canadian that he is, Dent gives thought, then responds:
"I must ask you to bear in mind that in Canada offences against the Narcotic Act fall under the jurisdiction of the R.C.M.P. The R.C.M.P. wouldn't like your present attitude."
Despite his reservations, Dent takes the case. I'm not sure why exactly, but I think it has something to do with Ashton's love for his daughter.

"She was beautiful, young, blonde and a junkie…" reads the pitch on the Belmont paperback.  The key word is "was". Helen was beautiful, or so Dent assumes, but those looks are gone by the time he sets eyes on her. Heroin has taken its toll, as it always does, and there's more: scars and weals crisscross her sunken belly, the work of a drunken abortionist.

Orvis – Lemieux, if you prefer – spent five years researching this novel. He hung with addicts and pushers, interviewed counsellors and read a mess of reports and case studies. There's a real feel of authenticity in the descriptions of his damned and destroyed: Frankie Seven, Dream Street Fay and wasted talent Phil Chasen. A classically trained concert pianist, Phil coulda been somebody, instead of a junkie, which is what he is.

Orvis handles these characters well – they appear real, and probably were – but falls flat with others. Drug kingpin Jack Moss, the "Back Man", comes off like a Bond villain. Shadow, his errand boy, is a young rapscallion who is equal parts Dondi and Oliver Twist. Inspector Welch of the RCMP is an inspector with the RCMP, and the only memorable thing about Helen's sister Thorn is her name.

Things fall apart in the second act with the shift from the first group to the second. By this point, I'd long grown tired of Dent, his outrage, his moralizing and his unwavering faith in himself. The PI is never more annoying than when he gets it in his head that he can cure Helen through tough love. He has her witness a police line-up, takes her to the trial of someone charged with possession, and forces her to visit Fay in the Fullum Street Prison:
My fingers tightened determinedly over Helen's shoulder. "Take a good look at her," I said with every ounce of firmness I could command… "Look at her face, her body. Listen to her screams, her agony. Listen and look well, because what you're seeing and hearing now is the end of the road for every addict. For everyone that thinks there's a thrill or an escape in heroin. For you – Helen Ashton!" 

Lee Child is a great admirer of The Damned and the Destroyed. Should I be surprised? I don't know, I've never read Child. But a thriller should thrill, right? At the very least, it should move forward at a good pace. This one stalls. Repeatedly. When it picks up, the reader is treated to lengthy descriptions of hours spent trailing Moss and stakeouts that go on for days and days. The climax, which comes as a relief, involves a risky plan of Maxwell Dent's own design. He gets RCMP support, but keeps the details to himself. "Just issue those orders," he tells Welch. "Issue them and wait."

Three people die as a result.

I'm sure our hero would tell you that it was the best of all possible outcomes.

Pierre Desmarais, Jean Drapeau and Pacifique Plante
25 October 1954
Epigraph:


Dedication:


Coincidence: Amongst those thanked in the Acknowledgements is "Gordon W. Phillips S. Th., Consultant at the Allan Division, Royal Victoria hospital, and Chaplain Montreal prisons." A friend of the my parents, glimpses of Rev Phillips' good work is found in Adopted Derelicts, a pre-romance Harlequin written by his wife Bluebell. My father is named in the Acknowledgements of Mrs Phillips' book.


Object and Access: An unexciting 223-page hardcover in black boards with silver type. The 1962 Dobson is most likely the first, but those who follow the flag will want the McClelland & Stewart edition published that same year. An old Gazette column (29 June 1962) has McGraw-Hill publishing the novel in the States, but I've yet to see a copy. There have been two paperback editions: Digit (1964) and Belmont (1966).

Copies of The Damned and the Destroyed aren't plentiful, but they're not expensive. Those listed for sale online range in price from between £5 and US$30. I purchased mine this past June for £3.50 from a UK bookseller.

The Damned and the Destroyed was reissued three years ago – as an ebook only – by Prologue Books. Lee Child provides the Foreword.

A handful of our academic libraries have copies, as do Bibliothèque et Archives nationals du Québec and Library and Archives Canada.


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