Conversing with a Literary Tourist about Montreal

Audio of my recent conversation with Nigel Beale has just been posted here at the Literary Tourist.

Mordecai Richler, A.J.M. Smith, F.R. Scott, the Writers' Chapel, the Seville Theatre and Les Mas des Oliviers figure... as does Fiddler's Green Irish Pub, the establishment that has taken up residence in John Glassco's old Bishop Street pied-à-terre.

Cross-posted at The Dusty Bookcase

Images of the John Glassco Soirée

A few photographs of the John Glassco Soirée, held late last month at the Writers' Chapel of Montreal's St James the Apostle Anglican Church. All images and captions come courtesy of the fine folks at the Argo Bookshop, sponsors of the event.

Reverend Robert Camara started us off with a few opening remarks.

Michael Gnarowski, a good friend of John Glassco, followed Robert Camara with anecdotes about his old friend. A personal favourite was the recipe for one of Glassco's favoured summer drinks, the 'Glassco special':
1 part gin
1 part sparkling water
1 part orange juice
& sugar to taste

Judy Nesbitt spoke as a direct bloodline connection to Glassco. Before she spoke at the event about her Uncle Buffy, at the bar, she passed around the oldest photographs of the Glassco family.

One of our two featured speakers was Brian Busby, author of A Gentleman of Pleasure, enlightening us with facts and factoids, details and illuminations on Glassco's life and work.

Our other featured speaker was Carmine Starnino, who had edited John Glassco and the Other Montreal, a selection of poems. He had taken the side of interrogator and interviewer for the evening, posing questions to Busby about the contexts and underpinnings of Glassco's work.

Last, but certainly not least, Bryan Sentes would season Carmine and Brian's conversation about Glassco by reading excerpts and poems: specifically, the poems "The Rural Mail" & "Brummel at Calais", with excerpts from The English Governess/Harriet Marwood, Governess, and the first three paragraphs of Memoirs of Montparnasse.

Argo co-owners Jesse Eckerlin and Meaghan Acosta at the book table.

It seems such a cliché, but there truly was something magical about the evening. I offer my thanks, once again, to the Argo Bookshop for sponsoring the event. Anyone looking for copies of A Gentleman of Pleasure, John Glassco and the Other Montreal and Memoirs of Montparnasse need look no further.

Cross-posted at The Dusty Bookcase.

A John Glassco Soirée

Later this month I'll be joining Carmine Starnino, editor of the recent John Glassco and the Other Montreal, in a discussion of Glassco's life and work at St. James the Apostle's Writers' Chapel:

A John Glassco Soirée

The Writers' Chapel

Church of St. James the Apostle

1439 St. Catherine Street West (corner Bishop)

Montreal 

Friday, April 27, 7:00 pm

Glassco's good friend Michael Gnarowski, editor of John Glassco: Selected Poems with Three Notes on the Poetic Process and publisher of the only Canadian edition of The English Governess, will be hosting the evening.

St. James the Apostle was the church of Glassco's childhood. The plaque celebrating his life, placed in the affixed to its walls in 2009, marked the beginning of the Writers' Chapel.

This is a free event is presented by the Argo Bookshop.

All are welcome.

Cross-posted at The Dusty Bookcase

Covering Memoirs of Montparnasse

For far too many years, I've been complaining much too much about the cover treatments that have been accorded Memoirs of Montparnasse. All this clamouring has been based on the tired observation that not one image of John Glassco, who was photographed frequently during his Montparnassean adventures, has been used on the cover of this, his finest work of prose. In doing so, I was perhaps being just a bit unfair to Hosei University Press, which in 2007 published a translation, モンパルナスの思い出 [Memories of Montparnasse]. Their cover features Adolf Dehn's 1929 sketch of Glassco. Not a photograph, but an image nevertheless.

To be completely fair, this same sketch appears on the back cover of the first edition.

Memoirs of Montparnasse

Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1970

The front cover illustration for the first edition is by Blair Drawson.

Memoirs of Montparnasse

Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1973

The cover used for both the first Canadian paperback edition and the first American edition in any format (published by Viking). Dehn and Drawson have disappeared, replaced by an André Kertész photograph.

Souvenirs de Montparnasse

Montreal: Éditions Hurtubise, 1983

The first French language translation, by Jean-Yves Soucy, published two years after Glassco's death. The mysterious cover art is by Robert Théroux.

Memoirs of Montparnasse

Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1995

Oxford's second edition, with a critical introduction and notes by Glassco's friend Michael Gnarowski. The final Canadian edition, this is is the one to buy.

Memoirs of Montparnasse

New York: New York Review Books, 2007

The only English language edition currently available, NYRB's features a Man Ray photograph of Kiki, a woman who features only fleetingly in the book (and who, evidence suggests, Glassco did not know). "In 1928, nineteen-year-old John Glassco escaped Montreal and his overbearing father for the wilder shores of Montparnasse", says the back cover. In fact, Glassco was eighteen. More misinformation can be found in Louis Begley's Introduction.

Memorias de Montparnasse

Madrid: Alfaguara, 2008

The first Spanish language edition... again with Kiki, again with Louis Begley.

Die verrückten Jahre: Abenteuer eines jungen Mannes in Paris

Munich: Hanser, 2010

Translated by Matthias Fienbork as The Crazy Years: Adventures of a Young Man in Paris, the German language edition features a photograph by Brassai of a lesbian bar. Go figure. Also included: a translation of the NYRB Introduction.

Mémoires de Montparnasse

Paris: Éditions Viviane Hamy, 2010

Daniel Bismuth's translation – historic in that with it Memoirs of Montparnasse becomes the first book of Canadian prose to have been twice translated into the French. I have no idea who graces the cover, but I can say with certainty that it isn't John Glassco.

Picturing Harriet Marwood

Google Harriet Marwood, the heroine of John Glassco's The English Governess, and you'll find the top site brings this image of a "Professional Disciplinarian and Spankologist" located in New York City. The visitor is told that this "no nonsense lady... takes her inspiration from a renowned, stern English governess of longstanding literary fame and believes in the expert application of all manner of traditional domestic corporal discipline as needed and/or deserved." I'm not so sure this is how the author imagined his creation, though I can say with great certainty that the modern Ms Marwood's clothing isn't at all correct.

Glassco commissioned dozens of illustrations for his erotic works – The Temple of Pederasty (banned), Fetish Girl (rejected), Squire Hardman (unused) and The Jupiter Sonnets (unpublished) – but nothing at all for Harriet, governess to Richard Lovel. The only sense we have of how Glassco saw his creation is found in his writing. Here she is, as first viewed through the eyes of Richard's father:

Mr. Lovel saw before him a tall young woman in her middle twenties, dressed with quiet elegance. A brunette with a very white skin, she wore her dark, almost black hair in a plain style under her small bonnet, parted from forehead to crown and drawn smoothly back to a heavy chignon at the nape of her strong, graceful neck. Her brow was well-shaped and intellectual, the nose was straight, short and full of energy, the mouth rather wide, with full underlie, the chin quite prominent. Everything in her face and pose denoted decision and force; but her glance, reserved, serious, even academic, could not conceal the warm brilliance of her violet-grey eyes.

The first published version of Harriet and Richard's romance, The English Governess (Paris: Ophelia, 1960), had no cover illustration; nor did the reissue Under the Birch (Paris: Ophelia, 1965). It wasn't until the appearance of the more polite telling of this love story, Harriet Marwood, Governess (New York: Grove, 1967), that the heroine was finally depicted.

As with Fetish Girl, Glassco hated the cover. Here he complained that the model, "though well constructed", had "the countenance of a mental defective".

This poor failed Harriet reappears recast on the cover of the 1970 Grove edition of Yvonne; or, The Adventures and Intrigues of a French Governess with Her Pupils, an erotic novel first published in 1899. Of the other depictions of the flagellating governess, Glassco would have only seen the first two. Sadly, his opinions are unrecorded.

Tuchtiging tot Tederheid [Harriet Marwood, Governess]

Anonymous [Gerrit Komrij, trans.]

Amsterdam: Uitgeversij de Arbeiderspers, 1969.

Tuchtiging tot Tederheid? Rough translation: Discipline to Tenderness.

Harriet Marwood, Governess

John Glassco

Toronto: General, 1976

The lone Canadian edition of the cleaner version, and the only one to be printed under Glassco's name. It features an intentionally misleading Preface written by the author.

Harriet Marwood, Governess

Anonymous

New York: Grove, 1986.

An edition that perpetuates the misconception that the novel dates from the time of Queen Victoria. From the back cover: "A curious exploration of the private lives of outwardly uptight Victorians... Alongside such classics as My Secret Life, Pleasure Bound, A Man with a Maid, The Pearl, Harriet Marwood, Governess takes its place as one of the outstanding works of erotic fiction produced in the Victorian era."

The English Governess

Anonymous

New York: Masquerade, 1998

Harriet as a poor man's Bettie Page. There is nothing in the packaging to suggest that the book doesn't take place in the 'fifties.

The English Governess

Anonymous

New York: Masquerade, 1998

A second Masquerade cover from the very same year as the first.

The English Governess

John Glassco

Ottawa: Golden Dog, 2000

The sole Canadian edition of The English Governess, and the only one to appear under the author's real name. It has a great advantage over previous editions in that it features a highly informative introduction by Michael Gnarowski.

The English Governess: Harriet Marwood

Miles Underwood

Bexhill-on-Sea, East Sussex: AKS, 2002

A confusingly titled edition – really The English Governess – with an illustration that has nothing to do with the era in which the novel is set.