Showing posts with label Allan (Ted). Show all posts
Showing posts with label Allan (Ted). Show all posts

12 April 2022

Talking Ted Allan with Dick Bourgeois-Doyle



The second of my two conversations with Leacock Medal scholar Dick Bourgeois-Doyle is now available here on Soundcloud.

The topic is Ted Allan's Love is a Long Shot – in its 1949 and 1984 incarnations – and why I believe the latter was ineligible for the award.

I first wrote about Love is a Long Shot in the 2011 Fall/Winter issue of Canadian Notes & Queries; then reworked the piece for The Dusty Bookcase book. I'm sharing it here for the first time:


NEVER SO DISTURBING

Love is a Long Shot
Alice K. Doherty [pseud. Ted Allan]
Toronto: News Stand Library, 1949
160 pages

Can a writer, even a deceased writer, be stripped of the Leacock Medal? It’s a fair question, particularly when one considers the late Ted Allan, who received the honour in 1984 for Love is a Long Shot. This slight, uninspired novel tells the story of seventeen-year-old David Webber and his sometimes ribald adventures tending the till in a thirties-era Montreal cigar store-cum-bookie joint. It features a cast of characters that are characters; each ultimately and invariably proving themselves loveable types despite earlier indiscretions. Readers familiar with Lies My Father Told Me, the 1975 film that earned Allan an Academy Award nomination, will recognize some of these folks, including David’s frustrated inventor-father and his ideas for moveable cufflinks and permanently creased trousers.

This is not to suggest that there’s anything deceitful here; not with the film, at least. The overlap between Lies My Father Told Me and Love is a Long Shot is trifling, and in no way makes the latter ineligible for the Leacock. The medal’s rules inform: adaptations are fair game, we need only discount works of which “significant or substantial parts have been previously published in book form.”

Like so many tomes, the 1984 Love is a Long Shot includes a list of the author’s previous works. Allan’s first novel, This Time a Better Earth (1939), is followed by The Scalpel, The Sword (1952), the commercially successful biography of Norman Bethune that he wrote with Sydney Gordon. There’s Quest for Pajaro (1957), the science-fiction novel Allan published under nom de plume “Edward Maxwell,” and his children’s book Willie, the Squowse (1973). Also included is a comprehensive list of Allan’s plays and screenplays. What’s missing is telling: an earlier Love is a Long Shot.

Published by News Stand Library in September 1949, two months before newspaperman Al Palmer’s Sugar-Puss on Dorchester Street, this Love is a Long Shot holds the distinction of being the first pulp noir novel set in Montreal. Its setting is a Depression-era city that’s as dark as the second Love is a Long Shot is light. Where in the remake David Webber gets his job through a helpful, good-natured uncle, our desperate protagonist—recently orphaned teenager Katie Doheny—is out of options. Like David, she takes a job in a cigar store that’s little more than a front for illegal gambling. The early pages of the girl’s bleak world are broken by fleeting moments of black humour—all of which Allan reused in his Leacock-winning novel. Here, for example, is the most memorable, a comic scene that features Molly, the wife of the cigar-store owner. It begins with a boast:
“Never wore a corset in my life. Never had to.” She swaggered out from behind the counter.  “If you don’t believe me, feel,” she said, offering me her hip.
     “I believe you,” I said.
     “Feel. Feel. Don’t be shy.”
     I touched her quickly with the tips of my fingers.
     She started to laugh again, a loud, hearty laugh. “How old are you?”
     I dug the broom into the floor, pushed hard and told her my age.
     “I bet you never had a man.”
The Molly of the 1984 Love is a Long Shot, also married to the cigar-store owner, is equally proud:
“Never wore a corset in my life. Never had to.” Weaving from behind the counter, she offered me her backside. “If you don’t believe me, feel.”
     “I believe you.”
     “Feel, feel, don’t be shy.” She wiggled her behind. I touched her hip quickly with the tips of my fingers. This made her cackle. You have to hear a woman with a bass voice cackle before you can believe the sound.
     “So help me, he’s blushing. How old are you?”
     “I’m twenty-one,” I lied.
     “I bet you’re still a cherry.”
Any further frivolity in the original Love is a Long Shot is soon overwhelmed by the noir. The greatest difference between the two novels lies in their depictions of organized crime. While the Leacock-winning Love is a Long Shot has the “syndicate” as a group of misbehaving boys, the 1949 original comes uncomfortably close to ugly reality.

Young Katie falls for “tall, rugged-looking, tanned” mob boss Hazen Black, a relatively young man rendered impotent by a life of debauchery. In what is surely one of the darkest scenes in Canadian literature, the appropriately-named Black masturbates while instructing his henchman Herbert to rape Katie:

Herbert grabbed me and held his hand over my mouth. I tried to bite it. “Go ahead,” Black was shouting. “Go ahead, damn it, go ahead.” His eyes looked insane. His breath was coming in short gasps, as if he’d been running. He was close to me, but hadn’t touched me yet. “Go ahead. Pick up her dress… do it, do it, do it.”

The original Love is a Long Shot ain’t that pretty at all—nor is it funny. Printed only once, in a fragile, disposable edition that credits the author variously as “Alice K. Doherty,” “Alice H. Doherty,” and simply “Alice Doherty,” it slipped by the judges of the 1984 Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour. The most one can say about the award-winning Love is a Long Shot that is that is was far superior to the previous year’s winner, Gary Lauten’s No Sex Please… We’re Married. Allan didn’t deserve the honour; the $3,500 cheque should have rightfully gone to fellow nominee John Gray, whose debut novel, Dazzled, had been issued by the anaemic Irwin Publishing. It’s a sad fact that the best novel Ted Allan ever wrote was one that he chose not to recognize. A cheap mass-market paperback issued under a pseudonym that the publisher couldn’t get right, it has been out of print for over half a century.  

Related posts:

26 December 2021

The Very Best Reads of the Second Plague Year


This annus horribilis draws to a close – thank God – meaning the time has come to recap the last twelve months of reading old books. I tackled a bunch, twenty-one of which were reviewed here and in the pages of Canadian Notes & Queries. I'm counting Arthur Stringer's 1936 novel The Wife Traders and its British reworking, Tooloona, as two.

Fight me.

They're two different books... and having slogged my way through both, I've earned it.

Stringer proved to be this year's most read author, though I'm at a loss to explain why. I read four books by this son of Chatham, which is more than the previous seven years combined. The majority were pretty awful, but one made it onto my annual list of the three out-of-print reads most deserving a return to print:

Ted Allan
Toronto: McClelland &
   Stewart, 1977

Forget The Scalpel, the Sword,  this is the Ted Allan book you want to read. And yes, I'll again point out the wonderful Quentin Blake illustrations.

Get it while you can, then share it with the children in your life.

The Shadow
Arthur Stringer
New York: Century, 1913


Better known under the later (superior) title Never-Fail Blake, this story of one man's relentless drive to bring another to justice was one of Stringer's most reprinted thrillers. Today, it is all but forgotten. It doesn't deserve that fate.


Poldrate Street
Garnett Weston
New York: Messner, 1944


This was the second Weston novel read this past summer. Where the first, The Legacy of Fear, disappointed, Poldrate Street entertained as the year's most unpleasant, stomach-turning read. Voyeurism, adultery, greed, murder, and something approaching necrophilia figure. No disappointment here!


Three of the books I reviewed this year are currently in print:

Dear Departed stands out as a relatively new book. The first true collection of Brian Moore short stories, it features writing that originally appeared between 1956 and 1961. Dear Departed was published just last year by Belfast's Turnpike Books, but went almost unnoticed in the author's adopted land. The only review I've seen or heard is Randy Boyagoda's on The Next Chapter

Having been elevated in 2012, Grant Allen's An African Millionaire (1897) holds certain distinction as a Penguin Classic. Much as I like the novel, I wonder why. The Woman Who Did is a much better, more interesting, more enduring, and more culturally significant work.

Never mind.

Give An African Millionaire a read, but if you want Allen at his best I recommend The Woman Who DidThe Devil's DieFor Mamie's Sake, Michael's Crag, Under Sealed Orders, Hilda Wade, What's Bred in the Bone or The British Barbarians.

Brash Books is in the process of returning every Tom Ardies novel to print. The author's second, This Suitcase is Going to Explode (1972) has the defeated hero of the first, Charlie Sparrow, pick himself up to save us all. The third and final Sparrow novel is titled Pandemic (1973), in which he saves us from same.

 At least, I think he does.

Praise this year goes again to Stark House (first recognized in 2012) for its continued dedication to the work of Douglas Sanderson (aka Martin Brett, aka Malcolm Douglas). This year, the publisher put one foot outside its usual crime territory in publishing Dark Passions Subdue, which I reviewed here ten years ago. Sanderson's debut novel, it concerns a male McGill student's attraction to another man.

Dark Passions Subdue was first published in 1952 by Dodd, Mead. The next year, Avon brought it out as a mass market paperback. The McGill University Library does not have a copy of either edition. Now's its chance.

I was involved in the reissue of only one novel this year. Due to production matters, it's been pushed into next. Here's something to look forward to in the New Year:

Resolutions? I have a few:
  • I will focus more on francophone writers;
  • I will review more non-fiction;
  • I will keep kicking against the pricks.
Here's to a better New Year!

Bonne année!

Related posts:

The Very Best Reads of a Plague Year (2020)
The Very Best Reads of a Very Strange Year (2019)
Best Books of 2018 (none of which are from 2018)
The Year's Best Books in Review - A.D. 2017
The Year's Best Books in Review - A.D. 2016
The Year's Best Books in Review - A.D. 2015
The Christmas Offering of Books - 1914 and 2014
A Last Minute Gift Slogan, "Give Books" (2013)
Grumbles About Gumble & Praise for Stark House (2012)
The Highest Compliments of the Season (2011)
A 75-Year-Old Virgin and Others I Acquired (2010)
Books are Best (2009)

Arthur Stringer Unshackled (then bowdlerized)
Little Willie, Willie Won't Go Home
A Shadow Moves Through a Showy Underworld
The Dead of a Dead End Street
Fumbling Towards Legacy
Shorter Moore
Starting on on Grant Allen: A Top Ten
Getting to Know The Woman Who Did
A Nineteenth Century What's Bred in the Bone
Grant Allen Tells Us Like It Is
Criminal Notes & Queries
Have Bomb – Will Travel
The Jacket, the Dressing Gown and the Closet

06 December 2021

The Ten Best Book Buys of 2021... and much more!



A better year than last, right? I got out more, raised pints in pubs, saw my daughter, and spent seven days touring Quebec City and the Eastern Townships. Hell, I even saw a movie in a theatre.

I also visited more bookstores, though a depressingly small number were worth the effort. Six of this year's ten best buys were purchased online. Ted Allan's pseudonymously published Quest for Pajaro (London: Heinemann, 1957) is my favourite. I'd known about about this science fiction romance since 1983, but in all the years that passed had never come across a copy.

No surprise, I suppose.

Quest for Pajaro was published in 1957 by Heinemann. There was no Canadian edition. Was anyone distributing Heinemann in Canada back then? If so, were they aware that "Edward Maxwell" was in fact Montrealer Ted Allan?

Doubt it.

I purchased Quest for Pajaro after having been invited to comment on Allan's work at this year's Toronto Jewish Film Festival. While not his best book, it is his most intriguing. There hadn't been many many Canadian science fiction romances before 1957 – still aren't. What's more, the novel's linchpin is an experimental jet known as the "Arrow."

Bruce Petty's gorgeous jacket illustration puts it over the top.

What follows is the rest of the ten best:

Ted Allan
Toronto: McClelland &
   Stewart, 1977

The author's only children's book, this tale of a talented squowse (offspring of a squirrel and a mouse) proved one of the most enjoyable and life-affirming reads of the year. The fifty – fifty! – Quentin Blake illustrations brought further joy.

Whispering City
Horace Brown
Pickering, ON: Global
   Publishing, 1947

Horace Brown's adaptation of this film noir shot in Quebec City, for years I'd hoped to find a reasonably-priced copy. This year I did (US$89.95).

Can it be as good as The Penthouse Killings? Please tell me it's better than Murder in the Rough.

Blood on My Rug
E. Louise Cushing
New York: Arcadia, 1956


A mystery novel that begins with the discovery of a body in a Montreal bookstore, since I'd long been searching for this novel. Might it be a candidate for reissue as a Ricochet Book?

Nope.

Still, I'm still happy to have it in my collection.

Let Not Man Put Asunder
Basil King
New York: Grosset & Dunlap,
   [n.d]

Though it's been two years since I bought, never mind reviewed, a Basil King novel, I leapt at this one. Let Not Man Put Asunder is either the seventh or eighth King novel to be adapted by Hollywood. IMDb does not recognize, but I have this photoplay edition as evidence.
 
Toute la Vie
Claire Martin
Quebec: Éditions de L'instant
   même, 1999

I've admired Claire Martin since reading Dans un gant de fer in CEGEP. David Lobdell's translation of her Doux-Amer deserves a return to print. Imagine the thrill in finding three signed Martins during my recent visit to Quebec City. This is one.

In Spite of Myself: A Memoir
Christopher Plummer
Toronto: Random House,
   2009

I regret many things in leaving our St Marys home, not the least of which involves selling thirteen-hundred books, In Spite of Myself amongst them.

I'm slowly been buying them back. This signed copy was found at the Kemptville Youth Centre Book Fair.

Marshall Saunders
Toronto: Standard
   Publishing, 1897

I own many copies of Beautiful Joe, but this is by far the most... um, beautiful. At one dollar, it was the least expensive book I purchased this year.

The Countess of Aberdeen provides an introduction!

Menaud, maître-draveur
Félix-Antoine Savard
Ottawa: 
Éditions Fides, 1967

Another Quebec City find, I came upon this inscribed, slip-cased edition on the very same day I made my pilgrimage to the author's home.

I vow to read it in the New Year.


Poldrate Street
Garnett Weston
New York: Messner, 1944


This old novel proved to be 2021's most unpleasant, stomach-turning read. Voyeurism, adultery, greed, murder, and something approaching necrophilia figure.

Good fun from a Toronto boy who made a killing in Hollywood before retiring to Vancouver island.


Two generous souls donated books to the Dusty Bookcase this year.

Lee Goldberg noted my interest in the novels of former Vancouver newspaperman Tom Ardies (Their Man in the White House, Kosygan is Coming) and was kind enough to send me newly published copies of This Briefcase is Going to Explode, Pandemic, Balboa Firefly, and Manila Time (the latter two written under Ardies' Jack Trolley nom de plume). 

Lee is in the process of reissuing Ardies' entire bibliography through Brash Books.

More power to him! 

Fraser Sutherland died this earlier this year. I was honoured to have been asked to provide an obituary for the Globe & Mail. One of the greatest challenges in its writing concerned family, specifically the name of a sibling, an older brother, who had died at a young age. Our newspaper of record is insistent on such things. It seemed not one of Fraser's friends could quite remember... and then one came through, which led me to this uncommon chapbook:


Published in 1976 by Northern Journey Press, Within the Wound is dedicated to that brother, Hugh Sutherland (1941-1965). I shared this discovery with Fraser's good friend, Adrian King-Edwards of Montreal's Word Bookstore, who in turn presented me with this copy.

RIP, Fraser. You are much missed.

27 September 2021

Six Forgotten Novelists at the Atwater Library


This coming Thursday – September 30 – I'll be speaking on "Forgotten Montreal Novelists" at the Atwater Library.

Forgotten Montreal novelists? Where to begin! I've selected six. I'll be talking about their lives with a focus on a novel by each.

These being strange days, I won't be appearing in person. Wish I could. The good thing is that you can watch through Zoom. The link to register is here.

C'est gratuit!

11 June 2021

Love is a Long Shot on the Nose

The Calgary Herald, 29 September 1978

This weekend the 29th Toronto Jewish Film Festival presents Love on the Nose.

Do you know it?

I didn't before being contacted by the Toronto Jewish Film Foundation. A made-for-TV movie, Love on the Nose, aired on the CBC in September 1978... and then never again. The screenplay, credited to  "John Smith" (read: Ted Allan), tells the story of David (Saul Rubinek), a young Trotskyite who, thanks to his uncle (Paul Soles), lands a job at Keller's cigar store in Depression-era Montreal. The establishment is a front for a bookie joint, which allows David a good amount of time for on-the-job studies of Karl Marx.

Love on the Nose received glowing reviews; I've yet to find a critic who said a bad word. Much of the praise landed on Saul Rubinek. He played a character a decade younger than himself, though you'd never know it. Al Waxman was singled out for playing a crime boss, a character so very different than the Larry King we'd come to love on The King of Kensington. Reading the reviews, it's clear that to that point the critics hadn't recognized the actor's range.

Months later, the Windsor Star was still going on about it.

The Windsor Star, 9 January 1979

I was contacted by the Festival because of my writing on Allan this blog, in Canadian Notes & Queries, and in my most recent book. It was my pleasure to provide a short video postscript to the film in which I discuss Love on the Nose, its relationship to Allan's 1949 pulp Love is a Long Shot, and the lighter 1984 version published by McClelland & Stewart.

What I didn't mention – but should've – is that Love on the Nose is the best of the three.

Tickets for Love on the Nose can be purchased through this link.

You will not be disappointed.

Related posts:

01 June 2021

Little Willie, Willie Won't Go Home



Willie the Squowse
Ted Allan
Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1977
57 pages

What I admire most about Ted Allan was his ability to take an idea and rework it repeatedly, in the process supporting himself, his wife, and his children. "Lies My Father Told Me," a very, very short story – 782 words – was written on the instant for a 1949 issue of The Canadian Jewish Congress Bulletin. It went on to become a radio drama, a television drama, a stage drama, and a feature film for which Allan earned an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay.

On March 29, 1976, the evening of the award gala, Allan joined Federico Fellini (Amarcord) and Robert Towne (Shampoo) in learning that he'd lost to Frank Pierson, who'd written the script for Dog Day Afternoon. The bad news came from Gore Vidal:


Allan's screenplay is brilliant and moving, but it was not original. I think he received the nomination because the story had been published in a monthly Canadian newspaper, and not, say, The New Yorker. I'm guessing that not too many people in Hollywood heard the adaptation he'd written for CBC Radio. I'll wager fewer still saw the hour-long European television production, in which Allan moved the setting from Montreal to Dublin. I've yet to meet anyone who remembers the play. From what I understand, it included musical numbers.

The very same year that "Lies My Father Told Me" appeared in The Canadian Jewish Congress Bulletin, Allan dashed off a pseudonymously published pulp novel, Love is a Long Shot, for News Stand Library, the paperback imprint of Export Publishing. Thirty-five years later, he rewrote the novel and managed to place it with McClelland & Stewart. It won the 1985 Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour. In between the two different versions, as "John Smith," Allan adapted the plot as a CBC movie titled Love on the Nose. As I understand, he later shopped another adaptation, this one titled Love is a Long Shot, around Hollywood. 

All this brings me to Willie the Squowse, which is by far the shortest and most enjoyable book I've read this year. It began as a story written for his children – unpublished, it would seem – which was bought by George Pal. It was reimagined by Hungarian expat László Vadnay as The Great Rupert. Look carefully, and you'll see Allan's name on the movie poster:


Sadly, Pal didn't direct the film, and Allan had nothing to do with its screen adaptation. According to son Norman Allan, Ted Allan hated the film.

In 1950, the year The Great Rupert was was released, the CBC broadcast Allan's radio adaptation. I find it charming. You can hear it through this link

Twenty-three years after that, Allan entered "Willie the Squowse" in the 1973 Times Children's Story Competition. It earned earned second place, was published in The Times Saturday Review, and was subsequently included in The Times Anthology of Children's Stories (London: Cape, 1974). I believe it's on that strength of this late notice that, at long last, "Willie the Squowse" appeared as a book on its own. Printed in Great Britain, all indications point to my McClelland & Stewart edition as a Cape co-publication; no effort has been made to alter the anglicisms.


The story takes place somewhere in England, in two houses – one well-kept, the other run-down – built back to back. Mr and Mrs Pickering live in the nicer place. They're supported by their son, Richard, who teaches at a university. An impoverished animal trainer named Joe lives in the lesser house. Willie, his most recent project, is a squowse – squirrel father/mouse mother – who swings on a trapeze, marches like a soldier, and can hum "Alouette." Seems pretty impressive, but theatrical agent Pete has a better understanding than I of the box office: "Sorry. The women would scream. There'd be panic in the theatre. No manager could risk it. An elephant act, a dog act, a seal act, even a cat act, but not a squowse act, Joe."


The failure to attract interest means Joe and Willie must leave their squalid lodgings the very next day. Joe falls asleep quite easily, but not Willie. The restless squowse paces about until he notices a small hole in the wall separating his home from the Pickerings'. While exploring, he's knocked out by a chunk of falling plaster. Because Joe can't find the squowse the next morning, he comes to the conclusion that pal Willie has left him. 

Money means nothing and everything in Willie the Squowse. Mr and Mrs Pickering are troubled by their reliance on Richard until they receive a fantastic letter stating that stock purchased long ago will now be paying off in weekly cheques of two hundred pounds. These they convert into ten pound notes which Mrs Pickering pushes through a hole she's made in the kitchen wall. "I want to know the money is near us," she explains to her husband. "I want to feel it around us." They never touch the money, nor do they tell Richard about their windfall, and so he continues to support his parents. 

Just the thought that the money is near brings the Pickerings peace of mind:
During their walks around the the park they noticed two trees they'd never noticed before. They heard music they had never heard before. And most of the neighbours seemed to be very neighbourly, which was something else they had never noticed before. They didn't worry when it rained and they didn't worry when the sun shine and sometimes they giggled thinking how silly they had been to worry so much.
What they don't know is that the money isn't there. For reasons I won't describe, Willie, who has taken up residence in the wall shared by the two houses, has begun pushing ten pound notes toward the new residents of his former home. 

Because Willie the Squowse is so short I'll say no more, except to recommend it. I'm even more keen on Allan's 1950 CBC radio adaptation. Ted Allan played Joe in that production. As I say, he really knew how to make money from his work.

Sadly, I'm nowhere near so savvy.

Object: A very slim hardcover with black boards. The jacket is, of course, by Quentin Blake. I count fifty Blake illustrations in the book itself. 

Access: Sadly, Willie the Squowse is no longer in print. Happily, used copies are plentiful online. The most common is the American edition, published in 1977 by Hastings House. The last edition was published in 1980 by Puffin.

Willie the Squowse
has been translated several times: French (Histoire d'un souricureuil), Spanish (Willie el ratiardilla), German (Willi die Eichmaus), Finnish (Ville Hiirava pankkiirina), and Chinese (松老鼠阿威).

The complete text to Willie the Squowse can be found here on Norman Allan's website. 

17 May 2021

He and His Arrow



Quest for Pajaro
Edward Maxwell [pseud Ted Allan]
London: Heinemann, 1957
116 pages

Before the title page, the reader encounters this:


It has the appearance of a publisher's note, but I suspect it was written by Allan. Either way, the fiction has already begun.


Quest for Pajaro is told in the first person. It's narrator, Edward Maxwell, is a son of great wealth and privilege. As a very young man, he designed and flew experimental aircraft. When came the Second World War, he joined the Royal Air Force, eventually becoming Chief of Staff to Air Vice Marshal Sir Matthew Brown Frew (right).

The war now over, Maxwell has settled into early middle age, living on the Buckinghamshire estate left by his parents. Of his personal life, he has only this to say: "I was married at the age of twenty-four, divorced a year later, and the less said about that unfortunate incident the better. At the age of thirty-seven I had still not found any woman I cared to share my life with."

Maxwell may be a bit off women , but his youthful enthusiasm for experimental aircraft has continued unabated, manifesting itself in an sleek jet he calls the "Arrow." The name will cause the Canadian reader to pause and brush away a tear. 

The Avro Canada CF-105 Arrow

Ted Allan was living in the UK when Quest for Pajaro was written, but I don't imagine for a minute that he wasn't following news from home about the real life Arrow, the most advanced jet aircraft of its day.

If anything, Maxwell's Arrow is even more remarkable in that it is both jet and rocket propelled. On the evening before the first test flight, which he himself is to pilot, our hero invites mathematician friend Alan Ryerman to discuss the project over dinner. A good amount of gobbledygook follows, much of it speculation as to what might happen if the Arrow cracks the "thermal barrier." Ryerman raises the intriguing possibility that his host might simply disappear. This speculation has to do with the speed Maxwell expects to achieve, combined with the speed of the Earth's rotation, the speed of our planet as it circles the sun, the speed of our solar system in the Milky Way, the speed of the galaxy itself, and... well, you get the idea.

As I say, gobbledygook. It's to Allan's credit that he keeps it brief.

The next morning's test flight begins just as hoped. Maxwell passes Mach I, then fires up the rockets. He sees a full circle rainbow, and immediately becomes confused as to whether the cloud ceiling is up or down. Then the clouds disappear, as does colour and all sense of motion. And then he blacks out. 

Maxwell regains consciousness in a one-room hut belonging to a Basque goat-herd and his wife. Their only child, an exquisitely beautiful daughter named Angelita, nurses our hero back to health. Just shy of twenty-one, at birth she suffered a brain injury which has rendered her mute.

There's a something of the fairy tale about Angelita. Though incapable of speech, she's able to communicate with birds through cooing and whistling. Her only friends, they fly in and out of the hut as in a Disney movie, and are talkative companions on walks.

Maxwell tells Pedro, the goat-herd, that he needs to send a telegram, only to be told that this remote corner of the Pyrenees has no such service. He offers to take a letter to Pajaro, the closest village, from which it will eventually make its way to San Bettino, then San Sebastian, and then to whichever destination it is addressed.

Maxwell accepts, sending a letter to Ryerman detailing his location. Days pass, during which our bedridden hero and Angelika become increasingly close. Eventually, Maxwell's letter is returned marked with "the careless script of officialdom" that the recipient is deceased. The cancellation date reads "19 Mayo, 1977."

It's only then that our hero realizes he's somehow flown into the future. The Arrow took off on the morning of 15 May 1956, months before the exquisite Angelika was even born! 

Bruce Petty's jacket illustration, itself exquisite, is more appropriate to a romance novel than a work of science fiction. But then, Quest for Pajaro is more a love story than a tale about a man and his plane. It's Maxwell love for Angelita – come now, you can't pretend you didn't see that coming – that drives the second half of the book. There's really something for everyone, fans of travel adventure included.

Much as I liked Quest for Pajaro, by the end I couldn't help but think it was better suited to the screen than the page. And so, it came as no surprise to discover that it had once been optioned. Thirteen days after the launch of "satellite moon" Sputnik, Queen of Hollywood gossip Louella Parsons reported: 

The Calgary Herald, 17 October 1957
The film has yet to be made, of course, but I'd love to see it done today as a period piece that moves between 1956 and 1977.

I wonder whether Ted Allan's papers, held at Simon Fraser University and Library and Archives Canada, contain a script. If so, I wouldn't be surprised if it pre-dates the novel.

Quest for Pajaro enjoyed just one printing. I purchased my copy earlier this year from a Wallingford, Oxfordshire bookseller. Price: £4. Until a few weeks ago, when I began encouraging friends to add the book to their collections, copies could be purchased on the cheap. As of this writing, the least expensive with jacket is being offered by an Australian bookseller at A$40.00. Not one of the listings identifies Ted Allan as Edward Maxwell.

The fiction that Maxwell is a real person is given a bit of a twist on the dust jacket's front flap:


Ted Allan wasn't a well-known writer when Quest for Pajaro appeared in bookshops. His previous books were This Time a Better Earth (London: Heinemann, 1939), a pseudonymously-published pulp titled Love is a Long Shot (Toronto: News Stand Library, 1949), and The Scalpel, The Sword (Boston: Little, Brown, 1952), a biography of Norman Bethune, co-authored by Sydney Gordon. He was, however, managing to support his family through work for the BBC and CBC.

The Gazette (Montreal)
27 September 1975
Looking back on his career, I'm not sure Ted Allan was ever a "well-known writer," though my thirteen-year-old self knew his name through Lies My Father Told Me (1975), which I first saw in first run at Cinema Place Ville Marie. I liked the film so much that my mother presented me with son Norman Allan's novelization as an Easter gift.

Was Lies My Father Told Me the high-point of Ted Allan's career? He was nominated for a Best Original Screenplay Oscar, while the film itself received a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film. I have no argument with those who instead point to Allan's script for the John Cassevetes film Love Streams, winner of the 1984 Golden Bear.

How is it Love Streams is so forgotten?

Ten Allan was an interesting man and an accomplished writer. One correspondent suggests that Allan's life would make for a riveting biography. Sadly, the days in which the flush publishers would be interested in such a project are long past.

Still, I hold out hope that Ted Allan will better recognized by people twenty-one years in the future than he is today.

Coincidence: The Arrow was rolled out to the public on 4 October 1957 (below), the very same day Sputnik was launched.


What exciting times!

Object and Access: A bland black hardcover in dust jacket by Bruce Petty. My Lord, his work is wonderful. Here's another example:

Pray for a Brave Heart
Helen MacInnes
London: Collins, 1955
Library and Archives Canada and three Canadian universities hold copies of Quest for Pajaro.

Related posts:

13 September 2017

Ten Dusty Favourites from The Dusty Bookcase


Brian shares ten noteworthy finds on his bibliophilic journey, including gossip about the Eaton family, radish-heavy dialogue, and "the worst sex scene in all of Canadian literature."
The good folks at All Lit Up have just posted my overview of ten favourite Dusty Bookcase finds. You can read it through here.

Yep, the worst sex scene in all of Canadian literature – and it wasn't written by Dan Hill.

Related posts:

17 October 2016

A List of Montreal's Post-War Pulps: Second Shot



Late last month, I was interviewed by CULT MTL for their cover story on Montreal pulp and the Ricochet Books series. The issue arrived on the stands last week. Since then, I've been contacted by a number of people wanting a list of Montreal's post-war pulps. The only one of which I knew was this 2014 list made for my Canadian Notes & Queries column. I think it has stood the test of time – two years, anyway – but am now wondering whether it shouldn't be expanded.

All depends on one's definition of "post-war," really. For the purposes of the column, I chose the ten years that followed the August 1945 armistice – though, truth be told, I see the period as ending in 1960. Am I wrong? Americans tend to agree... much to do with Kennedy's victory and that torch being passed to a new generation, I expect. Across the pond, certain cousins maintain that it all ended in 1979 when Thatcher moved into 10 Downing Street.

And then a great darkness set in.

This revised list covers pulps set in Montreal and published between the armistice and the end of 1960, the last day of the farthing. Links are provided for my reviews of each. Titles that have been revived as part of the Ricochet Books series are indicated with asterisks.

The House on Craig Street
Ronald J. Cooke
Winnipeg: Harlequin, 1949 

The first novel by magazine writer and editor Cooke, The House on Craig Street is about a kid who thinks he'll make a killing in the advertising game. He does, though this real passion is literature.

Love is a Long Shot
Alice K. Doherty [pseud. Ted Allan]
Toronto: News Stand Library, 1949

Allan's second novel – after the recently rereleased This Time a Better Earth – Love is a Long Shot is notable for containing the most disturbing scene in Canadian literature. I've written this before. I'll write it again. It haunts.

Sugar-Puss on Dorchester Street*
Al Palmer
Toronto: News Stand Library, 1949

Newspaperman Palmer's only foray into fiction. A slim novel written with tongue firmly in cheek, its value comes in its depiction of pre-Drapeau Montreal, a time when Dorchester was a street... and was called Dorchester.

The Mayor of Côte St. Paul*
Ronald J. Cooke
Winnipeg: Harlequin, 1950

Easily the best of Cooke's three novels. Heavily autobiographical, like the first, it follows aspiring writer Dave Manley, who joins a crime syndicate in quest of material.


Wreath for a Redhead
Brian Moore
Winnipeg: Harlequin, 1951

The very first novel by Moore, a man who would win two Governor General's Awards and be shortlisted for several Bookers.

 "Montreal Means Murder!"


The Crime on Cote des Neiges*
David Montrose
     [pseud. Charles Ross Graham]
Toronto: Collins White Circle, 1951

Montrose's debut introduces Montreal private dick Russell Teed. Here he's trying to prove the innocence of a Westmount girl accused of murdering her bootlegger husband.

The Executioners
Brian Moore
Winnipeg: Harlequin, 1951

Dangerous men arrive in Montreal tasked with either kidnapping or killing an exiled foreign leader. Mike Farrell, a veteran of the Second World War and more than a few boxing rings, sets out to stop them.

Flee the Night in Anger
Dan Keller [pseud. Louis Kaufman]
Toronto: Studio Publications, 1952

Unique amongst the post-war pulps, Flee the Night in Anger divides its action between Montreal and Toronto. Beware the 1954 American reprint, which cuts out a good quarter of the text (including the dirtiest bits).

Murder Over Dorval*
David Montrose
     [pseud. Charles Ross Graham]
Toronto: Collins White Circle, 1952

The second Russell Teed book, Murder Over Dorval is set in motion when a Canadian senator is clubbed on the head during a particularly turbulent flight from La Guardia.

The Body on Mount Royal*
David Montrose
     [pseud. Charles Ross Graham]
Winnipeg: Harlequin, 1953

The third and final Russell Teed adventure is also his booziest. This one involves blackmail, illegal gambling and, of course, a dame... two, in fact.

Intent to Kill
Bernard Mara [pseud. Brian Moore]
New York: Dell, 1956

The last of Moore's Montreal pulps. A thriller set in a building modelled on the Montreal Neurological Institute. The basis for a more than competent 1958 feature film of the same name. Both are recommended.
The Deadly Dames
Malcolm Douglas
     [pseud. Douglas Sanderson]
New York: Fawcett, 1956

The first Sanderson to be published as a paperback original, The Deadly Dames sees the return or Montreal private dick Mike Garfin (see below), but under another name. By pub date, Sanderson had quit Montreal for Alicante, Spain.

Related titles:

Noirish novels not included because they were first published in hardcover or because they don't take place in Montreal.


Daughters of Desire
Fletcher Knight
Toronto: New Stand Library, 1950

A mystery of sorts that begins in a Montreal nightclub, but quickly shifts to a yacht bound for the Bahamas; the novel itself is directionless. Promises of sex come to nothing, despite the presence of a hooker and a promiscuous heiress.

Dark Passions Subdue
Douglas Sanderson
New York: Avon, 1953

The author's debut, this "story of the men who don't belong" deals with homosexuality and the angst of a privileged Westmount boy studying at McGill. Sanderson's "serious novel," it was first published in 1952 by Dodd, Mead.

Hot Freeze*
Martin Brett
     [pseud. Douglas Sanderson]
New York: Popular Library, 1954

The greatest work of Montreal noir... and it's written by a transplanted Englishman. Go figure. Hot Freeze marks the debut of private dick Mike Garfin. It was first published the same year by Dodd, Mead.

French for Murder
Bernard Mara [pseud. Brian Moore]
New York: Fawcett, 1954

Moore's third pulp, the first not set in Montreal. American Noah Cain stumbles upon a murder scene and spends the rest of the novel running around France trying to find the girl who can clear his name.
Blondes Are My Trouble*
Martin Brett
     [pseud. Douglas Sanderson]
New York: Popular Library, 1955

The second Mike Garfin novel – very nearly as good as the first – sees the private dick doing battle with a Montreal prostitution ring. Originally published in 1954 by Dodd, Mead under the title The Darker Traffic.

A Bullet for My Lady
Bernard Mara [pseud. Brian Moore]
New York: Fawcett, 1955

Josh Camp arrives Barcelona to search for his missing business partner. A treasure hunt ensues. By far Moore's weakest and silliest novel (writes this great admirer).

This Gun for Gloria
Bernard Mara [pseud. Brian Moore]
New York: Fawcett, 1956

Disgraced journalist Mitch Cannon, down and out in Paris, is approached by a wealthy American matron who wants his help in finding her daughter. He refuses, but does it anyway.
Hickory House
Kenneth Orvis
     [pseud. Kenneth Lemieux]
Toronto: Harlequin, 1956

By a Montrealer, but set in an anonymous city on the shores of Lake Michigan. I'm reading it right now and would appreciate hearing from anyone who knew the mysterious Mr Orvis.
Murder in Majorca
Michael Bryan [pseud. Brian Moore]
New York: Dell 1957

The last Brian Moore pulp, published between The Feast of Lupercal and his very best Montreal novel, The Luck of Ginger Coffey. Moore left the city for New York in 1959, much to our loss.


The Pyx
John Buell
New York: Crest, 1960

An unusual, highly impressive first novel in which Catholicism, the occult, prostitution, heroin, wealth and privilege all come into play. The basis for the less impressive 1973 film of the same name, it was first published in 1959 by Farrar, Straus & Cudahy.


C'est tout.

Have I missed anything?

Let me know.