15 February 2013

Curing the Flapper; or, Tough Love in the Jazz Age



White Hands
Arthur Stringer
Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1927

Imagine returning to your spacious Manhattan mansion after having spent five months away on business. It's after midnight, the place is unlit, sleeping servants do not serve, and your daughters – Patience ("Paddy") and Janet ("Jinny") – are nowhere to be found. Cocktail glasses, cigarette butts and a half-emptied carton of dried fruit have made a mess of the library. Your reading-table is covered with mauve-jacketed French novels. Paddy's room smells like a Turkish harem. Amongst powder-boxes, lip-sticks, rouge, mascara and "unidentifiable war-paint" you find copies of Ulysses and Casanova's Homecoming. The floor holds "a scattering of slippers, satin and suede and serpent-skin, some buckled and decorated with brilliants, vivid-colored and incredibly small and bewilderingly gay-looking, even in their careless disorder, as though they had been kicked aside by tiny feet tired of dancing , tired of the moan of saxophones and the throb of drums and negroid music that once pulsed along the banks of the Congo."


This is the scene that confronts widower John Winslow, the millionaire Pulpwood King. His nightmare worsens some time after two when Jinny – cold, beautiful Jinny – finally returns home:
"Where is your sister Patience?"
   His daughter's small shoulder-movement, insouciant and defiant, did not escape him.
   "Probably Daniel-Booning through the black-and-tans," was the deliberately callous retort.
   "Does she still sleep at home?" he demanded, prompted to match savagery with savagery.
   "When she sleeps," was the laconic reply.
Paddy does show up eventually, bandaged and brought home by young Peter Summers, the Winslow family doctor. Seems she's totalled yet another automobile, this time running into a baker's wagon carrying cream puffs.

What's a father to do? How to save his girls from becoming "empty-headed and selfish-spirited sensation-hounds?"

Winslow's answers come through his consideration Jinny's hands:
He could see the soft white skin over the phalanges, the skin that had been so carefully protected from wind and weather, from the casual blemishes of toil and time. They were futile and helpless hands, openly proclaiming their aloofness from manual labor, a symbol of her character, an index of her soul, a tribal advertisement of incompetency.
This, he realized, runs against nature. Those white hands were meant "for grasping, for intricate and cunning movements, for the accomplishment of womanly tasks."*

The Pulpwood King's plan is to install Paddy and Jinny in a rustic cabin at Adananak, his private island in Northern Ontario. A place without "beauty parlours and padded limousines and saxophone-bands and night-clubs and pink teas and putrid farces," he'll ground the girls by grounding them down, forcing them to live a life similar to their great-grandmother.

The sisters have some help in silent Indian Pierre Pecotte, who brings the odd morsel of food and instructs both in the fine art of moccasin-making.

You know, like great-grandma used to make.

How do the girls do? Well, Paddy has more than enough pluck to make a go of it, but Jinny is just too hardened.

Aside from Pierre, the only other contact with the world outside Adanak Island comes in the personages of Chief Black Hawk and brash bush pilot Casey Crowell. Like Pierre, the latter is a stereotype, but not so Black Arrow. A self-described Carlisle Indian, educated at Dickson College and Oxford, he became something of a hero in serving as a sniper during the Great War. "Then came a different kind of a fight," he tells Jinny. "I had an offer or two of inside work, after I got my discharge in Winnipeg. But I couldn't stand being shut up between four walls." He tried his hand at cow-punching, horse-breaking, but found himself turning increasingly to drink. Tired of it all, he made a decision to return to the ways of his ancestors.

Jinny is smitten by Black Arrow and her romantic vision of the noble savage. Such are her own charms that she woos the war vet into taking her back to the world he'd rejected. What happens next is all very exciting, with Casey Crowell, Peter Summers and John Winslow taking to the sky in order to save Jinny's virtue.

They needn't have worried.

Jinny might have fantasies about showing off Black Arrow at swanky Manhattan dinner parties, but beads of sweat form on his brow and body odour builds as he paddles and portages, carrying her southward. The romantic dream dissipated, Jinny strikes off on her own, gets lost and collapses, only to be rescued by Black Arrow. Unfortunately, her ill-fated trek has led both to the wall of an advancing forest fire. Black Arrow carries Jinny to safety – quite literally – but dies in the process.

Jinny learns of Black Arrow's death only after she's found by young Doctor Peter in the final pages. Any sadness and trace of guilt is swept away in what might be, before The Last Canadian, the very worst ending to a Canadian novel:
"Poor Dad," said Jinny, as Peter took her up in his arms. "I s'pose he's lost about empty million dollars' worth of timber in this awful fire."
   "But he's got you," Peter reminded her.
   "Will he want me?"
   "Well," said Peter, breathing a little heavily as he carefully lifted her over the cock-pit side, "if he doesn't, I do."
   But she wasn't listening to him. She was looking down at her hands, her sun-reddened and briar-scratched and work-hardened hands.
   "He won't be ashamed of 'em now, will he?" she said with a catch in her voice.
   You're talking too much," growled Peter, as the turning propeller flashed in the pallid sunlight. "I want you to keep quiet."
   "I won't," asserted the blanketed woman nested so close in his arms.
   "You'll have to," commanded Peter.
   "Well, I won't unless you kiss me," conceded Jinny. 
THE END
No, not Ulysses. Not even Casanova's Homecoming.

Object: My copy, fairly fragile and lacking jacket, was purchased last December at a London bookstore located just two kilometres from the author's second childhood home. I'm guessing that it's at best first edition, second state, coming after copies bound in red cloth with gold lettering.

Access: The Bobbs-Merrill edition appears to have been printed as a split-run with McClelland & Stewart. A cheap A.L. Burt reprint followed, which in turn was followed by nothing. The novel is in the public domain in Canada, but I'm not about to suggest that any publisher take it on.

Anyone wishing to add the Bobbs-Merrill White Hands to their collection will find plenty of decent jacketless copies going for five dollars and less. Expect to pay six times as much for the uncommon McClelland & Stewart Canadian edition. The only first edition – American – listed with dust jacket is going for US$165.

The novel is found in the public libraries of Chatham-Kent and London, as well as eleven of our university libraries. Once again, Library and Archives Canada fails.

* See: Case 90 in Richard von Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia Sexualis.

11 February 2013

Harlequin: The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name


Gay Canadian Rogues
Frank Rasky
1958
Gay Cavalier
Alex Stuart [pseud. Barbara Allen]
1967
The Gay Gordons
Barbara Allen
1967
The Strange Quest of Nurse Anne
Mary Burchell
1965
Framed in Guilt
Day Keene [pseud. Gunnar Hjerstedt]
1953

Related posts:

08 February 2013

Harper Hockey Book Watch: Year Nine, Day 237



As expected, rumours of a ghostwriter grow, fuelled in large measure by Globe & Mail columnist John Barber naming Roy MacGregor as the phantom. Short hours later, the description was scrubbed with "ghostwriter" changed to "editorial consultant". This "editor's note" has been appended to the story online:
Roy MacGregor acted as an editorial consultant on Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s hockey history book. An earlier version of this story referred to Mr. MacGregor as a "ghostwriter."
I repeat my belief that Mr Harper wrote the forthcoming book himself. Yep, everything except the title... and he might just get around to that, too.

Not to say that some polishing was in order... or that it wasn't done by another hand.

No, I suggest that Mr Barber's piece contains something significant that is being overlooked in all this speculation over the spectral:
The Prime Minister had no role in choosing a publisher for his book, according to Toronto lawyer Michael Levine, who brokered the deal. "These were all my decisions, these were not his decisions at all," Mr. Levine said, adding it was "extremely important" to achieve North American distribution for the English-language edition. "Obviously, we’re in a very transitional time in the publishing business here, and I talked to everybody, but I felt this was the best deal for him because of the enormous commitment on both the American and Canadian side of the border," Mr. Levine said.
An observation:

Last February, a few days before the decision was to be made, Bruce Westwood of Westwood Creative Agency – Mr Levine is Chairman – told the Toronto Star that it was the prime minister who would choose the publisher: "There’s a lot of interest in the book. We are in negotiations. We have to go with [Harper’s] decision."

Emphasis mine.

A query:

To what does Mr Levine refer when he speaks of the enormous commitment on both the American and Canadian side of the border? I'm going to say that it's Simon & Schuster. Conspiracy theorists will say that all begins with Republican consultant Frank Luntz, who in May 2006 advised our new Conservative Party to feed on Canadians’ love of the game.


Full disclosure: I've paid many a bill as a ghostwriter myself. Make of that what you will.

Note: In writing this piece I was twice logged out "from another location". Again, make of that what you will.

Related posts:

07 February 2013

Harper Hockey Book Watch: Year Nine, Day 236



What a day this turned out to be!

Activity began early with 'Details of Stephen Harper's hockey book to be revealed', a story by Marsha Lederman, posted at 5:00 am EST on the Globe and Mail website. Begins the journalist:
Publication details of Stephen Harper’s long-awaited hockey book are expected to be announced imminently, likely on Thursday, according to a source close to the deal.
Thursday? You mean today?

Oh, but who could take Ms Lederman seriously? After all, her anemic story – 123-words in length – refers to the book, which the PM has been going on about since 2005, as an "open secret".  Then we have the matter of the publisher. Ms Lederman describes this as being "kept under careful wraps", but it's been two full weeks since Stephen Maher broke the story that Simon & Schuster had won the rights. Finally, there's this: "Mr. Harper is a serious hockey fan – a member of the Society for International Hockey Research – and can often be seen attending NHL games."

Oh, for goodness sake. How many times must I address this issue? Look, it's far more difficult to join Costco than it is the Society for International Hockey Research. Much more expensive, too.

The eyes did roll, but Ms Lederman turned out to be right. Short hours later, Simon & Schuster announced a November pub date for the long-awaited tome. We learned also that there's still no title for Mr Harper's book. Roy MacGregor's name was mentioned for the first time, to no one's surprise – he's been providing our PM with "editorial services". No mention of Greg Stoicoiu... or, for that matter, George Pepki.

I look forward to the book, and am betting it will be a solid piece of work. But the most welcome bit of news is that all author royalties will go to the Military Families Fund. Makes sense. After all, our PM is well-aware of the challenges facing those who serve and have served this country, whether it be fighting his government for benefitsfighting his government for pension claims, fighting his government's clawbacks on disabled veterans, fighting his government's spying on and smearing of veterans (and cover-up of same). The very minute that Simon & Schuster's press release began to circulate, Major Marcus Brauer appeared on The Current to speak to the financial hardship incurred by today's military families.

Yes, the PM is more aware than most of the challenges facing our military. The funding provided by his hockey book will, I'm sure, be welcome. It's just a pity that he isn't more prolific.


Related posts:

04 February 2013

A Comic Book Artist's Absurd Murder Mystery



Artists, Models and Murder
Tedd Steele
Toronto: News Stand Library, 1948
141 pages

This review now appears, revised and rewritten, in my new book:
The Dusty Bookcase:
A Journey Through Canada's
Forgotten, Neglected, and Suppressed Writing
Available at the very best bookstores and through



02 February 2013

Miss Cameron Does Mrs Mackay an injustice


Following Thursday's post on The House of Windows by Isabel Ecclestone Mackay:

An adventurer, educator, lecturer and suffragette, there's so much to admire in Agnes Deans Cameron (1863-1912) that I'm willing to overlook her membership in the Women's Christian Temperance Union. Sadly, I have today discovered another flaw, this in the form of her review of The House of Windows from the July 1912 issue of Canada Monthly:
Isabel Ecclestone Mackay's new book does something of a tardy justice to the romance of Canada's Pacific Coast. Men like London, Service and Hough have written of Alaska. But although Victoria and Vancouver breathe romance, and the sea-battered isles of the coast hide fantastic stories, they have as yet got but little into print. It is too bad that Mrs. Mackay has not emphasized more the locale of "The House of Windows" (Cassell & Co., Toronto) and made it manifestly impossible for the story to have happened anywhere but on the shores of Burrard Inlet. The scene is laid in a coast city, and then is carried afield to a curious, rambling old roadhouse on an inland highway. The heroine is a slip of a clerk in a department store, and her adventures are exciting enough, comprising a mystery of birth, a secret love affair, a revenge, an abduction and a rescue. The girl herself is pleasantly drawn, and her lover is a convincingly adequate young man with the resource of the west. Curiously enough, the impression that remained longest with the reviewer was that of old Granny Bates clawing in the ashes of the fire to find Christine's little grey silk glove.
   The book is charmingly written, and moves smoothly, but there is yet to come the writer who will paint with bold strokes Vancouver as the reviewer saw it in a certain May.
You see, The House of Windows doesn't take place in Vancouver. We know this because Mark, Miss Cameron's "convincingly adequate young man," is sent there by family so as to get him away from "pleasantly drawn" Christine. The fleeting glimpses of the city are limited to a couple of letters he sends back east, one of which forms the whole of a chapter entitled, appropriately, "From Vancouver."

The mystery of birth, the secret love affair, the revenge, the abduction and the rescue, all take place in and around an unnamed eastern city, which as I've noted, appears to have been modelled on Toronto. This is all so obvious, one can only conclude that Miss Cameron didn't read the novel. I will allow that she thumbed through it's 338 pages, encountered "Vancouver" a few times, and read the scene in which old Granny Bates searches for Christine's little grey silk glove.

And yes, that scene is memorable.