Welcome to this cyberplace, set up as a space for news and reviews of A Gentleman of Pleasure and occasional jottings about John Glassco. Five years have now passed since publication, and I've moved on to other projects, but I'm leaving this up with the thought that those drawn to Glassco's writing will find something of interest.

01 January 2012

George Fetherling in CNQ




George Fetherling reviews A Gentleman of Pleasure and John Glassco and the Other Montreal in the new issue of Canadian Notes and Queries:
I imagine that Busby, like many other literary biographers, ended up with a much different book than the one he had in mind originally. As he gathered more and more detail (he is a master of research), he must have rethought his previous assumptions, coming to see Glassco as a terribly sad figure: someone at odds with his wealthy family, frequently broke or seriously constrained in various ways by what he called “the two features of my psychosexuality, the fetishistic and the masochistic.” Yet in the process Busby proves himself most sympathetic as he goes about revivifying a complex and (in this instance) highly conflicted individual consciousness, which is what serious biographers aspire to do.
What a yarn…