The First Review of John Glassco's First Book

The Gazette, 13 December 1958

The Gazette, 13 December 1958

The Last of the Elegant 'Decadent Esthetes'

A gift from poet Stephen Morrissey, these Glassco related clippings from more than three decades past. Included is the man's Gazette obituary:

So Good They Had to Print It Twice

Anne Chudobiak's recent Gazette review, reprinted in today's Edmonton Journal:

You may be forgiven for not knowing who John Glassco was, or why biographer Brian Busby has written such a big book about him. He was, in no particular order, a writer at a time when writers still joked about who would be the first to write the first great Canadian novel; a pornographer at a time when obscenity laws were still a major impediment to publication; a poet whose career overlapped with Leonard Cohen's and Irving Layton's; and a literary translator whose first major effort, the groundbreaking Poetry of French Canada, came out in 1970, the same year as the October Crisis, when enthusiasm among francophone poets for communication with the other solitude was perhaps at its lowest ebb.

If you have heard of him at all, it might be because the Literary Translators' Association of Canada has named a prize in his honour.

Even so, it's not immediately obvious why A Gentleman of Pleasure is such an important book. But it is, so much so that the writer in me envies Busby his choice of topic: Somebody had to write this book, and it was smart of him to do it first.

The entire review can be found here. Sadly, the review is no longer available online.

Anne Chudobiak in The Gazette

If, at the end of this book, which so exhaustively lists Glassco's many crimes against love and literature, I am left with an appreciation for the man and artist, and a desire to read his "memoirs," I can only attribute it to Busby's tact and humanity as a biographer. He presents Glassco, a survivor of childhood abuse, as a three-dimensional person, with strengths and weaknesses, with his primary strengths being his prose and his charm.

The complete review can be found here. Sadly, the review is no longer available online.