Showing posts with label Rohmer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rohmer. Show all posts

19 February 2024

My Mistake in Reading Richardson



Hardscrabble; or, The Fall of Chicago
Major [John] Richardson
New York: Pollard & Moss, 1888
113 pages

A forgotten novel about forgotten bloodshed, Hardscrabble isn't about the fall of Chicago because at the time there was no Chicago. It does concern an April 1812 assault on a farm, Hardscrabble, which was located south of the South Branch of the Chicago River. Winnebago warriors killed two men, while two others escaped.

And so the fiction begins. In Richardson's imaginings, the farm belongs to a man named Heywood, who "by dint of mere exertion and industry" amassed a small fortune in the wilds of Kentucky. He then moved on to South Carolina, where he took as his wife a woman with an even greater fortune. After that, it was back to the Bluegrass State, where he killed a man just to watch him die.

I jest.

Heywood kills a lawyer from a prominent family in a duel – no cause of contretemps given – and then fearing retribution, flees west with his wife and daughter. In the Territory of Illinois they establish two homes, the nicer being a charming cottage across the river from Fort Dearborn. The other dwelling is, of course, the farmhouse at Hardscrabble.

News of the attack on the farm is carried by a hired hand, but Captain Headley, fearing an attack on the stockade, decides against sending his men. This puts him at odds with "high-spirited Southerner" Ensign Harry Ronayne, who is in love with Heywood's daughter Maria. The smitten man disguises himself as a drunken Pottawattamie so as to be ejected from the fort and sets out to rescue the man he hopes will be his future father-in-law.

As in many a historical novel, romance trumps fact. Hardscrabble existed, but it belonged to men named Russell and Lee, neither of whom were present at the time of the killing. Heywood, his wife, and his daughter are fictions. Ensign Ronayne too is a fiction, as is Captain Headley, though a strong argument may be made that the latter is modelled on Captain Nathan Heald, who was from 1810 to 1812 Fort Dearborn's commander.

This student of the War of 1812 expected Fort Dearborn to fall – something to do with the title, you understand – but this never happens. I suggest nothing ribald in writing that the climax comes during the July 4, 1812 wedding of Maria Heywood and Ensign Ronayne. I won't spoil anything either, except to say that there is strong implication that another man's love for Maria will lead to Fort Dearborn's destruction.

The ending is abrupt, as if Hardscrabble, like Richard Rohmer's Ultimatum, is the first half of a longer novel. Sure enough, Wau-nan-gee; or, The Massacre of Chicago, followed its publication. 

I've not read it, and likely never will.

Clearly, Hardscrabble is not the place to start in on Richardson. I read it only because I happened upon a copy being sold for a dollar and had long been intimidated by Wacousta. Richardson's big book in more ways than one, my Carleton University Press Centre for Editing Early Canadian Texts edition amounts to 688 dense pages. The Canadian Brothers, its sequel, is very nearly as long. Hardscrabble seemed much more manageable.

My judgement is no doubt influenced by irritation over its bait and switch title. While the romantic dialogue between Maria and Ronayne is strained, Hardscrabble is well written. At the very least, it's interesting as a novel of the months leading up to the War of 1812 written by a man who had lived through the conflict. And so, I'm willing to read more Richardson.

Wacousta?

No, I'm more interested in his risqué The Monk Knight of St. John, which is set during the Crusades and features a countess Richardson scholar David Richard Beasley refers to as a "Fatal Woman."

Now, if I can only find a copy for a dollar.

Bloomer:
At this early period of civilization, in these remote countries, there was little distinction of rank between the master and the man – the employer and the employed. Indeed the one was distinguished from the other only by the instructions given and received, in regard to certain services to be performed. They labored together – took their meals together – generally smoked together – drank together – conversed together, and if they did not absolutely sleep together, often reposed in the same room.

Object and Access: A cheap, very delicate paperbound book. Mine is falling apart, revealing a glue remarkably similar in colour to that used on the front cover. It was was purchased five years ago.

The novel first appeared serialized in Sartain’s Union Magazine of Literature and Art (February - July, 1850). It was first published in book form in 1854 by DeWitt & Davenport, two years after Richardson's death. My 1888 Pollard & Moss edition appears to have been the last.

As I write this, no copies of the first edition are listed for sale online, though two American booksellers are offering hardcover copies – in variant bindings – of the 1888 Pollard & Moss edition. At US$150.00 and US$159.50 respectively, War of 1812 obsessives may find them tempting.

You're out there, right?

Related post:

03 June 2022

Reading Writing About Richard Rohmer


Lieutenant-General Richard Rohmer's commanding countenance graces the cover of the new issue of Zoomer, just now hitting the stands. A cover boy at 98, his appearance owes something to Her Majesty's Platinum Jubilee. In the corresponding article, "A General Fit for a Queen," Ian Coutts writes of Rohmer's decades-long relationship with our monarch, his life, his various careers, and his bestselling thrillers.

I'm honoured to have been interviewed for the piece. An elementary school discovery, Richard Rohmer was my very first favourite Canadian author. Eight years ago, with pals Chris Kelly and Stanley Whyte, I resolved to read every single one of his books. We very nearly succeeded. The blog Reading Richard Rohmer documents our adventure. 

Richard Rohmer hasn't published a new book since 2007's Ultimatum 2. And so, I was excited to read this in Ian's article: "As we wind down the interview, Rohmer hands me the dazzling, fiery abstract cover design for the non-fiction book he is working on, about high air temperatures in the Rockies and melting permafrost."

How's that for a teaser?

Long live the queen!

Long live the general!

Related posts:

16 February 2022

On Pierre Poilievre's Bookshelves



What with everything going on in Ottawa these days, my focus on things political has shifted from Parliament Hill to the hot tubs and bouncy castles on Wellington Street, and so it wasn't until yesterday that I found time to watch Pierre Poilievre's three-minute YouTube announcement of his run for Prime Minister the leadership of the Conservative Party.


Last go around, two years ago, the MP for Carleton surprised us all in announcing that he wouldn't be running. “I knew it would be hard on my family life to do this,” he said. 

That concern has passed.

Pundits posit Pierre Poilievre as the next party leader. I have no doubt he'll win, if only because there's no one else in the race.

"Governments have gotten big and bossy," begins Poilievre, who once served in the largest cabinet in Canadian history. The man who provided coffee, hot chocolate, and donuts to members of the "Freedom Convoy" goes on to criticise the Grits for exploiting Covid for political purposes.

Poilievre said more, but nothing so interesting or revealing as the collection of books behind his well-oiled hair.

Invite me into your home and I will cast an eye over your bookshelves. And I will judge. 

Beginning on the left uppermost shelf we have a copy of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's Cancer Ward next to the Bodley Head edition of August 1914.

The only volume I recognise on the top centre shelf is Rupert Murdoch's HarperCollins Study Bible (sadly, lacking dust jacket).

The next shelf holds five Dickens novels belonging to the Penguin Clothbound Classics series: Bleak House, Hard Times, Oliver TwistA Tale of Two Cities, and Great Expectations. PenguinRandomHouse sells these volumes as part of a six-volume set. I wonder what it means that A Christmas Carol is missing.


Framed family photos dominate the second row of shelves, but look carefully and you'll see the second edition of Richard Rohmer's Patton's Gap (Toronto: Stoddart, 1998). I bought two thousand copies when working for a national book chain. Sixteen years passed before I read it. If interested, my thoughts on Patton's Gap can be found in this ageing Reading Richard Rohmer post.


There aren't many Canadian books on Pierre Poilievre's shelves. The Rohmer aside, the only others I see are Stephen Payne's Canadian Wings: A Remarkable Century of Flight and Mark Reid's 100 Photos That Changed Canada. The Americans dominate: Reagan: In His Own Hand, Henry Kissinger's Diplomacy, Karl Rove's Courage and Consequence, Thomas Maier's The Kennedys, and Peter Baker's Days of Fire: Bush and Chaney in the White House.


There are no books on Canadian politics.

What else have we got? A paperback copy of 1984 is followed by The Wicked Wit of Winston Churchill. A Regnery Gateway book is next. I thought at first it might be Ann Coulter's High Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Case Against Bill Clinton, but now have my doubts.

All in all, it's a curious collection, arranged in a manner that can make sense only to Poilievre himself. Everything seems so neat, so orderly, so tidy, but look carefully and you'll find evidence of a more chaotic fourth row of shelves, all but blocked by his well-polished desktop. As with career politicians, some lean left, but most lean right.

21 October 2019

Number 43 in a Series



The 43rd Canadian general election takes place today. The first I remember was the twenty-ninth – October 30, 1972 – which Pierre Trudeau's Liberals won by all of two seats. We may see something similar befall son Justin... who happens to be the baby pictured above between Pierre and Margaret Trudeau.

My prediction is that Trudeau fils will do a little bit better, but I'm not prepared to put money on it. I don't recall an election with so many three-way races – and don't remember four-way races  at all. Will the NDP win sixteen seats or sixty? Eric Grénier won't commit.

Can you blame him?


Me? I'll be more than happy with a Liberal minority. Lester Pearson, the greatest prime minister of my lifetime, never once enjoyed a majority. I think of Pearson – and NDP leader Tommy Douglas – each time I speak medical care. I think of Pearson – and NDP leader Tommy Douglas – whenever I see our flag. I will think of Pearson – and NDP leader Tommy Douglas – when my Canada Pension Plan kicks in. My Quebec Pension Plan, too.

Polls close at 9:30 in my riding, which means this could be a very long night. Much of it will be spent dipping in and out of Hotter Than Hell, a 2005 political thriller penned by Mark Tushingham, Senior Advisor to Environment and Climate Change Canada.


Sound familiar?

It received little notice until Conservative Environment Minister Rona Ambrose forbade the author from speaking publicly. Though this made the news, I've yet to find anything by anyone who has actually read Tushingham's novel. Should be interesting – especially to we who make a habit of reading Richard Rohmer.


Does Dr Tushingham's novel give an indication of my vote?

It should.

Truth be told, at this late hour I'm torn between two candidates... neither of whom belongs to the People's Party.

Vote!

Related posts:





18 August 2019

Nelson Ball (1942 - 2019)



Thoughts this weekend have been with Nelson Ball, who died this past Friday. I first encountered Nelson as a poet, and later as a bookseller. He knew more about Canada's fly-by-night post-war paperback houses than anyone. It was my good fortune to have been able to tap his knowledge. Unfailingly generous, Nelson shared my enthusiasm, encouraged my exploration of CanLit's dustier corners, and took joy in my discoveries (most particularly Richard Rohmer's pseudonymously published volume of verse).

Nelson supplied me with dozens of books over the years: Sugar-Puss on Dorchester Street, Flee the Night in Anger, Bad Men of Canada... but of all he sent my way, I value nothing so much as Minutiae, a limited edition chapbook he published in 2014 with Cameron Antsee's Apt. 9 Press. A gift, it was included in an order for Sin for Your Supper, Dirty City, Frustration, No Place in Heaven, Overnight Escapade, Strange DesireDaughters of DesireHe Learned About Women, and Too Many Women.


Its inscription reads "For Brian Busby - with admiration."

Right back at you, Nelson.

I thank you for your kindness. I'm grateful that our paths crossed.

You will be missed.

You are missed.

RIP

Addendum: Cameron Anstee and rob maclennan share their memories of Nelson.

16 January 2018

Resuming Richard Rohmer: A Plea for Help



Four years ago this month, I set out to read every book ever written by Richard Rohmer.

It wasn't my idea.

My old pal Chris Kelly came up with the challenge, mutual old pal Stanley Whyte joined in, and we were off. Not only were we going to read Rohmer's entire bibliography, we were going to do it within the year!

We're still at it.

Our mistake was that we remembered Rohmer's years as a bestselling author, but ignored the decades in which he was not. We'd assumed his books would be plentiful, accessible, and cheap. Why, mere days before we began, I picked up his 1989 thriller Red Arctic for a buck in a Perth, Ontario bookstore.


What I failed to recognize is that it was the first copy I'd ever seen. I haven't come across another since. I didn't know that Red Arctic had come and gone in only one printing, and had never made it to paperback. As a kid, Rohmer mass markets were everywhere. I bought mine at the second closest drug store to my home, but I could've just as easily bought them at the closest. It has been over three decades since Rohmer was last published in mass market.


Rohmer's Ultimatum was the bestselling Canadian novel of 1973, but my local library doesn't have a copy; in fact, the St Marys Public Library doesn't have anything by Richard Rohmer. Its helpful staff did all they could in providing inter-library loans.

Stanley had access to slim holdings offered by McGill and Concordia, but these only went so far. He resorted to ordering one book directly from the publisher. It took several months to arrive.

Chris, who lives in California, had the hardest time of it.

Despite the challenges, we tackled sixteen titles in our first year, and wrote about each in a blog: Reading Richard Rohmer. Visitors will see that we slowed to eight in the second year. In year three, we tackled two: Raleigh on the Rocks and Ultimatum 2. Last year, our reading was Rohmerless.

I began 2018 determined to finish reading Richard Rohmer. We're four books shy:
  • Practice and Procedure Before the Highway Transport Board (1965)
  • The Royal Commission on Book Publishing (1972)
  • The Building of the CN Tower (2011)
  • The Building of the Sky Dome/Rogers Centre [sic] (2012)
The first two are held at the University of Western Ontario's D.B. Weldon Library. As reference material, they're not to be checked out, but I'm willing to suffer as many hours as it takes in that butt-ugly, brutalist building.


Such is my willpower and dedication that I plan to read all four, despite reservations concerning Rohmer's authorship of Practice and Procedure Before the Highway Transport Board and The Royal Commission on Book Publishing. Sure, they appear in his bibliographies, but like Rohmer's claims about taking Rommel out of the Second World War, I have doubts that he played so great a role.

I look forward to being proven wrong.

Remarkably, the most recent titles are more difficult to find than half-century-old government reports. After many, many months, I've finally managed to get my hands on The Building of the CN Tower, but The Building of the Sky Dome/Rogers Centre is proving even more elusive. And so, I ask anyone with a copy to contact me.

Please.

Four years is an awfully long time.

Related posts:

02 January 2017

The Trudeau Papers: Bang!



The Trudeau Papers
Ian Adams
Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1971
Thucydides wrote that Themistocles' greatness lay in the fact that he realized Athens was not immortal. I think we have to realize that Canada is not immortal; but, if it is going to go, let it go with a bang rather than a whimper. 
— Pierre Elliott Trudeau, 30 March 1988
Beginning our sesquicentennial year with a novel imaging Canada's demise might be an odd choice were it not for the deafening roar heard from south of our border. How long before the first major fuck-up of the Trump presidency? I'm betting on this month.

The fuck-up described in this debut novel is monumental. The CIA manages to recruit a brilliant Red Army computer analyst, tasks him with testing the security of the Soviet's "fail-safe computer firing program", and then forgets he ever existed.

Bureaucracy is to blame, which isn't to say that there aren't benefits to be had.


Two SS-9s head for American bases in Montana and North Dakota, and the Soviets can do nothing to stop them. Their Premier alerts the President of the United States of the situation, but is unable to convince him that it is all a mistake. Fortunately, Trump the President knows nothing of the Bible and so cannot recall the quotation used in the nuclear code ("Unto God would I commit my cause." – Job 5:8). Unfortunately – for Canada – the U.S. Strategic Missile Command manages to intercept both missiles, resulting in nuclear explosions above Edmonton and southern Saskatchewan.

One million people die.

Within two weeks, the number triples. It grows exponentially as children succumb to leukaemia, their elders shed skin and hair, and Canadians of all ages are sprayed repeatedly with Agent Orange.

After the Prime Minister's plane goes down on a return flight from Washington, the United States takes advantage of misplaced Soviet guilt. Its military moves north on the pretence of securing American-owned industry, while right-wing vigilantes with ties to the CIA take to the streets. Bookstore owners are beaten, and left-leaning student leaders are strung up on the rafters of Varsity Stadium.

Were it not so dense, I'd consider this 108-page "Novel by Ian Adams" a novella; were it not so complex, I might be dismissive. The Trudeau Papers is a remarkable and unusual novel. Its title is explained by narrator Alan Jarvis, a former journalist who has been entrusted by fellow members of the resistance to record what has happened since the two SS-9s exploded:
The name seemed to evoke a collective sense of grim irony. Personally, I think there title is unimportant, considering the enormity of what has taken place, and how much of it has been documented. The rather vague explanation for the choice was that as one of the last democratically elected prime ministers, his name symbolized the end of a nation. So be it.
The "vague explanation" works well. Jarvis himself was once a former CIA operative – and it could be that he is still. Nothing in The Trudeau Papers is cut and dry; nothing is black and white. I came to trust him, but not so much that I won't understand your distrust.

The Trudeau Papers takes place sometime after 1975... but when?

And so, on this second day of our sesquicentennial year, a new question arises: Which Trudeau?

Addendum: This post is the second – after my review of Richard Rohmer's Triad – to include the Trudeau quote above. Again, is it not incredible that we once had a prime minister who could speak about Thucydides on Themistocles?


Object and access: A slim novel in orange boards with uncredited dust-jacket, I bought my copy twenty-seven years ago at S.W. Welch in Montreal. Price: $1.00. Eighteen years earlier, this very same copy was a Christmas gift from journalist Peter C. Newman to John Payne. I'm guessing that this is the same John Payne who once served as an adviser to future PM John Turner (and not the man who starred opposite Maureen O'Hara in Miracle on 34th Street).

It appears there was no a second printing. Remarkably, there has never been a paperback edition.

Ranging at prices between US$3.48 and $17.54, eight copies are listed for sale online. Condition is not a factor.

25 March 2015

Pornography Dressed Up as a Cautionary Tale



Death by Deficit: A 2001 Novel
Richard Rohmer
Toronto: Stoddart, 1995

There are plenty of villains in this novel – Quebecers, bankers, the Japanese, a CBC reporter with beer on his breath – but only one appears more than fleetingly. This would be the unnamed former prime minister, a "burned-out politician" whose "lined round face was recognized by everyone in Canada."

I recognized him as Paul Martin, our twenty-first prime minister.

Rohmer's twenty-first prime minister is one of "the architects and the builders of the crisis." The emphasis, mine, is wholly justified. Death by Deficit is set in an imagined 2001, a future past, during the earliest days of the greatest crisis Canada has ever faced. Rohmer's twenty-second prime minister – known only, perhaps tellingly, as "Richard" – has just been sworn in when the economy collapses.

Not his fault. Blame Paul Martin, Jean Chrétien, Brian Mulroney, Pierre Elliott Trudeau and their years of reckless deficit spending. As the country's accumulated debt approaches one trillion dollars, the Japanese get jittery and start dumping their Canadian bonds and securities. Richard announces to the assembled media that he is certain the Americans and Europeans will do likewise.

Which they then do.

Which is meant to show how smart he is.

This reader thinks he's an idiot – and not just for that self-fulfilling prophecy. I'm sure the author wouldn't see it that way. Rohmer's Richard is a hero. The leader of a new party created by the merger of Reform and the Progressive Conservatives, he sees crisis as an opportunity to do whatever the hell he wants: slashing the civil service, privatizing Crown corporations, ending foreign aid, giving "Indians" the what for and, of course, slamming the door on immigration.

I once wrote about this type of story in reference to a fantasy Preston Manning published in the Globe & Mail. Masturbatory to those who favour the right, I called it porn. It is. The U of T's Sylvia Ostrey can hardly contain her excitement: "As usual, Richard Rohmer tells a gripping tale – but this time about fiscal policy!"

Former Progressive Conservative MP James Gillies joins in: "Death by Deficit uncannily captures the atmosphere which dominates the House, the caucus, and the Cabinet when there is a crisis."

Bullshit.

There's never been a crisis in which a PM has called for the RCMP to be brought in to House of Commons to quell dissent.

Not yet, anyway.

Richard snubs his Cabinet and meets with his neophyte caucus only to deliver a false primer on "the parliamentary principle of party discipline."

Enter that beery-breathed CBC reporter, who dares make the very observation that Richard did behind closed doors:
"You have a new, inexperienced Cabinet filled with people who don't even know how to find a washroom in this place, let alone how to handle this crisis. Don't you think you should get some help, call in the best brains in the country?"
A fair question, it's followed by others until Richard changes the channel (pun intended):
"There is no longer any justification for the continuation of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and its enormous drain on the public purse."
So ends the CBC. Cut the mike.

The prime minister never calls in "the best minds in the country", rather he phones Allan Greenspan Al Weinstock, Chairman of the Federal Reserve of the United States.

Weinstock states the obvious:
"…you'd better open the IMF and World Bank doors. At least knock on them and let them know you're coming."
As if he hasn't already helped enough, the Chairman of the Fed gives Richard some phone numbers.

Accompanied by Abbi Black, his very hot "director of international studies," Weinstock flies to Ottawa, susses out the situation, and presents the "Weinstock Solution": Washington will take on Canadian debt in exchange for free access to the country's fresh water, abrogation of cultural protection and unobstructed negotiations that would see British Columbia absorbed by the United States.

Richard accepts the proposal with thanks. No negotiation necessary. No need to call the President.

God, what a mess. It's not like we didn't see it coming.


Remember that 1993 episode of W5 devoted to New Zealand's meltdown?

Sure you do. After all, the reporter was "one of Canada's best, probably the best, TV news magazine producer, Eric Malling." American Abbi Black thinks so much of the show that she presents the entire transcript to Richard, his Minister of Finance, the President of the Treasury Board and, ultimately, the reader. Thirty pages of disjointed prose follow.

"There's been some criticism of the program," hot Abbi acknowledges, "but it's okay for our purposes."

Criticism? Well, yes. In fact, Malling's report inspired Linda McQuaig's Shooting the Hippo: Death by Deficit and Other Myths, which laid bare Malling's… let's say "stretching of the truth."

Published six months before Rohmer's novel, McQuaig's Shooting the Hippo: Death by Deficit and Other Myths dominated the 1995 bestseller lists and was shortlisted for a Governor General's Award for English-language Non-Fiction.

Rohmer's Death by Deficit is, of course, pure fiction. You can tell because he inflates Canada's 1993-94 debt, has it that Employment Insurance is a drain on our taxes and repeats that old saw about Francophones controlling the civil service.

Think of it all as a novelist's prerogative.

Still, I can't help but think that Rohmer believes these things, just as I'm certain he believes the PM's warped version of parliamentary democracy is spot on. Death by Deficit is our world, but a little off, like cheese that's been left out too long smeared over the pages of The Plot Against America. In Richard Rohmer's Canada a female Governor General delivers the "Speech From [sic] the Throne" decked out like Eliza Doolittle at the Embassy Ball.

Death by Deficit predicts a Chrétien government that paid no attention whatsoever to the growing national debt, when in fact it began paying off same with record surpluses. Credit belongs to Paul Martin, who is referred to in the novel as a "lying bastard".

I'll hand the author this: Paul Martin did indeed become our twenty-first prime minister. What's more, our twenty-second, Stephen Harper, leads a party born of a merger of Reform and the Progressive Conservatives. What Rohmer gets wrong is that the Harper government has run the largest deficits in Canadian history, raising us to unprecedented heights of public debt.

What he gets right is that, like Richard's party, Stephen's votes as one.


Sheep.

Trivia: In Generally Speaking: The Memoirs of Major-General Richard Rohmer, the author describes Paul Martin as "a good friend of mine." Rohmer isn't mentioned in Hell or High Water, Martin's autobiography.

Best passage:
It was Abbi Black who was the sight to behold. The PM's male hormone computer told him she was one of the most strikingly beautiful women he had ever laid eyes on. His computer went up a further notch when she slipped off her heavy coat and white scarf. This tall, high-healed, long-limbed, slim beauty was wearing a tight-fitting black woollen sheath with a gleaming row of golden buttons running down from the discretely low-cut bodice that covered her firm breasts (just the right size, according to his computer).
     His eyes took in the cascade of wavy ebony hair and the smooth, unlined forehead, the black, well-shaped eyebrows arched over eyes that held deep-brown pupils in their centres. Her nose was perfectly shaped, her high cheekbones led to a wide, full-lipped mouth with exquisite teeth.
     The PM liked – very much – what he saw, but there was serious business at hand, and he switched off his internal computer as he shook Abbi Black's soft, well-manicured hand.
Highest concentration of hyphens in Canadian literature (but that's not why I point it out).

Bonus:
The doors of the Speaker's chambers opened. There the Right Honourable Pearl McConachie stood in radiant white, her long form-fitting gown reaching to the scarlet carpet. He sleeved arms were partly concealed by a purple cape that sat on her slender shoulders. The wavy blond hair was fetched upwards, seemingly encased in a delicate, glittering tiara.
Object and Access: A well-padded 234-page hardcover in Tory blue boards, my copy set me back 60¢ last summer. Online booksellers offer a dozen or so at prices ranging from $4.11 to $38.74. Condition is not a factor. Pay no more than 60¢.

Death by Deficit was printed only once and has never come out in paperback, meaning all copies out there are first editions. Pay no more than 60¢.

Thirteen of our academic libraries have copies, as does Library and Archives Canada. Public library users will find the book in the Calgary Public Library, the Red Deer Public Library, the Medicine Hat Public Library and the Toronto Public Library.
Death by Deficit was read for Reading Richard Rohmer
Related posts:

01 December 2014

Of Downton Abbey and Our Magnificent Folly



December. Time has come to admit that we've failed.

Eleven months ago, with my friends Chris Kelly and Stanley Whyte, I set out to read each and every book by Richard Rohmer within the calendar year. We're right now on our eighteenth. While that figure may seem impressive, there are still twelve to go.

Who'd've thunk he'd written so much?

We all knew what we were getting into. I was pretty certain that Rohmer had published something in the area of thirty books. What I didn't anticipate was that they would be so hard to find. A child of the 'sixties, I well remember a time when Rohmer topped bestseller lists. His books were on display at the local WH Smith and could be bought at every drug store in town. I expected – as did Stan and Chris – that used copies would be plentiful and cheap. Hell, last December I picked up a copy of Red Arctic for a dollar.


What I didn't know is that after his 1973 smash Ultimatum, Rohmer's sales began to decline. The first break in his string of bestsellers came in 1984 with the flop How to Write a Best Seller. There's irony for you. By the end of that decade, he was no longer  published in mass market – readers of thrillers will recognize the significance of that fact. Second printings have been rare.

How rare?

The only book that has seen any sort of second life in the past quarter-century is the one we're currently reading: John A.'s Crusade. First published in 1995 by Stoddart, two years ago Dundurn reissued the novel as Sir John A.'s Crusade and Seward's Magnificent Folly.


"About the only general suggestion I can make about choosing a title is that it should in some way suggest the plot," says Rohmer in How to Write a Best Seller. John A.'s Crusade did just that. Set during the months leading to Confederation, it sees the future prime minister travelling about Europe – by train, warship and carriage – on a secret mission to purchase Alaska from the Russians. Meanwhile across the pond, William Seward, Andrew Johnson's Secretary of State, is working on the very same goal.

If anything, Sir John A.'s Crusade and Seward's Magnificent Folly suggests even more of the plot. And, as my pal Stan points out, it also provides something of a tie-in to the film Lincoln, in which Seward figures prominently.


I wonder whether Sir John A.'s Crusade, Seward's Magnificent Folly and a Visit to Highclere Castle was ever considered. Too long, I suppose.

Highclere Castle features prominently on the cover of the new edition; Sir John A a little less so. Cast your eyes down and you'll find this banner: "BRITAIN'S REAL DOWNTON ABBEY AND CANADA'S BIRTH".


I wasn't aware of any connection between Confederation and Downton Abbey. Truth be told, I didn't see that the show has had much to do with Canada at all. Then I read the back cover:
In late 1866, John A. Macdonald and other Fathers of Confederation arrived in London to begin discussions with Britain to create Canada. Macdonald and two of his colleagues stayed briefly at Highclere Castle in Hampshire, the stately home of the Fourth Earl of Carnarvon, Britain's colonial secretary. Those are the facts. 
Today Highclere Castle is widely known as the real-life location for the popular television series Downton Abbey. In Richard Rohmer's novel, Macdonald talks with Carnarvon at Highclere about legislation to give Canada autonomy, the danger of Irish Fenian assassination plots, and the proposed American purchase of Alaska from Russia.
It is indeed a fact that "Macdonald and two colleagues stayed briefly at Highclere Castle". Those two colleagues were George-Étienne Cartier and Alexander Galt; being an overnight stay theirs was several hours longer than that offered today's paying visitors.

So, yeah, "stayed briefly" seems about right.

What irks is the author's new Preface. All about the tenuous link between the novel and television show, for the most part the thing is sigh-inducing:
Downton Abbey, as it appears in the magnificent television series is actually Highclere Castle, often known as Carnarvon Castle. It was there that much of the Downton Abbey series was and will be shot. 
This sentence follows, challenging conventional history :
It was also there that the difficult quest for Canada's status as an ultimately self-governing monarchy nation truly began on December 11, 1866, as this piece of historical fiction demonstrates.
Never mind the Great Coalition, the Charlottetown Conference, the Quebec Conference and the London Conference, Rohmer has it that an after-dinner conversation over port and cigars marks the true beginning of the country we call Canada. The claim is absurd, and is made truly shameful by the simple fact that this piece of historical fiction demonstrates no such thing. Macdonald and colleagues do nothing more than report on current negotiations… oh, and Fenians!

Here, in full, is how the real Carnarvon described Rohmer's birth of a nation in his diary:

from The Political Diaries of the Fourth Earl of Carnarvon, 1857–1890
Cambridge UP, 2010
See how much work goes into reading Richard Rohmer?

Imagine how much time has been wasted walking across rooms to retrieve books thrown against walls.

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12 November 2014

Chasing Down a Thriller Writer's Hidden Verse



Poems
Arthur Henry Ward [pseud. Richard Rohmer]
Don Mills, ON: Musson, 1980

It all began late last year when I noticed a seemingly foreign title in Wikipedia's Richard Rohmer entry:


Poems of Arthur Henry Ward? Rohmer as anthologist? Of poetry? A joke, right? And who the hell is Arthur Henry Ward?

Turns out that Arthur Henry Ward is Sax Rohmer's real name. I didn't know this because my knowledge of British mystery writers is next to nonexistent. I understand that his novels aren't half bad.

I could be wrong.

In any case, the discovery gave rise to a question: If Ward is Rohmer, could it be that Rohmer is Ward?

Further investigation revealed that Poems of Arthur Henry Ward was added to the entry by someone using the name "General Richard Rohmer". To date, the Wikipedian has made only one other edit – this to the very same entry. More have been made under the username "Richard rohmer [sic]"; IP addresses traced to the general's adopted hometown of Collingwood, Ontario (pop. 19,241), have also been used.

Richard Rohmer, right?


So convinced am I that Poems is the work of the man who gave us Ultimatum, Exxoneration and Separation that I purchased the lone copy listed for sale online. The investment paid off in the receipt of what is now the most unusual volume of verse in my personal library.

The slim tome's first poem, "Critic", begins:
I am a Critic!
As such I render competent artists incoherent, impotent
through my unfeeling castration of
talented painters, sculptors, authors, actors and
the beautiful disorderly horde of intuitive creators of
intellectual art
Ninety-four lines follow, but I'll stop here because I was lost on first reading. Still am. I don't quite get why the castration of the talented renders the competent impotent. Were they standing too close? Did the castrator's knife catch? Is psychological trauma to blame? More than anything, I'm left wondering whether castration is ever done with feeling. I should write Joni Ernst.

That first stanza is the easy one. This, the fourth, is more typical:
but of course, if you are a critic and therefore a
perverted, certified insanist with no relationship
to the real world, it is agreed by all who are
not mercenary critics and therefore by the whole
of those humanly afoot/abroad that critics are as
above described —
Rohmer was never the critics' darling. Before John Gellner's incompetent reviews of Massacre 747, and Starmageddon, I'm not sure he'd ever received positive notice. Rohmer once sued Larry Zolf and various higher-ups at the Gazette over a review of Balls! I'm not sure even Erwin Rommel was so great an enemy as William French, whom Rohmer once described – unjustly  as "the most skilled literary critic (so-called) in Canada when it comes to putting down Canadian authors."

The Gazette, 22 September 1979
Oh, but then a lot of authors hate critics. It wasn't until the first eight lines of the second poem, "Smoker", that I knew for certain that Ward was really Rohmer:
Polluters
contaminators who foul the already grit-crud filled
atmosphere of a crowded world, chemical waste
pouring into steams, rivers, lakes, oceans upward
into the moving air masses that insidiously fly
parasitical minute particles of man-generated
poisons to be lowered imperceptibly, secretly
enveloping the unsuspecting body
Smokers, you see, crowd Rohmer's novels, invariably falling into one of two camps: the weak and the villainous.

Some will take exception to me and "General Richard Rohmer", pointing to words like "already grit-crud filled / atmosphere", "chemical waste / pouring into steams, rivers, lakes, oceans", and the "parasitical minute particles of man-generated /  poisons". They will ask how these could come from Rohmer, a man who has spent decades arguing for aggressive expansion of the oil and gas industry in our far north. To these doubters I say there have always been contradictions within Rohmer's writing.

Consider his 1979 big bestselling Balls! In the novel, his fifth, a natural gas monopoly shuts off supply to the City of Buffalo without warning. Twenty thousand people die as a result – the President of the United States included – though everyone agrees that Congress is at fault for not imposing stringent industry regulations. The new president sets things right, spending billions to purchase and retrofit several dozen oil tankers. These in turn are handed over to the very same corporations that had caused the crisis. As the vice-president explains, the government is a great believer in private enterprise. So is Richard Rohmer.

I dwell on Balls! because it was the first Rohmer from General Publishing. In 1979, the company paid $35,000 for the privilege. A year later, it gave Rohmer $75,000 ($210,000 today) as an advance on Periscope Red, Patton's Gap and Triad.

I doubt one of those books earned out.

Poems was set loose by Musson, the General imprint that had forty years earlier published Memory Hold-the-Door. I suggest that its existence has at least something to do with the company's desire to please its bestselling author.

Rohmer the poet is much different than Rohmer the bestseller. The language is different. A man who typically dictates his books  Generally Speaking while driving his car  I suspect he actually wrote Poems; hence "thence" and  hundred or so other words not found in his prose. His style is best described by my Reading Richard Rohmer colleague Chris Kelly, a more accomplished certified insanist than I:
What’s the difference between a poem and an angry diary entry? A poem has arbitrary line breaks. Also, in a poem, whenever you get to something you know two other words for, use all three.
     That way people know you won’t be silenced, censored, cowed.
I haven't encountered a more angry book. Only once, in "Flyer", does one detect another emotion:
I fly
airborne!
free, up
a bird machine
strapped to my ass
in my hands, under
the coordinates of my
concentrating brain 
Poems cannot be easily dismissed. Months have passed since its purchase, and I've still not made my way through the twenty poems contained within its cardboard covers. It is not possible to read one after another; it is not possible to read one stanza after another. My reading for today comes from the eighteenth poem, "Woman", stanza six (of twelve):
womankind, whose exclusive role of potential/actual
re-creation brings usually therewith a
lesser strength, physical, emotion but superior
determined doggedness peppered with erect, stiff,
bitchiness not overpowering for the mate but oftentimes
precipice teetering as equality syndrome
balloons prickly proofing deflatable on the edge-push
of the drive of woman to be her own person,
but just only/merely/something more than a semen
receptacle
Again, I'm lost.

T & A?: Poems by Arthur Henry WardPoems by Arthur Henry Ward Jr.Poems by Arthur Henry Ward, Jr.? I'm going with the Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data.


Object: A slim, 60-page trade-size paperback. Part of Musson's short-lived, not-much-missed Spectrum Poetry Series. The Robin Taviner cover design appears to have been adopted as a logo.


My copy – a review copy – was purchased earlier this year from Paris bookseller Nelson Ball.


I've not been able to find a single review.

Critics!

Access: For a thirty-four-year-old book from a major Canadian publisher, Poems is surprisingly scarce. No copies are currently listed for sale online. Library and Archives has a copy, as does the Toronto Public Library and twelve of our academic libraries. That's it.

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13 August 2014

Richard Rohmer Recycles (Again)



Starmageddon
Richard Rohmer
Toronto: Irwin, 1986

Starmageddon takes place in a future past. We know this because the Office of the Vice-President of the United States is held by a woman. The president calls her a bitch, primarily because she never supported Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative. It's the year 2000, seventeen years have passed since The Gipper initiated the program and – glory be – the thing works! Doesn't the VP have mud on her face!

Time, 4 April 1983
When an American general insults the South Koreans, the lady vice-president is sent off to do damage control. Air Force One has been booked by the Secretary of State, meaning she and her staff have to travel on a commercial airliner. Seats are booked on a 747 that will follow the very same route taken in 1983 by doomed Korean Air Lines Flight 007.

What could go wrong?

Plenty.

The captain is distracted by the vice-president, another pilot is distracted by the hot purser, and the first officer is legally blind. As a result, the wrong coordinates are entered into the navigation system and the 747 flies over a site where the Soviet Union is at that very moment testing its own strategic defence system.

Well, you can imagine.


Starmageddon is the twelfth book tackled as part of the Reading Richard Rohmer project. By now, I've come to expect a fair amount of self-plagiarism in the author's books. For the most part, this takes the form of passages, speeches, chapters and fictitious documents lifted from previous novels. Separation Twothe most egregious act of self-plagiarism in Canadian literature, is the most extreme example.

Starmageddon is something else altogether. Here Rohmer lifts and tweaks page after page from Massacre 747, his 1984 book on the Korean Air Lines disaster. Behold, fiction born of non-fiction:
Like a lumbering elephant, Flight 315 began to move down runway fourteen, accelerating rapidly toward the computer-precalculated speed of 196 miles per hour. When the speed was reached, the co-pilot called out "rotation"and the captain, both hands now on the wheel of the control column, hauled back smoothly and strongly. Instantly, the nose rotated up into the climb position, and the enormous aircraft, 196 feet between its blinking wingtip lights and 232 feet between nose and tail, leapt gracefully up into the black night. It was 2:02 on the morning of August 29.
— Starmageddon 
Like a lumbering elephant, Flight 007 began to move down runway 31L, accelerating rapidly toward the computer-precalculated speed at which the co-pilot would call for rotation. When the rotation came, the captain, both hands now on the wheel on the control column, hauled back smoothly and strongly. Instantly, the nose came up into the climb position, and the enormous aircraft, 196 feet between its blinking wingtip lights and 232 feet between nose and tail, leapt gracefully up into the black night. It was 12:24 on the morning of September 1.
— Massacre 747
August 29, not September 1. The flight and runway numbers are different, too. Again, Starmageddon is set in the future; albeit a future in which the lessons of Flight 007 are forgotten. Oh, people still remember the disaster, its a real topic of conversation, but that doesn't prevent this from happening:
At 5:53 the Soviet pilot reported: "804. I have executed the launch."
       In one second the lights of the rockets, as burning propellants thrust the missiles ever faster toward the target, had become mere pinpoints in the distance. The rockets headed unerringly for the brilliant navigation lights and the red rotating beacons of the target.
       Pilot 804 knew this his heart-seeking missile, if functioning properly, would have locked onto one go the river of intense heat that the target's huge engines pouring out into the frigid high-altitude air.
— Starmageddon 
At 18:26:20 the Soviet pilot reported: "805. I have executed the launch."
     In one second the lights of the rockets, as burning propellants thrust the missiles ever supersonically faster toward the target, had become mere pinpoints in the distance. The rockets headed unerringly for the brilliant navigation lights and the red rotating beacons of the target.
       The fighter pilot knew this his heart-seeking missile, if functioning properly, would have "locked on" to one go the target's huge engines pouring out a river of intense heat into the frigid high-altitude air.
Massacre 747
One can understand Rohmer's temptation; Massacre 747 is one hell of a book, and it contains some of his very best writing:
The mortally wounded 747 cut through the night sky, illuminating it for miles around. With only one wing it slowly began to roll. It was like a comet. Its long, distinctive humplike cockpit and nose thrust ahead and clear of the ball of flame as if trying to run away, to avoid being consumed. Inside the roiling fire all was being engulfed or spit out by the explosion into the icy air. Bodies were torn apart. Blankets, luggage, seats, toys – everything movable or ripped away from floors and ceilings at the rear of the massive aircraft – were spewed out the hole where the tail had been.
— Massacre 747 
The flaming and mortally wounded 747 cut through the night sky, illuminating it for miles around. With only one wing, it slowly began to roll. Its long, distinctive humplike cockpit and nose thrust ahead and clear of the ball of flame, as if trying to avoid being consumed. Inside, the roiling fire engulfed all that was not spit out into the icy air by the explosion. Bodies were torn apart. Blankets, luggage, seats, toys – everything that was movable or had been ripped away from floors and ceilings at the rear of the massive fuselage – were spewed out the hole where the tail had been.
— Starmageddon
Who wouldn't want to revisit those images. Besides, it gave opportunity to fix that awkward sentence about the roiling fire.

Did anyone notice?

Books in Canada, May 1986
John Gellner, who wrote glowing reviews of both books for the Globe & Mail, didn't mention the self-plagiarism; as editor of the Canadian Defence Quarterly, you'd think he'd have noticed. But what interests me more is Irwin, which was then in its death throes. Did anyone there know that large portions of their big fiction offering where copied from a book being sold by a rival publisher?

Best sentence:
Pieces of the shattered engine blade penetrated the thin fuselage skin like a knife through gossamer.
— Starmageddon 
Pieces of the shattered engine blade penetrated the thin fuselage skin like a knife through gossamer.
— Massacre 747
Object: A 241-page hardcover in blue binding. The cover art by Peter Mossman reminds me of the very worst albums sold during my time at Sam the Record Man (1983-85).

Access: At eight, I count more copies in public libraries than academic libraries.

The hardcover first edition – there was no second printing – is more common than the mass market paperback. The only cover image I can find (right) comes courtesy of Toronto bookseller David Harris, who offers his copy for all of two dollars.

Worth every penny.

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