The Heart Accepts It All

The first day of National Poetry Month seems a good time to mention my forthcoming book The Heart Accepts It All: Selected Letters of John Glassco. I've never been much good when it comes to  salesmanship, so will leave the task to publisher Véhicule Press.

From their catalogue:

A brilliant and enigmatic literary figure.

Decades after his death, John Glassco (1909-1981) remains Canada’s most enigmatic literary figure. The Heart Accepts It All: Selected Letters of John Glassco draws back the curtain on this self-described ‘great practitioner of deceit.’ We see the delight he took in revealing his many literary hoaxes to friends, and the scorn he had for literary fashion. The letters reflect his convictions about literature, other writers and his own talent, while documenting struggles with publishers, pirates and censors. 

    Born into one of Montreal’s wealthiest families, Glassco turned his back on privilege for a life in letters. At age eighteen, having been published in Paris, his voice suddenly went silent. His unexpected return to the literary scene in 1957 coincided with the great flowering of Canadian literature. In the years that followed, he produced a unique body of work that encompasses poetry, memoir, translation, and several bestselling books of pornography. 

    Collected here are the few surviving letters from his youthful adventures in France and three previously unpublished poems. Amongst his correspondents were Maurice Girodias, F.R. Scott, A.J.M. Smith, Ralph Gustafson, Leon Edel and Margaret Atwood.

It's an honour to again find myself associated with this great talent.

Cross-posted at The Dusty Bookcase.

Now that April's Here...

Spring has sprung and the thoughts of a middle aged man turn to work. Much of these past few months have been spent going through John Glassco's letters in preparation for a volume to be published this coming autumn.

More on that another day.

This morning, rereading correspondence between the poet and his old McGill friend Leon Edel, I was stuck – for the nth time – by their final exchanges. Glassco, not long for this world, continues to be haunted by a short story published a half-century earlier: Morley Callaghan's "Now that April's Here".

The story is one the writer's most anthologized, but I've never quite understood its weight; Callaghan had better than this. Its real value lies in it being a nouvelle à clef, with Glassco cast as Johnny Hill, a young, chinless expatriate who is writing his memoirs. Glassco's friend Graeme Taylor appears as Charles Milford, whom Johnny supports through a small monthly income. As portrayed by Callaghan, they're two gay boys who delight in snickering at others. Robert McAlmon makes an appearance as Stan Mason, a boozy writer who is hurt to discover that he is their chief target.

Graeme Taylor, John Glassco and Robert McAlmon, Nice, 1929

The story was first published in the Autumn 1929 number of This Quarter, by which time Callaghan had completed his "summer in Paris" and was safely back in Toronto. He never got to witness the effects the time bomb left behind in Montparnasse had on Glassco's friendship with McAlmon. Leon Edel came to Glassco's aid by dismissing story in his "Paris Notes" column for the Montreal Daily Star. Late in life, after Glassco's death, he allowed that Callaghan's depiction of the "two boys" was accurate.

For Glassco, it was a story that just wouldn't go away. In 1936, he saw it given a place of prominence in Now that April's Here and Other Stories. It would return in Morley Callaghan's Stories (1959) and lives on in the man's misleadingly-titled Complete Stories (2003).

Then we have Now that April's Here, an odd 1958 feature comprised of four Callaghan short stories": “Silk Stockings”, “Rocking Chair”, “The Rejected One” and “A Sick Call”, but not the one that gives the film its title.

Now that April's Here enjoyed a gala opening in Toronto, closing after two weeks. After a few more runs through a projector in Hamilton, it was never screened again. Glassco was spared the distress of reading the title on Montreal movie marquees.

This seven minute clip, courtesy of YouTube, reveals why the film is forgotten:

Criterion will not be interested.

Cross-posted at The Dusty Bookcase.

Fetish Girl's Fetish

The pseudonymous Fetish Girl was Glassco's last pornographic novel. Its heroine is Ursula, a "pretty long-legged bitch of wide and varied experience." A sympathetic figure, the poor girl lives in frustration, due entirely to her inability to find a man who shares her fixation on things rubber. This, the reader is reminded, is in the days before the World Wide Web. Fortune changes, as it often does, while on vacation. Lounging beside a motel swimming pool, Ursula spots Adrian, an effeminate man sporting black latex trunks. The die is cast when he dons a tight fitting rubber bathing cap. Let the fun begin!

Glassco placed Fetish Girl with Harriet Marwood, Governess as his favourite piece of writing, in part due to ease of composition. However, as publication approached, he struggled with the dedication. Glassco's desire was to pay tribute to his new love Marion McCormick, who would become his second wife, but he knew that she would not appreciate having her name associated with a work of pornography. In the end, the pornographer dedicated the book to himself, because, as he wrote friend Leon Edel, "I am getting on in years and no one ever dedicated a book to me."

Where twelve years earlier he'd hidden his authorship of The English Governess, Glassco was quite open about Fetish Girl. He looked forward to its publication, touting it as the very first rubber fetish novel. I don't doubt that he believed this to be the truth. In fact, he'd already lost the race to Paul Hugo Little who, as "Lana Preston", had had his book Rubber Goddess published in 1967 by Cleveland's Corsair Books.

Fetish Girl was published in 1972 by Venus Library, an imprint of Grove Press. Glassco hated the thing before he ever set eyes on it, complaining to a confidant: "A friend in New York tells me it has a rather stupid illustrated cover of a girl in wet clothes coming out of the ocean – which is not what the book is about at all!"

Still, his irritation didn't prevent his keeping copies, one of which is inscribed in his hand: "And once again to Buffy from Sylvia".

The novel was reissued in 2001 by Blue Moon – sadly, without the dedication. It's currently available from olympiapress.com – one of four Glassco works it offers without the permission of his estate.

Shameful, really.

Originally published – in a much different form – at The Dusty Bookcase.

Another Errant Edel

An annex, of sorts, to an earlier post on Glassco, Leon Edel and Henry James. A Montreal collector was kind enough to send me these images of another Edel title that was not included in the sale of Glassco's library.

The warm inscription, typical of Edel, is made particularly interesting with it's mention of Montparnasse and Nice:

Buffy Glassco

his contrite (in not having given you this book) copain of the yesteryears, of Montparnasse and Nice — with nostalgia and affection.

Leon Edel

Honolulu 1973

The first in Edel's five-volume biography, Henry James: The Untried Years 1843-1870 was published in 1953, during the long decades in which the two copains had no contact. The place of inscription is curious – it wasn't until later in the 'seventies that Glassco first travelled to Honolulu.

Glassco Meets Leon Edel and Reads Henry James

Though most of John Glassco's library – some 526 books – was sold to Queen's University a couple of years after his death, items do show up from time to time. Of those I've managed to pick up, Telling Lives (New Republic, 1979), a collection of essays on modern biography, is an obvious favourite. It's made all the more interesting by Leon Edel's inscription to Glassco and his second wife Marion McCormick.

Glassco and Edel first met in 1925 at McGill University – the old Student Union cafeteria to be precise – and maintained what might best be termed an acquaintanceship that extended into the period covered in Memoirs of Montparnasse. After Glassco's 1931 return to Montreal, the two lost all contact. It wasn't until the late 'fifties, with the poet emergence from semi-reclusiveness, that their friendship truly began. By this point, Edel had already published Henry James: The Untried Years, the first in his five-volume biography of the American-born master.

An admirer of James, Glassco had at least four pieces of Jamesiana in his library – most tied in some way to his friend Edel. Curiously, not one made it into the collection that was bought by Queen's. These are they. Cliquer pour agrandir.

Ten Short Stories of Henry James

Henry James

London: John Lehmann, 1948

The American Essays

Henry James

New York: Vintage, 1956

Stories of the Supernatural

Henry James

New York: Taplinger, 1980

Henry James in Westminster Abbey: The Address by Leon Edel

Leon Edel

Honolulu: Petronium Press, 1976