24 July 2020

Canada Reads 2020: "Shouts Out to Tara!"



After much delay, Canada Reads 2020 has come and gone. Congrats to Samra Habib, whose memoir We Have Always Been Here won the game show and was crowned "The One Book to Bring Canada Into Focus."

I listened with as much interest as ever, and was surprised to hear from people asking my opinion. This may have had something to do with "No Country for Old Books," an article I wrote last year for Canadian Notes & Queries. If so, the head doth swell.

As in other years, my thoughts take the form of complaints, like the 2014 decision to focus on the new.

Canadian Notes & Queries #104, Spring 2019

For those keeping track, all but one of the titles in this year's competition was published in 2019, the outlier being Eden Robinson's Son of a Trickster, which appeared in bookstores in 2017. The average age of a Canada Reads 2020 title was 13.5 months.

Canada Reads' preference for the front list was something I discovered through a letter CBC Books sent to publishers. An eye-opener, you can read it in "No Country for Old Books." In researching the game show, I've found CBC Books to be less than forthcoming. Imagine my interest when host Ali Hassan revealed, just yesterday, that Canada Reads has a style consultant named Tara Williams.


I remind that Canada Reads is a radio show.

My main quibble with Canada Reads remains. In its early years, panellists chose the books they wished to promote. In 2002, Leon Rooke, argued on behalf of The Stone Angel, a novel he'd read many times. The same can be said for Denise Bombardier, who in 2007 championed an old favourite in Gabrielle Roy's Children of My Heart.

This year, each of the "defenders" revealed that they had not read their respective books before being asked to participate.

We Have Always Been Here was a national bestseller before it made Canada Reads. It had won a Lambda and had been longlisted of the RBC Charles Taylor Award. The memoir was the subject of a Globe & Mail feature and a subsequent review. It was a 2019 "Globe 100" title. Published internationally, We Have Always Been Here was featured on The Next Chapter, and in the pages of  the Toronto StarNOW, Stylist, and something so distant as the Tampa Bay Times. CBC Books had been pushing We Have Always Been Here for more than a year, beginning with its excited 3 June 2019 article "10 Canadian books coming out in June we can't wait to read."

And yet... and yet, in making her case, Amanda Brugel, its defender, stated: "I wouldn't have been aware of this book until it had been brought to my attention via this competition."

Isn't this a sad state of affairs?

One last thing:

Ali, "The One Book to Bring Canada Into Focus"?

In 2020.

You're a comedian.

Was it too obvious?

Full disclosure: I wanted Eden Robinson's Son of a Trickster to win.

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13 July 2020

CNQ: Spring? Spring Ish



“When a day that you happen to know is Wednesday starts off by sounding like Sunday, there is something seriously wrong somewhere.”

The same might be said of a magazine's Spring Issue landing in July. Something is seriously wrong, though I dare say we're getting used to it. Yesterday, I donned a mask, looked about, and felt good that others waiting to buy beer had done the same.

What a long, strange year this has been... and it's barely half-way done. I like to think the arrival of this new issue of Canadian Notes & Queries signals a return to better times. There's a whole lot to look at, like this issue's What's Old, which features:


Here I remind readers that my birthday is next month.

The Dusty Bookcase column in this issue concerns Robert W. Service's thriller The Master of the Microbe. Published in 1926, its hero, an American expat living in Montparnasse, stumbles over a plot to unleash a deadly virus that attacks the respiratory system. Its earliest pages are as interesting and entertaining as anything I've read this year.


You'll also find Bruce Whiteman on George Fetherling, whose The Writing Life (Montreal: McGill-Queens UP, 2013) I edited:


I'm all in with Nigel Beale, who sounds off on the disregard this country demonstrates toward its literary heritage:


David Mason is spot on: There's no such thing as book hoarding.


The embarrassment of riches continues with Colette Maitland's contribution:


And then there's Cynthia Holz's memoir, 'Out of the Bronx':


Other contributors include:
Jeff Bursey
Page Cooper
Elaine Dewar
Meags Fitzgerald
Stephen Fowler
Ulrikka S. Gernes
Basia Gilas
Douglas Glover
Alex Good
Brett Josef Grubisic
Alex Pugsley
Seth
Kelly S. Thompson
Shelley Wood
and
editor Emily Donaldson

An unexpected treat, the copy I received included this insert:


Again, my birthday is next month.

06 July 2020

A Queer Thing, Nationalism



What Fools Men Are!
Sinclair Murray [Alan Sullivan]
London: Sampson Low, Marston, [1933]
316 pages

It's possible that What Fools Men Are! has the worst first sentence in Canadian literature:
Otto Banta, whose appearance gave no suggestion that he was a millionaire in dungarees, was running a lathe, the end one in a long row of warring machines driven by belts that ran from a shaft just under the ceiling and looking down the row one saw a dwindling line of men's heads, most of them young and dark, each very attentive to the mechanical creatures controlled.
The second isn't much better:
Heads, belts, lathes, the song of speeding leather, the low grunt of tool steel as it bit into the revolving thing it fashioned, the constant rain of bright thin cork-screws of sheared metal into the iron pan beneath the lathe; that was the perspective to which Otto was now accustomed.
This is a novel about men, their shafts, their leather, low grunts, and tool steel. Its hero, Otto Banta, earns respect by working next to other muscular fellows in the factory he will one day inherit from his father. When comes the "swelling, full-throated roar" that signals the end of the shift, he doesn't hesitate in joining them in the showers. However, on this day, he's interrupted when a man named Oster touches his arm:
Oster glanced around the room now filling with men peeling off their shirts, exposing bodies whose alabaster whiteness contracted sharply with the grime on faces, wrists, and hands. Their muscles had a smooth, silky play, the biceps buldging when their arms went up over their heads.
     "Can you come around this afternoon?"said Oster in a low voice.
He has something to show Otto – and it wasn't at all what I expected. On Oster's worktable is a new aeroplane engine that is lighter, more efficient, and more reliable than any other ever made. The inventor is set to happily hand it over to the Banta family in exchange for royalties and a brass plaque bearing his name on each engine... which, I couldn't help but note would add unnecessarily to the engine's weight. Why not aluminum?

Oster is a bachelor, as is Otto, but do not get the wrong impression. The millionaire in dungarees is engaged to a woman, Hilda Theres, whose "white breast" – which one? –  he longs to one day fondle. His fiancée's parents, Hugo and Mathilde, emigrated from the Republic of Sardosa some fifteen years earlier. They're now prominent citizens in Lunga, the capitol city of neighbouring Aricia, in which Hugo has established a remarkably successful import/export business. Forty years ago, his home country was involved in a terrible war with Aricia in which the Province of Modoris was lost. It's best left unmentioned.


Hugo and Mathilde are just as happy with the engagement as Otto's parents, John and Maria. "Yes, I think they'll hit it off," John tells Hugo. "Of course Maria is very pleased, and holds there might be more of these marriages between your people and mine. Queer thing, nationalism, isn't it? I used to try and persuade myself that the world was moving away from it, but now I have my doubts."

The seasoned reader will know to share John's apprehension.

What happens next is packed with incident:

Though sworn to secrecy, Otto tells Hilda that he's been asked to form a team of volunteer aviators meant to supplement the Arician Air Force. Without permission, Otto takes his betrothed up in his aeroplane, crosses the Aricia/Sardosa border, and lands on the grounds of the Sardosan mansion in which she spent her earliest years. Though welcomed, Otto and Hilda don't know that the lord of the manor happens to be a man named Hammon, owner and editor of the influential Sardosan Tribune. The couple then return to Lunga for a private dinner hosted by Hugo and Mathilde Theres. Otto's parents are in attendance, as are Boris Parka (President of the Arician Republic), General Mark Kekwich (Arician Minister of War), and Paul Constantine (owner and editor of the Lunga News). As the evening winds down, Otto's departs for the Lunga Club, where he chairs the first meeting of his secret squadron.

Otto has had a long day; the steel shafts, leather, and showers, must seem so long ago. On the way home from the meeting, he happens upon a street artist flogging paintings beneath the imposing marble statue of Sardosian hero Dimitri Collo, a gift from Sardosa to the people of Aricia. Though the consequence is unintended, their brief exchange encourages the artist to deface the statue, making a mockery of a man Sardosians consider a national hero.

And then the shit hits the propellor.

The front page of the following day's Sardosan Tribune is devoted to the defacement, the news of Otto's incursion into Sardosa, and his role as secret squadron leader. Oster's engine is stolen by suspected members of the Sardosian Secret Service, a Sardosian Air Force hanger is destroyed by a saboteur, rioting breaks out in Modoris, anti-Sardosian sentiment takes root in the Banta factory, and the Arician political and upper classes snub invitations to the Theres family's monthly reception. Meanwhile, Constantine and Hammon stoke the fires by printing speculation and fake news in their respective papers.

As might be expected, these tensions have ill-effect on star-crossed lovers Otto and Hilda. Still,  I couldn't help but feel that war would be averted and that all was heading toward a happy ending. I can't say why. Blantyne–Alien, the only other Sullivan novel I've read, ends in great tragedy.

In any case, I was right that things end happily, but wrong in my prediction that the last page, as tradition dictates, would belong to Otto and Hilda. Instead, it's given over to minor characters General Mark Kekwich and his wife Alicia. Poor Mark had been banished from the bedroom due to his treatment of Theres family, but all is forgiven:
On the second floor of the house of the Minister of War, a big bedroom glowed warmly in softened light, and Alicia, her back against a heap of pillows, wearing a very low cut and diaphanous garment, toyed idly with a magazine, smiling to herself in the manner of one who contemplated the immediate future with delicately malicious pleasure, and it might have been midnight when a knock sounded on the door.
     "Come in." She spoke sweetly, aware that she was the most seductive thing in all Lunga.
     On the threshold stood Kekwich in slippers and yellow pyjamas, his cheeks dusky, eyes a little glazed.
     "Darling," he breathed. "Oh, darling!"
     The magazine slid to the floor and two very white arms extended towards him.
     "Silly!" said she as they enfolded him. "Silly old Mark! Come along." Then, a little later, rosy and delicious. "Of course, I loved you all the time – I never stopped – but why did you men get so excited over nothing at all? 
FIN
It's a jarring conclusion in that it doesn't fit with the tone of the previous 315 pages.

The last sentence is a joke, right?

If so, am I wrong about the first?

Trivia concerning white breasts: Hilda is not the only woman in Lunga with a white breast or two. Alicia Kekwich's rare appearances in the novel are almost invariably accompanied by some mention of her own. The introduction to the character, at one of the Theres family's soirées, features this description: "a small, fair, blue-eyed woman who carried her headline a flower and had, it was agreed, the whitest bosom in Lunga."

That she is Alicia from Aricia did not escape my notice.

Trivia concerning bachelors: Sullivan populates the novel with a fair number of single men – including Oster, Constantine, and Air Commodore Pollak of the Sardinian Air Force – remarking on their disinterest in women. The most prominent is Boris Parka, president of the Arician Republic, "a lean, saturnine man, a bachelor to whom women in general were neither an objective or of interest." We first see Parka in conversation with the stunningly beautiful Mathilde Theres "saying little but smiling faintly and watching her with cool appraising eyes in which none of her sex had ever caught the least flicker of desire."

About the author: A forgotten son of Montreal, Alan Sullivan published forty-seven books in his seventy-eight years. He was awarded the 1941 Governor General's Award for his historical novel Three Came to Ville Marie, but I think Sullivan is better remembered, when remembered at all, for The Rapids (1922), a roman à clef inspired by the rise and fall of his former employer Francis H. Clergue. Though Sullivan started his writing career as a poet – his first book was The White Canoe and Other Verse (1891) – novels dominate his bibliography (thirty-nine in total; thirteen as "Sinclair Murray"). I've now read two. I'm happy to keep going.

Edward Alan Sullivan
29 November 1868 - 6 August 1947
RIP
Object and Access: A bland production bound in bland orange boards. Nothing is on offer by online booksellers, though Queen's University, the University of New Brunswick, the University of Toronto, and the Toronto Public Library have copies. Sadly, Library and Archives Canada fails.

The Sampson Low, Marston edition is the only one. I've found no evidence of a second printing.

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01 July 2020

Marjorie Pickthall's Canadian Hymn



On this one hundred and fifty-third anniversary of Confederation, patriotic verse by Marjorie Pickthall. This version is taken from The Complete Poems of Marjorie Pickthall (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1927), edited by the poet's father.

STAR OF THE NORTH

Canadian Hymn 
Out of the dust God called new nations forth,
The land and sea made ready at His voice;
He broke the barriers of the North
And bade our plains rejoice;
He saw the untrodden prairie hold
Empire of early gold.
Star of the North,
He bade thee shine
And prove once more the dreams of men divine. 
Ask of the seas what our white frontiers dare,
Ask of the skies where our young banners fly
Like stars unloosened from the hair
Of wild-winged victory.
God’s thunder only wakening thrills
The ramparts of our hills.
Star of the North,
No foe shall stain
What France has loved, where Britain’s dead have lain! 
Dark is the watch-fire, sheathed the ancient sword,
But sons must follow where their sires have led,
To the anointed end, O Lord,
Where marched the mighty dead.
Firm stands the red flag battle-blown,
And we will guard our own,
Our Canada,
From snow to sea.
One hope, one home, one shining destiny!
A Happy Canada Day to all!

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29 June 2020

Arthur Mayse, His Wife, and The Beachcombers


Saturday Evening Post, 11 May 1946
My third post on Arthur Mayse in under two weeks.

Why not?

Shining a light on neglected writers like Mayse is the very raison d'être of The Dusty Bookcase. And make no mistake, Mayse is neglected.

Perilous Passage, the 1949 thriller that got me reading his work, was last published in 1950.  His second novel, Desperate Search (1952), which was adapted by Hollywood,  has been out of print for nearly as long. There's never been a collection of the dozens of stories Mayse published in Canadian, American, and British magazines. There's no collection of his newspaper work. His name doesn't feature in The Canadian Encyclopedia or The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature.

Argosy, November 1961
What intrigues me most are the scripts that Mayse wrote for The Beachcombers.

Canadians and Germans will understand.

IMDb lists just one: "The Hexman." BC BookWorld puts their number at four, but provides no titles. A call-out on the Friends of The Beachcombers Facebook page brought unexpected riches, including an email from actor Jackson Davies (Constable John Constable), who provided a complete list with episode descriptions drawn from the CBC database.

As it turns out, Mayse wrote not one, not four, but twenty-seven episodes – many with his wife Win. The description of the earliest, "Here Comes Santa Claus" (broadcast 22 December 1974), promises light fare, as befits a Christmas episode:
The Brotherhood of Unaffiliated Beachcombers sponsors the annual Christmas cruise which will carry Santa (Nick) and his sleigh to the kids on the outlying islands. Events get out of hand when an accident puts Relic in the Santa suit. Cast: Bruno Gerussi, Robert Clothier, Rae Brown, Juliet Randall and Bob Park. Guest cast: Franz Russell, Anna May McKellar, Gregg Morley, Annabel Kershaw, Jack Rigg, and Drew Kemp.
Arthur Mayse's second script, "Nick and the Amazons" (12 January 1975), in which Nick is kidnapped by private school girls, seems more unconventional. In "Too Many Cooks" (6 April 1975), his third, "Molly goes on a trip to Vancouver and winds up on skid row."

Jackson Davies himself appears in nine episodes penned by Mayse (or the Mayses), beginning with "In the Still of the Night" (21 December 1975). As the actor noted in his email to me, the writer often wrote stories focussed on the show's indigenous characters. "Voice of the People" (4 January 1981), Mayse's second to last Beachcombers episode, one of several to star Chief Dan George, is a good example:
Relic discovers that Nick and Jesse have stumbled upon some native artifacts. While poking around the site, Relic falls through the roof of an abandoned long-house and becomes entombed underground. He is finally rescued when Chief Moses orders Nick and Jesse to go back and cover up their find. Guest cast includes Chief Dan George, Len George, Robert George, John Callihoo, Willard Sam. Regular cast members are Bruno Gerussi, Robert Clothier, Rae Brown, Juliet Randall, Bob Park, Pat John, Charlene Aleck, Reg Romero and Jackson Davies.
I find I remember that episode quite well, though I'm certain I haven't seen it since it originally aired.

Chief Moses Charlie (Chief Dan George) and Jesse Jim (Pat John)
Looking over the synopses of Mayse's episodes I find some familiar, and others not so, though I'm sure I watched them all. Among the latter is "Boat in a Bottle," an episode that aired two parts:
Hugh and the family befriend a young Japanese-Canadian who has come to Gibsons to locate his father's old fish-boat which was confiscated during World War II. They run head-on into entrenched prejudice from Col. Spranklin but this does not discourage them from wanting to find the fish-boat and making it sea-worthy again. Cast: Bruno Gerussi, Robert Clothier, Rae Brown, Juliet Randall and Bob Park. Guest cast: Frank Wade, Paul Kariya, Jonathon Pallone, and Dick Clements.
"Boat in a Bottle" was broadcast on 30 January and 7 March 1976, predating Ken Adachi's influential The Enemy That Never Was: A History of Japanese-Canadians by several months... and predating reparations to Japanese-Canadians by well over a decade. It served as my introduction to an ugly scar on our history. We did not learn about internment camps in school.

The Beachcombers could be light fare, as with "Here Comes Santa Claus," but didn't shy away from the ugly. It reflected the country – particularly that part of the country – in a way other shows did not. I expect this is one reason why it remains so loved to this day. There is no Friends of the Trouble With Tracy Facebook page.

Amongst those who responded to my query regarding Arthur Mayse's contributions was Jo-Anne Campone, whose late husband, Merv Campone, also wrote for the show. After our brief exchange, I discovered that he also wrote Adventures on the Sunshine Coast (Toronto: NC Press, 1981), which I believe to be the only Beachcombers book.

I found a Fine hardcover copy listed for sale online.

You can bet I bought it.

My thanks to Jackson Davies for his generosity.

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24 June 2020

Acerbic Saint-Jean-Baptiste Verse



On this Fête de la Saint-Jean-Baptiste, thirty-eight forgotten lines of nineteenth-century verse by S. Frances Harrison. Am I wrong in finding it curious? I admit I don't know much of the poet's work, but I was under the impression that S. Frances Harrison was a great champion of French-Canadian culture. This poem, from Pine, Rose and Fleur de Lis (Toronto: Hart, 1891) suggests her enthusiasm had its limits. Bur really, who can't help but feel sympathy for little Antoine?

ST. JEAN B'PTISTE 
     'Tis the day of the blessed St. Jean B'ptiste,
          And the streets are full of the folk awaiting
     The favourite French-Canadian feast. 
     One knows by the bells which have never ceas'd,
          Since early morn reverberating,
     Tis the day of the blessed St. Jean B'ptiste. 
     Welcome it! Joyeux, the portly priest!
          Welcome it! Nun, at your iron grating!
     The favourite French-Canadian feast. 
     Welcome it! Antoine, one of the least
          Of the earth's meek little ones, meditating
     On the day of the blessed St. Jean B'ptiste, 
     On the jostling crowd that has swift increas'd
          Behind him, before him, celebrating
     The favourite French-Canadian feast. 
     He is cloth'd in the skin of some savage beast.
          Who cares if he be near suffocating?
     Tis the day of the blessed St. Jean B'ptiste,
     The favourite French-Canadian Feast. 
II 
     Poor little Antoine! He does not mind.
          It is all for the church, for a grand good cause,
     The nuns are so sweet and the priests so kind. 
     The martyr's spirit is fast enshrin'd
          In the tiny form that the ox-cart draws,
     Poor little Antoine, he does not mind. 
     Poor little soul, for the cords that bind
          Are stronger than ardor for fame or applause—
     The nuns are so sweet and the priests so kind. 
     And after the fete a feast is design'd—
          Locusts and honey are both in the clause—
     Brave little Antoine! He does not mind 
     The heat, nor the hungry demon twin'd
          Around his vitals that tears and gnaws,
     The nuns are so sweet and the priests so kind. 
     The dust is flying. The streets are lin'd
          With the panting crowd that prays for a pause.
     Poor little Antoine! He does not mind!
     The nuns are so sweet and the priests so kind.
Bonne fête!

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23 June 2020

Arthur Mayse: The Gift of His Extraordinary Life


 

At ten, The Beachcombers consumed a steady portion of my week – one half-hour each Sunday evening – and yet Arthur Mayse's name meant nothing to me. Truth be told, I never paid much attention to the show's credits. Mayse wrote four of the early episodes; they followed more than sixty short stories, novellas, and novels published in Liberty, Argosy, Collier's, Maclean's, and the Saturday Evening Post. They also followed three novels, including 1952's Desperate Search, a Post serial and Sears Book Club selection, which was adapted to the screen in a film starring Howard Keel and Jane Greer. IMDb has the trailer.


Arthur "Bill" Mayse was a Manitoban, born amongst the Swampy Cree to Baptist missionaries, though he lived most of his life in British Columbia, the province in which most of his fiction is set. A newspaperman, Mayse wrote for the Vancouver Sun, the Province, and was for thirty years a columnist for the Victoria Times-Colonist. His obituary appeared in the same edition as his final column.

I moved from Montreal to Vancouver not long after Arthur Mayse died. In my fifteen years in British Columbia – eight of which I served on the Executive of the Federation of BC Writers (two as Vice-President, two as President) – I never once heard anyone mention his name.

How can this be?

Arthur Mayse lived a most remarkable life. This early part of his Vancouver Sun obituary (25 March 1992), penned by son-in-law Stephen Hume, gives a sense of what we lost in his passing:
He knew Cowichan shamans, Sointula pukka fighters, tame apes from the A-frame camps, Chinese laborers, unrepentant Wobblies. More than anything, he knew and loved the country. He lived it, breathed it, fished it and sometimes despaired at what was being done to it in the ignorant clamor called progress.
      He was an ace reporter for The Province from the day he was hired out of UBC, a prize-winning poet one course short of graduation. He'd been freelancing pieces at space rates until the managing editor noticed he earned more from his column-inch scale than reporters did on full salary and hired him to save money.
     In 1933, covering the first ascent of Mount Waddington, highest peak in the Coast Range and a notorious killer of climbers, he packed carrier pigeons to the high base camp. Hawks picked them off at the treeline, so he did a solo descent through brutal terrain, bushwhacked his way to tidewater, cat danced the log booms and sweet-talked a tugboat skipper into taking him downcoast to file his exclusive story.
It ends:
When word of his death came, we went outside and looked into a night sky blazing with stars. The Big Dipper wheeled down toward the horizon, the same constellation Bill watched from Cowichan Bay in his dugout canoe (heisted for him by shaman Cultus Tommy) as a boy so long ago. It seemed right that he should escape weary age and sorrow at the hinge of the year. He died just before dawn. It was equinox, the first day of spring. We took his two-year-old granddaughter to a sea-run cutthroat beach –  a child he loved, a place he loved – and gave thanks for the gift of his extraordinary life.
Extraordinary indeed.

It wasn't until this month that I'd read anything by Arthur Mayse. The strength of that work, his debut novel Perilous Passage, sent me off on a tear through the short stories he published in Maclean's. It's sad to think that they came and went with each new issue – none were ever collected – and yet I can't help but appreciate a time in which fiction featured in our best magazines. And I can't help but admire the artists who provided illustrations for his stories.

15 February 1940
1 April 1945
15 May 1945
15 September 1945
15 October 1946
15 March 1951

Does "The Hex-Man of Croacker's Creek" have anything to do with "The Hexman," one of Mayse's Beachcombers scripts?

The question might be addressed in the introduction to a collection of his short stories.

Is the publication of such a thing not overdue?

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