The Ten Best Book Buys of 2021... and much more!

A better year than last, right? I got out more, raised pints in pubs, saw my daughter, and spent seven days touring Quebec City and the Eastern Townships. Hell, I even saw a movie in a theatre.

I also visited more bookstores, though a depressingly small number were worth the effort. Six of this year's ten best buys were purchased online. Ted Allan's pseudonymously published Quest for Pajaro (London: Heinemann, 1957) is my favourite. I'd known about about this science fiction romance since 1983, but in all the years that passed had never come across a copy.

No surprise, I suppose.

Quest for Pajaro was published in 1957 by Heinemann. There was no Canadian edition. Was anyone distributing Heinemann in Canada back then? If so, were they aware that "Edward Maxwell" was in fact Montrealer Ted Allan?

Doubt it.

I purchased Quest for Pajaro after having been invited to comment on Allan's work at this year's Toronto Jewish Film Festival. While not his best book, it is his most intriguing. There hadn't been many many Canadian science fiction romances before 1957 – still aren't. What's more, the novel's linchpin is an experimental jet known as the "Arrow."

Bruce Petty's gorgeous jacket illustration puts it over the top.

What follows is the rest of the ten best:

Willie the Squowse

Ted Allan
Toronto: McClelland &

   Stewart, 1977

The author's only children's book, this tale of a talented squowse (offspring of a squirrel and a mouse) proved one of the most enjoyable and life-affirming reads of the year. The fifty – fifty! – Quentin Blake illustrations brought further joy.

Whispering City
Horace Brown
Pickering, ON: Global

   Publishing, 1947

Horace Brown's adaptation of this film noir shot in Quebec City, for years I'd hoped to find a reasonably-priced copy. This year I did (US$89.95).

Can it be as good as The Penthouse Killings? Please tell me it's better than Murder in the Rough.

Blood on My Rug
E. Louise Cushing
New York: Arcadia, 1956

A mystery novel that begins with the discovery of a body in a Montreal bookstore, since I'd long been searching for this novel. Might it be a candidate for reissue as a Ricochet Book?

Nope.

Still, I'm still happy to have it in my collection.

Let Not Man Put Asunder
Basil King

New York: Grosset & Dunlap,

   [n.d]

Though it's been two years since I bought, never mind reviewed, a Basil King novel, I leapt at this one. Let Not Man Put Asunder is either the seventh or eighth King novel to be adapted by Hollywood. IMDb does not recognize, but I have this photoplay edition as evidence.

 

Toute la Vie
Claire Martin

Quebec: Éditions de L'instant

   même, 1999

I've admired Claire Martin since reading Dans un gant de fer in CEGEP. David Lobdell's translation of her Doux-Amer deserves a return to print. Imagine the thrill in finding three signed Martins during my recent visit to Quebec City. This is one.

In Spite of Myself: A Memoir
Christopher Plummer
Toronto: Random House,

   2009

I regret many things in leaving our St Marys home, not the least of which involves selling thirteen-hundred books, In Spite of Myself amongst them.

I'm slowly been buying them back. This signed copy was found at the Kemptville Youth Centre Book Fair.

Beautiful Joe

Marshall Saunders
Toronto: Standard

   Publishing, 1897

I own many copies of Beautiful Joe, but this is by far the most... um, beautiful. At one dollar, it was the least expensive book I purchased this year.

The Countess of Aberdeen provides an introduction!

Menaud, maître-draveur

Félix-Antoine Savard
Ottawa: Éditions Fides, 1967

Another Quebec City find, I came upon this inscribed, slip-cased edition on the very same day I made my pilgrimage to the author's home.

I vow to read it in the New Year.

Poldrate Street
Garnett Weston
New York: Messner, 1944

This old novel proved to be 2021's most unpleasant, stomach-turning read. Voyeurism, adultery, greed, murder, and something approaching necrophilia figure.

Good fun from a Toronto boy who made a killing in Hollywood before retiring to Vancouver island.

Two generous souls donated books to the Dusty Bookcase this year.

Lee Goldberg noted my interest in the novels of former Vancouver newspaperman Tom Ardies (Their Man in the White House, Kosygan is Coming) and was kind enough to send me newly published copies of This Briefcase is Going to Explode, Pandemic, Balboa Firefly, and Manila Time (the latter two written under Ardies' Jack Trolley nom de plume). 

Lee is in the process of reissuing Ardies' entire bibliography through Brash Books.

More power to him! 

Fraser Sutherland died this earlier this year. I was honoured to have been asked to provide an obituary for the Globe & Mail. One of the greatest challenges in its writing concerned family, specifically the name of a sibling, an older brother, who had died at a young age. Our newspaper of record is insistent on such things. It seemed not one of Fraser's friends could quite remember... and then one came through, which led me to this uncommon chapbook:

Published in 1976 by Northern Journey Press, Within the Wound is dedicated to that brother, Hugh Sutherland (1941-1965). I shared this discovery with Fraser's good friend, Adrian King-Edwards of Montreal's Word Bookstore, who in turn presented me with this copy.

RIP, Fraser. You are much missed.

Related posts:

Love is a Long Shot on the Nose

He and His Arrow

Little Willie, Willie Won't Go Home
Horace Brown: From Penthouse to Pavement
Horace  Brown: Saturday Matinee
No Whack on the Side of the Head
Montreal Most Strange (w/ mysterious directions)

Claire Martin at the Beginning of the Quiet Revolution

Packing Up the Dusty Bookcases

Blue Plaque Special: Quebec City Edition

The Dead of a Dead End Street

A Russian is Coming! A Russian is Coming!
Have Bomb - Will Travel

The 1921 Globe 100 206: Don't Mention the War

The Globe, 3 December 1921

The 1921 edition of 'Recent Books and the Outlook,' the Globe's annual list of best books, begins on a positive note: "Author's and publishers have had an unhappy experience during the past few years owing to conditions which they could not control, but the current season has a distinctly better tone."

The Great War must surely have ranked as the preeminent condition. There were years in which the conflict came close to dominating 'Recent Books and the Outlook.' The 1920 edition had an entire section devoted to books about the war:

Not only is the Great War barely mentioned in the 1921 'Recent Books and the Outlook,' just three of its 206 books are related to the bloodshed just twenty-four months past. Great War poetry disappears entirely... and with it poetry. I exaggerate, but only slightly. Eight volumes of verse are listed, down from nineteen the previous year; four are Canadian:

My Pocket Beryl - Mary Josephine Benson

Later Poems - Bliss Carman

Bill Boram: A Ballad - Robert Norwood

Beauty and Life - Duncan Campbell Scott

I'm not familiar with any of these titles, but have read and reviewed Robert Service's 1921 Ballads of a Bohemian. To this point, the Bard of the Yukon had been a 'Recent Books and the Outlook' favourite;' I'd thought Ballads of a Bohemian a shoo-in. Is Bill Boram: A Ballad so much better? I must investigate.

As in years past, fiction makes up the biggest category; their number is seventy-two, the star being If Winter Comes by A.S.M. Hutchinson:

Hutchinson's achievement aside, the Globe is disappointed by foreign offerings:

Fiction in other countries has been disappointing during the last year, and has certainly not proved as rich as biography or history. American readers fall into two classes says the New York Times Book Review, those who like John Dos Passos' "The Three Soldiers" and those who do not.

The correct title is Three Soldiers.

It doesn't make the list.

My copy
(New York: Doran, 1921)

Where foreign writers of fiction disappoint, Canadians flourish. A record twenty-four Canadian fiction titles figure. Or is it twenty-three? Twenty-two?

The Lone Trail - Luke Allan

Anne of the Marshland - Lady Byng

Barriers - Lady Byng

To Him That Hath - Ralph Connor

The Lobstick Trail - Douglas Durkin

The Gift of the Gods - Pearl Foley

Red Meekins - W.A. Fraser

Maria Chapdelaine - Louis Hemon [trans W.H. Blake]

Maria Chapdelaine - Louis Hemon [trans Andrew Macphail]

The Quest of Alistair - Robert A. Hood

The Hickory Stick - Nina Moore Jamieson

Little Miss Melody - Marian Keith

The Empty Sack - Basil King

The Conquest of Fear - Basil King

Partner of Chance - H.H. Knibbs

Miriam of Queen's - Lillian Vaux MacKinnon

The Snowshoe Trail - Edison Marshall

The Window Gazer - Isabel Ecclestone MacKay

Purple Springs - Nellie McClung

Rilla of Ingleside - L.M. Montgomery

Are All Men Alike? - Arthur Stringer

The Spoilers of the Valley - Robert Watson

Let's ignore the misspelling of Isabel Ecclestone Mackay's surname, shall we. Louis Hémon's, too. Interesting to see both Maria Chapdelaine translations, don't you think? What really intrigues is the inclusion of Basil King's The Conquest of Fear.

As my 1942 World Library edition (above) suggests, The Conquest of Fear is a work of philosophy. The Globe describes it at a novel:

The inclusion of Arthur Stringer's Are All Men Alike? is just as intriguing. The author published two books in 1921, the other being his heart-breaking roman à clef The Wine of Life. By far the finest Stringer I've read thus far, my dream is to one day bring out an edition featuring the twenty-four James Montgomery Flagg illustrations it inspired.

My collection of the Globe's 1921 Canadian "fiction" titles

Is Are All Men Alike? superior to The Wine of Life?

I haven't read it, nor have I read Jess of the Rebel Trail or Little Miss Melody. I have read Miriam of Queen's and The Window Gazer, both of which disappointed. The Empty Sack is my very favourite Basil King title, and yet it too pales beside The Wine of Life.

Or is it better? Are they all better?

What do I know? I think Three Soldiers is the best novel of 1921.

Yes, I'm one of those who like it.

Related posts:

Best Books of 1920: Beware the Bolshevik Poets

The Globe 100 One Hundred Years Ago: Poets are Struck Dumb

and Capitalism Proves Embarrassing (1919)

The Globe 100 178 of 2018

The Season's Best Books in Review - A.D. 1917:

The String of Canadian Patriotism is Fingered

The Season's Best Books in Review - A.D. 1916

The Season's Best Books in Review – A.D. 1915;

Featuring the Best Canadian Book Ever Published

Rhyming Leads to Ruin

Back to School With Miriam of Queen's

The Great Canadian Post-Great War Novel?

Romance Amongst the Racists

Arthur Stringer's The Wine of Life

Portraits of a Marriage: James Montgomery Flagg and Arthur Stringer's Wine of Life 

Talking John Glassco With Patricia Godbout

Last week, I has the pleasure of joining Alexandra Irimia, Bilal Hashmi, Patricia Godbout, Phyllis Aronoff, and Arianne Des Rochers for the 2021 John Glassco Translation Prize Gala.

My congratulations to this year's recipient Luba Markovskaia for Notes de terrain pour la toundra alpine, her translation of Elena Johnson's Field Notes for the Alpine Tundra.

The streamed event has been preserved for posterity on YouTube:

Arianne Des Rocher delivers the jury statement at 51:40, which is followed by Luba Markovskaia's acceptance speech.
 
Beginning at 19:45, my participation takes the form of a discussion of Glassco's life and work with Patricia Godbout. Host Alexandra Irimia serves as moderator. What a pleasure it was to finally meet Prof Godbout... if only virtually. She's does such good work. I've long admired her Traduction littéraire et sociabilité interculturelle au Canada (1950-1960).

Here's hoping for a healthier 2022, and that the John Glassco Translation Prize Gala can return to being an in-person event.

I need an excuse to buy a new suit.

The Dustiest Bookcase: T is for Trueman

The Dustiest Bookcase:

Short pieces on books I've always meant to review (but haven't).

Cousin Elva
Stuart Trueman
Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1955
224 pages

I prefer my humour dark, which pretty much explains why I haven't read this mid-century comic novel. The jacket copy discourages:

What does it say about me that I have have no interest in a group of lovable characters? What does it mean that I don't want to read "a truly happy book."

Nothing good, I expect.

Did McClelland & Stewart do its author a disservice? It wouldn't be the first time. And I do like Trueman's illustrations.

Do Cousin Elva, Mr Bogson, Dr Fergus, Nathaniel Scribner, and luscious Beth Hailley rank amongst the most extraordinary characters in Canadian literature?

I'll be the judge of that... just not this year.

No Weddings and Three Funerals

Quebec in Revolt
Herman Buller
Toronto: Swan, 1966
352 pages

The cover has all the look of a 1960s polemic, but Quebec in Revolt is in fact a historical novel. Its key characters are depicted on the title pages:

At far left is Joseph Guibord, he of the Guibord Affair.

The Guibord Affair?

Like Gordon Sinclair, one of twelve columnists and critics quoted on the back cover, the Guibord Affair meant nothing to me.

It most certainly didn't feature in the textbooks I was assigned in school. This is a shame because the Guibord Affair would've challenged classmates who complained that Canadian history was boring.

Here's what happened:

In 1844, Montreal typographer Joseph Guibord helped found the Institut canadien. An association dedicated to the principles of liberalism, its library included titles prohibited by the Roman Catholic Index – the Index Librorum Prohibitoru. These volumes, combined with the Institut's cultural and political activities, drew the condemnation of Ignace Bourget, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Montreal. In July 1869, Bourget issued a decree depriving members of the sacraments. Guibord died four months later.

Here's what happened next: 

Guibord's body was transported to a plot he'd purchased at Montreal's Catholic Notre-Dame-des-Neiges Cemetery, only to be refused burial by the Church. The remains found a temporary resting place at the Protestant Mount Royal Cemetery, while friend and lawyer Joseph Doutre brought a lawsuit on behalf of the widow Guibord. In 1874, after the initial court case and a series of appeals, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council ordered the burial. In response, Bourget deconsecrated Guibord's plot.

The second attempt at interment, on 2 September 1875, began at Mount Royal Cemetery:

At Notre-Dame-des-Neiges, a violent mob attacked, forcing a retreat to Mount Royal.

The third attempt, on 16 November, was accompanied by a military escort of over 1200 men. Guibord's coffin was encased in concrete so as to protect his body from vandals.

The sorry "Guibord Affair" spans the second half of the novel. The focus of the first half is the man himself. Young Guibord woos and weds Henriette Brown, the smallpox-scared orphaned daughter of a poor shoemaker. He moves up the ranks within Louis Perrault & Co, the printing firm in which he'd worked since a boy, eventually becoming manager of the entire operation.

Louis Perrault & Co, c.1869

Henriette and husband come to be joined by Della, the daughter of one of her distant Irish cousins. Poor girl, Della was part of the exodus brought on by the Potato Famine. Her father and lone sibling having died whilst crossing the Atlantic – mother soon to follow – she clings to life in one of the "pestilential sheds" built for accommodate diseased immigrants. The most dramatic scene in the novel has Joseph defying authority by lifting he girl from her sickbed and carrying her home. 

"Skin and bone had given way to flesh and curves," Della recovers and grows to become a headstrong young woman. Buller makes much of her breasts. Ever one to buck convention and authority, Della spurns marriage, has a lengthy sexual and intellectual relationship with journalist Arthur Buies, and ends up living openly with Joseph Doutre ("Josef" in the novel). Truly, a liberated woman; remarkable for her time.

I've yet to find evidence that Della existed.

Joseph Guibord's entry in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography informs that he and Henriette, a couple Buller twice describes as childless, had at least ten children. The entry for Joseph Doutre, whom the author portrays as a lifelong bachelor, records two marriages.

Were it not for the novel's Author's Note, pointing out that Guibord began his career working for John Lovell (not Louis Perrault), or that he was born on 31 March 1809 (not 1 April 1809), or that women didn't wear bustles in 1820s Montreal, might seem nit-picky.

The Swan paperback quotes Al Palmer, author of Montreal Confidential and Sugar Puss on Dorchester Street):

In fact, what Palmer wrote is this:

The Gazette, 19 November 1965

I expect there many more fabrications and errors in this novel and its packaging, but can't say for sure. Again, we didn't learn about the Guibord Affair in school.

About the author: Herman Buller joins Kenneth Orvis and Ernie Hollands as Dusty Bookcase jailbird authors. A lawyer, he rose to fame in the 'fifties as part of a baby-selling ring.

The Gazette, 13 February 1954

Buller was arrested at Dorval Airport on 12 February 1954 whilst attempting to board a flight to Israel with his wife and in-laws. The worst of it all – according to the French-language press – was that the lawyer had placed babies born to unwed Catholic women with Jewish couples.

La Patrie, 11 February 1954

Remarkably, Buller served just one day in prison. He paid a $20,000 fine, was disbarred, and was good to go.

Though Quebec in Revolt was published just eleven years after all this, not a single review mentioned of Buller's criminal past.

I hadn't heard of the Buller Affair (as I call it) until researching this novel, despite it having been  dramatized in Le berceau des anges (2015) a five-part Series+ series. Buller (played by Lorne Bass) is mentioned twenty-two seconds into the trailer. 

Fun fact: I read Quebec in Revolt during a recent stay at the Monastère des Augustines in Quebec City. 

Object and Access: A bulky, well-read mass-market paperback, my copy was purchased for one dollar this past summer at an antiques/book store in Spencerville, Ontario.

Quebec in Revolt was first published in 1965 by Centennial Press. If the back cover is to be believed, McKenzie Porter of the Toronto Telegram describes that edition as a "Canadian best seller." I've yet to come across a copy.

As of this morning, seven copies of Quebec in Revolt are listed for sale online. At US$6.00, the least expensive is offered by Thiftbooks: "Unknown Binding. Condition: Fair. No Jacket. Readable copy. Pages may have considerable notes/highlighting," Take a chance! Who knows what will arrive!

There are two Swan copies at US$8.00 and US$12.45. Prices for the Centennial edition range from US$10.00 (sans jacket) to US$24.00. 

Surprisingly, Quebec in Revolt enjoyed an Estonian translation: Ja mullaks ei pea sa saama... Google translates this as And you don't have to become soil... 

There hasn't been a French translation.

Is it any wonder?