03 March 2014

Recycling Richard Rohmer



Separation Two
Richard Rohmer
Markham, ON: PaperJacks, 1981

March has come in like a lion, but those of us committed to reading Richard Rohmer in '14 continue unfazed. We're now six books into the man's oeuvre. Quite an achievement, I think you'll agree, but not nearly so impressive as it sounds. Rohmer has a habit of repeating himself, going over the same facts and past events as if aware that the reader wasn't paying much attention the first time around. Sometimes it's figures about natural gas reserves, pipeline capacity or technical details about the C-130 Hercules, but mostly it's an just a summary of his previous novel.

The first fifth of Exxoneration is a revisionist retelling of Ultimatum. Rohmer does something similar in Separation, before tacking on the final chapter of Exodus/UK.

More lifted filler follows.

With Separation Two, however, Rohmer takes repetition and recycling to a level not seen since the days of Thomas P. Kelley.

This is no sequel to Separation, Rohmer's 1976 bestseller, but a reissue sandwiched between four short chapters about Alberta separatism and an oil man's attempt to assassinate the prime minister. It's a shaky union, made all the more so by haphazard editing.

In the original, a severe economic crisis prompts the UK to ask whether Canada will accept millions of British immigrants. Quebec threatens to separate if Ottawa agrees; Alberta and BC threaten to separate if it does not. There's also lots of superfluous stuff about North Sea oil reserves, off-shore platforms, pipelines, along with an entirely irrelevant four-page UK/US energy agreement copied from Exodus/UK.


In Separation Two, Alberta is “prepared to take the British immigrants”, but doesn't really care much either way. The prospect of several hundred thousand economic refugees flooding into the province? Please. What  concerns Albertans are oil profits and "the budget that asshole in Ottawa threw at us".

The thing about that asshole, Prime Minister Joe Roussel (read: Pierre Trudeau), is that he's stuck repeating everything he said in Separation, things that simply don't fit Separation Two, like when he tells a crowd amassed on Parliament Hill: “British Columbia and Alberta have notified the federal government that if we do not take the British immigrants those provinces will succeed.”

What?

When?

Why in the original book, of course. The threat comes in a fleeting scene with the BC premier, a minor character that does not appear in Separation Two.

See, it's not the asshole's fault, it's the author and editor.


It seems that Separation Two was born out of disappointing mass market sales of Separation. As is so often the case in his fiction, the Americans are at fault. Sandra Martin got a reluctant Rohmer to discuss his rewrite in the 13 June 1981 Globe & Mail:
According to Rohmer, someone at Bantam in New York who knew nothing about Canada and less about art, designed the cover and wrote the copy on the back. Then the book was launched in Canada "without promotion" even though a television film of the book was in the works. The paperback was "a disaster." "It died and when it went out of print about a year ago, the rights reverted to me." In the meantime, Rohmer had moved to General Publishing, which wanted to re-release Separation in their PaperJacks line. Rohmer agreed, but suggested the book should be updated. And that's how Separation II [sic], which Rohmer suggests is "the same book yet different," came about.
Okay, a few quick observations:
  • As a  teenager I owned that Bantam (Bantam/Seal, actually) copy of Separation. I remember it as being far superior to previous Rohmer covers in that it was something more than 72-point type against a grey or white background.
  • I very much doubt the unnamed New York-based artist who designed the cover also wrote the back copy.
  • Rohmer dodged a bullet in not having a tie-in edition to that gawdawful made-for-TV flick.
  • Oh, for the days in which a three-year mass market run was considered "a disaster."
What I really want to address is the idea that Separation Two is "the same book yet different". No argument there, but why give it a different title? A novelist revisiting a work is not without precedent – hell, Dickens changed the ending to Great Expectations – but I can't help but think that PaperJacks was trying to pull a fast one. It really does stink. Nowhere in the cover copy is there so much as a hint that Separation Two is just Separation with a few dozen pages added. In fact, both bibliography and copyright page labour to give the impression that Separation is something altogether different.

Whatever does this mean for Ultimatum 2?

Update: Turns out my memory of the Bantam/Seal edition was spot on. The cover is by Paul Lehr, an American artist remembered primarily for his work on science fiction titles. I see no evidence that he wrote cover copy.  


Note: Much of this post is consists of observations I first made on the Reading Richard Rohmer blog. I've learned from the master.


Object and Access: A cheaply produced mass market paperback, most public library copies fell apart long ago. There are plenty of used copies listed for sale online. I've yet to find evidence of a second printing, so all are first editions, right?

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01 March 2014

Freedom to Read Week: Selected Salacious Filth Found in a Toronto Controller's Dresser Drawer


David A. Balfour
1889 - 1956
RIP
The joke that is Rob Ford isn't funny anymore, right? We all know where he's heading, the only real question is whether he'll be taking anyone with him. Torontonians, take extra care as you cross at the intersection, a black Cadillac Escalade may be just around the corner. 

No, not that funny at all. That's where Ford breaks with the buffoons of the city's past, my favourite being Controller David Balfour. If the name seems familiar, it may be that you've once strolled through Toronto's David A. Balfour Park.*

Balfour was no friend of parks, once calling for the removal of all flower beds, but his real foe was reds. He saw them everywhere, pressuring both Queen's Park and Ottawa to round up anyone he considered a communist leader. This included aldermen and Hewlett Johnson, Dean of Canterbury, who once dared speak in his city. Reds taught children to spit on the cross, claimed Balfour, adding that Bathurst United Church was a centre of communism. A Catholic, the controller fought Ontario Attorney-General Leslie Blackwell's move to  regulate bingo operators.

When not protecting children from those who would teach them to spit, he was working to shield their eyes and those of their parents from "salacious books" being circulated by lending libraries. Balfour's obsessive focus on "immoral literature" provided many column inches for Globe & Mail City Hall reporter Frank Tumpane. The six on the right come from the 22 March 1947 edition.

Balfour was a great collector of the material he sought to ban, encouraging others in the battle to send filth his way. "I stick them in the top drawer of my dresser," he told council. "I'm ashamed of them."

The controller was short on titles, amassing a lengthy list that he was never  willing to share. However, over the years he did mention five titles, one of which was Jan Peel's The Bed and the Blonde (Toronto: News Stand Library, 1949). I don't have a copy in the top drawer of my dresser, so can't provide a cover image. Here are the rest:

Forever Amber
Kathleen Winsor
New York: Macmillan, 1944
Kitty
Rosamond Marshall
Toronto: Collins White Circle,  1944
Duchess Hotspur
Rosamond Marshall
Toronto: Collins White Circle, 1947
The Flesh is Willing
James Clayford
Toronto: News Stand Library, 1949
A fin de la semaine bonus:

The Globe & Mail, 30 September 1949
* David Balfour is, of course, also the name of the central character in Robert Lewis Stevenson's Kidnapped, which was published just three years before the controller's birth. I'm not certain that this wasn't just a coincidence.

28 February 2014

Freedom to Read Week: Condemned by Coren



How Do You Spell Abducted?
Cherylyn Stacey
Red Deer, AB: Red Deer College Press, 1996

Newspaper columnists don't always write their headlines, but I think Michael Coren had something to do with this one:
TAXES FUND OFFENSIVE CHILDREN'S BOOK ABOUT ABUSIVE FATHER:
Suddenly your dad is no longer a man to be loved or trusted
Published in the 31 July 1996 edition of the Financial Post, the column that followed lit amassing gas beneath the seat of Alberta backbencher Julius Yankowsky, who called for the book to be banned and its publisher's funding to be pulled. The MLA aped the columnist, repeating Coren's assertion that it was "hate literature", all the while acknowledging that he hadn't actually read the thing. After all, How Do You Spell Abducted? is 135 pages long, and some of the words have eight letters. Just look at that title!

A few months later in Books in Canada, Coren reported that the controversy he'd started over Do You Spell Abducted? had been "so much fun" – his words, not mine… as are these:
It begins with bad old Dad, divorced from good old Mum, forcing his way into his ex-wife's bedroom and screaming at her until she weeps. He then kidnaps the kids and they are so terrified they think he might kill them all and then commit suicide.
Well, no.

Dad never forces his way into any room, least of all his ex-wife's bedroom. Mum does indeed weep, which has been known to happen in divorces. Dad leaves with the kids on what is meant to be a vacation, but it soon becomes clear that he has no intention of returning. That stuff about the kids being "so terrified they think he might kill them all and then commit suicide" was fabricated by Coren; it isn't in the book.

Michael Coren is currently employed by the Sun News Network.


Not to be outdone or ignored, in the 19 August 1996 Western Report an anonymous reporter bravely worked to fan dying embers with the claim that "the fictional father threatened to kill or prostitute his progeny". It's a lie, plain and simple, but then the late magazine was never tied to the truth. More crap follows:
Her book features three other men: a crabby oldster, a fat and stupid state trooper and a good Samaritan who has been unjustly denied legal access to his own children.
There is no "crabby oldster" in the novel. The state trooper, girth never mentioned, is pretty sharp. The good Samaritan, named Dusty Andover, is a very fine and generous gentleman. He has never been denied access, legal or otherwise, to his children, though there is estrangement. Dusty's adult offspring – no sexes mentioned – begrudge his having spent their inheritances in fighting their mother's cancer.

How Do You Spell Abducted? is a rotten title, but the book isn't half bad. The characters, particularly the father, are well drawn. The plot is believable, disturbingly so, though the resolution is forced and fantastical.

I can say these things because, you see, I've read the book. I have Michael Coren to thank for bringing it to my attention.


Object: An unattractive trade-size paperback. The cover illustration by Jeff Hitch depicts a scene that does not feature in the novel.

Access:
It will be forgotten before we can say 'bleeding-heart neurotic'.
— Michael Coren, Books in Canada, Oct 1996
Found in most of our larger public libraries. Used copies are cheap, but I encourage anyone considering purchase to buy it new. Yep, How Do You Spell Abducted? is still available. Setting It Right, Michael Coren's book from the same year is long out of print.

26 February 2014

Freedom to Read Week: Eight Men Speak



Freedom to Read Week Hump Day. Have you bought your banned book yet? If not, may I suggest Eight Men Speak? Written in 1933, reissued just last year by University of Ottawa Press, it's not so much a banned book as a banned play once – only once – staged as part of an effort to free Communist Party of Canada leader Tim Buck from Kingston Penitentiary. The Toronto Police didn't approve, nor did their Winnipeg brothers.

The Globe & Mail, May Day, 1934
The Ottawa Citizen, 2 May 1934
Where mail carriers once worked to prevent its spread, today's will happily deliver Eight Men Speak to your door… er, post box.

25 February 2014

Freedom to Read Week: Robertson Davies' Dad Against Censorship (and Misleading Cover Art)


Senator William Rupert Davies
12 September 1879 - 11 March 1967
RIP
For my part, I do not believe this senate has any business at all legislating what I or anyone else should read. This is a free country, and we are not the keepers of our brothers' consciences to that extent. It would be going to far to try to tell adult Canadians what they should read… I think we should have confidence in the rising generation and try not to protect them too much. After all, character is formed by overcoming obstacles and resisting temptation.
— William Rupert Davies, 5 May 1953  

The Globe & Mail, 6 May 1953

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24 February 2014

Freedom to Read Week: Catherine Seppala, the Book Burning Mayor of Fort William, Ontario


Catherine Seppala
1907 - 1975
RIP
Day Two of Freedom to Read Week, but I consider this the real beginning.

Welcome to the working week.

Looking over past Freedom to Read Week posts, I see I've written about personal heroes – Jean-Charles Harvey, Irving Layton, Norman Levine, F.R. Scott, and Dana Porter – while casting much more light on villains like Howard Burrell, Len Wynn, Raoul Mercier, Premier Maurice Duplessis, Fr. Harrigan, Col. Colin Harding, Sgt. John Watson, Det.-Lt. Lucien Quintal, and the forbidden books card catalogue of Lt.-Col. (Ret'd) John Merner.*

It probably doesn't reflect well on me that I focus so much on those who seek to suppress… and here I am doing it again with Catherine Seppala, once Mayor of Fort William, Ontario.

There's a good deal to admire about Mrs Seppala: she was a conservationist, a dedicated volunteer, a city councillor and Chair of Fort William's carnival queen contest.

The News-Courier (Charleston, SC) 10 January 1956
In 1959, she was elected Fort William's first and only female mayor. Sadly, the accomplishment is marred by abuse of power. It all began when the newly elected mayor visited the offices of the Central News Company and "suggested" to manager Henry Batho that he remove all copies of Lady Chatterley's Lover from city news stands. So persuasive was Mrs Seppala that Mr Bathos not only removed the book from sale, but received permission to use the city's incinerator in burning all seven hundred or so copies.

The Globe & Mail, 13 October 1959
Mr Bathos later told The Globe & Mail that he had feared a lawsuit. The same report has Mayor Seppela admitting that she hadn't actually read the Lady Chatterley's Lover, but she fully intended to one day. Ignorance in no way prevented her from deeming the novel as "a dirty rotten piece of filth", "the dirtiest thing ever put into print." "I will not hesitate to enforce a ban", she warned.

Condemnation followed, the most noteworthy coming in not one but two Globe & Mail editorials. Here's the second, published 14 October 1959:

(cliquez pour agrandir)
And then there were the letters; so many that I offer but a sampling:

The Globe & Mail, 7 October 1959
The Globe & Mail, 19 October 1959
The Globe & Mail, 27 October 1959
Mrs Seppala seems to have been undaunted, mailing a copy of Lady Chatterley's Lover to Minister of Justice Davie Fulton and asking whether he considered it obscene. Minister Fulton's response was to remind the mayor that her local police had the ability to launch test cases against publications they believed to be prohibited under the Criminal Code.

How far Mayor Seppala was willing to go is anyone's guess. A few months into the crusade she was struck by ill health, which in turn led to her resigning the mayoralty.

The Globe & Mail, 7 October 1959
Anyone wishing an opinion as to whether a book might be obscene is invited to mail same to my St Marys address. And, no, you can't have it back.

* No light will be cast on Barrick Gold Corp. I rush to add that Peter Munk, Anthony Munk, Howard L. Beck, William Birchall, Jamie C. Sokalsky and Brian Mulroney are mighty fine people. Really.

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21 February 2014

Cocking on the Beach



I possess one of the finest collections of Ronald Cocking material in private hands. Yes, I do. What's more, it was amassed in a matter of minutes.

There is a cautionary tale in this, recounted in my review of Die With Me, Lady. It will not be repeated it here. In its place, I offer these words of advice: Do not judge an oeuvre on eight pages of text.

Now, the collection:

ITEM #1

A glossy 6¼ x 8¼ black and white photograph (above) depicting the author at ease. A refugee from the defunct Miami News, I purchased this photo for US$5.33. The obverse appears to indicate that the image was published on 4 November 1951, a Sunday. 

(cliquez pour agrandir)
It was through this item that I discovered Cocking had once served as Managing Editor for The Hamilton News. The caption reports that J. Arthur Rank is "dickering for movie rights" to one of his three novels. Wish I knew which.


ITEM #2


A first edition of The House on Brooke Street (London: Hurst & Blackett, 1949), Cocking's first novel.  "Written in the best 'Clubfoot' tradition", says the jacket, but I doubt I'll ever read it. Published sixty-five years ago at 8s. 6d., I paid £20 for my copy.


ITEM #3


High Tide is at Midnight, subject of my most recent post. Published by Hurst & Blackett in 1950, this is a first edition of Cocking's second book. This one, originally 9s. 6d., was purchased for £26.


ITEM #4


A second edition copy of Cocking's third and final novel, Weep No More, Lady, published in 1953 by the Mystery Book Guild. This one was a bargain at £7. The first edition was published in 1952 by Hurst & Blackett. 


ITEM #5


Weep No More, Lady recast as Die With Me, Lady for the Canadian news stand. Published in June 1953 by Harlequin, it was this copy – more precisely, the first eight pages of this copy – that led me to drop C$147.10 (incl.  shipping) on the above.

Oh, but didn't those eight pages show such promise!

Addendum: What do I know about Ronald Cocking? Not much ore than is found on the back of that glossy black and white. To be perfectly frank, I haven't been much inspired to take that ninety-minute drive out to Hamilton to see what I might find.

The laziest of searches, conducted from the comfort of my home office, finds Cocking twice mentioned  in The Globe & Mail. Nothing to do with his books, mind. Here's the first, in Bruce West's column of 17 July 1950:


Cocking returned to the pages of Globe & Mail in this 7 June 1952 report from Osgoode Hall:


What else? What else? Well, let's see… That W. stood for William. He was born in 1907 at Portsmouth, and served in the RAF during the Second World War. Cocking emigrated to Canada, but at some point returned to the UK, where he contributed to Parade and Argosy. He died at Surrey in 1999. 

Oh, and it seems he did know his canines. The last piece of Cocking fiction I've been able to find is "It's a Dogs Life!", published in the August 1971 issue of Argosy.


I'm not interested in buying a copy.

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17 February 2014

The Lonely Patience of Kevin Marlow



High Tide is a Midnight
Ronald Cocking
London: Hurst & Blackett, [1950]

If the past is a foreign country, that of a foreign country will seem particularly alien. Still, I wonder if there was ever an England like the one depicted in High Tide is at Midnight. Was there really a time in which unlisted phone numbers were available to anyone who asked? Was there really a time when a simple call to a beautiful young film star would bring an immediate invitation to tea? Really? At the actress's London flat? Even when you refused to say why you were calling?

These are the sorts of questions that played through my mind when, I suppose, the author would've had me thinking about smuggling, rationing, and the high rate of purchase tax. His hero, Kevin Marlow of the Customs and Excise Department's Special Investigation Branch, is perhaps the dullest to ever feature in a thriller. "You know, Mr. Marlow," says his superior, Sir William Lindlay, "I think you are the most patient officer in the Branch. Not the most brilliant, perhaps, but certainly the most patient; and patience often achieves results denied to the purely clever people."

Clever colleague Craddock having failed, Kevin is assigned to take over an investigation into a smuggling ring thought to be working the English Channel. That evening, whilst going through Craddock's notes in his bachelor flat, he finds the calling card of new screen sensation Margaret Lawson. It's an "odd coincidence", Kevin having taken in her latest film, Strange Tomorrow, just hours earlier.

The very next morning, Craddock collapses, whispering these words to Kevin with his dying breath: "Kennington… Near Kennington. And… the… sea… port. They're… all… in… it."

Kevin doesn't bother following up on Craddock's parting tip. Never does. He begins his investigation by getting Margaret Lawson's phone number, giving her a call, sipping her tea, and coming away wholly unsatisfied:
Kevin decided that he didn't understand at all; nothing fitted. For one thing, he ought to be feeling a considerable resentment towards her because of the fact that she was deliberately obstructing him – yet all he could feel was admiration for her loyalty. Yet she had lied about Craddock, and if his vague suspicions about Craddock were right, that tied her up directly with what was going on – which was a vastly different thing to her being an unwilling party. He was thinking in circles, he suddenly realized – and gave it up. He must get a lot more facts first.
Kevin's method is to visit and revisit his suspects with faith that it will all lead to something. I was reminded more of a Jehovah's Witness than a detective. High Tide is at Midnight is a novella made novel through excessive detail, most of which involves getting the protagonist from visit A to visit B:
At eight o'clock the next morning – a Saturday – Kevin was bowling along over Catford Heath, headed south-east. It was more like April than October – the sky was blue, and there was a golden haze in the crisp air. By eight-twenty-five he was in Farmingham, and he pulled up briefly at a café to drink some steaming hot coffee and eat some buttered toast.
     Then he went on down the arterial road until he came to the Sevenoaks-Maidstone Road, where he turned left. In Maidstone he stopped to consult his road-map, then pressed on down the Hastings Road for a mile, turned off south-east again on the Class 2 road, finally coming out in Tenterden. There he asked the way from a passing farmhand, and some five minutes later he coasted down into a hollow, and tucked under the hill on the left, close to a brook, there it was – a cottage with a small board attached to a gate on which was written 'THE DELL'.
Although Kevin is helped along by the odd "odd coincidence" and has the good fortune to stumble, both literarily and figuratively, upon a good many clues, he proves himself incapable of exposing the smugglers. One of his greatest breaks occurs when, quite by chance, he stops in a village in which every single inhabitant is involved with the ring (vicar included). Even this leads to nothing. Shame Craddock is dead; bet he could've figured things out.

Ultimately, it's Margaret Lawson who blows the lid off the smuggling operation, telling our hero everything. In doing so, she exposes family's participation, thereby risking gaol time for herself, her brother and her parents.

Why would she do such a thing?

Well, you see, the beautiful film star had fallen in love with the Customs and Excise man.

Was there ever really such an England?


The romantic Kevin Marlow:
"You know," he said, "I little thought when I was sitting in the cinema watching your last film a few days ago that I would be soon having you all to myself in a country cottage. I admire your acting enormously."
     She said: "Thank you, sir. But seriously – I'm glad. Oddly enough, I want you to… have a good opinion of me."
     "Why?"
     She shrugged her slim shoulders.
     I don't really know – after all, we're practically strangers. But I suppose that it's because intuitively I respect your judgement. Does that sound ridiculous?"
     "No," Kevin said, smiling. "And it does my ego a lot of good." He looked over the rim of his cup. "While the Mutual admiration Society is in session, I should like to mention something else. I think that you're the most beautiful woman I have ever seen – and I mean that very sincerely. I hope you don't mind my saying that; anyway, it's said."

Object: A compact 222-page hardcover in black boards. I purchased my copy last year – avec Crime-Book Society belly band – for £26 from a bookseller in North Lincolnshire. The back cover features a pitch for the publisher's "New and Forthcoming Thrillers", including: The Man I Didn't Kill by Norman Deane (pseud. John Creasey), Fog is a Shroud by McKnight Malmar, and The Lady in the Wood by John Dellbridge. The one I'm most interested in is the ultra-uncommon Under the Quiet Water by Canadian Frances Shelley Wees.


Access: Not found in a single library on this side of the Atlantic. Cousins overseas will find it only at  the British Library, Oxford University and Trinity College, Dublin.

No copies are listed for sale online.


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