Publisher and Author as a Golfing Authority

by JK

On Saturday, May 5, I travelled east of Toronto to Whitby, to speak at a well-attended local Ontario Writers’ Conference. The setting was the Deer Creek Golf Club.

I was there to give a lunch-time talk to the 175 people at the conference, and was wearing my “Publisher’s Uniform.” (As a publisher I always instructed my authors that on the promotion trail they should look like their book cover photo, wearing the same clothes, hairstyle/beard, and so on. So when I’m appearing as “author” I wear the blue blazer, grey flannels, white button-down shirt, and striped tie that the unflattering Tony Jenkins caught on the book jacket.)

As you would expect, this was a much more formal outfit than that worn by the dozens of golfers who were enjoying the Deer Creek sunshine.

When I left the conference to roam around the tees before the lunch, my outfit led to a misunderstanding. I was silently standing there, watching people teeing off (in the interested manner of someone who grew up playing golf), when on two occasions, members eager to start the round mistook this well-dressed authority figure as the Official Starter. They were polite Asian Canadians, and they came up to me, bowed, and presented me with their official Starter’s Card.

I explained that I was just a spectator, and withdrew before there were any more misunderstandings. But the possibilities for mischief (“Sure, go ahead. I’m sure you’ll miss the players just in front . . . they’re further off than they look”) have stayed with me.

There may even be the start of a murder mystery plot. And a title . . . Drive, He Said.

Recommended Reading: The Disappeared

by JK

In May I’m going to be visiting Cambodia for the first time, to see my daughter Katie, who is doing good work there.

I’m doing all of the usual preparation things (or, more correctly, I’m saying, “Sounds good” when Jane suggests two nights at this hotel, then three nights at that one). But past experience shows that a layer of familiarity with a place is much better acquired from a good novel than from  a tourist guidebook. (London I’m sure, is different if you have never read Dickens.)

So I have been very pleased to read Kim Echlin’s 2009 novel The Disappeared. It’s set originally in Montreal, where a private school girl (from Miss Edgar and Miss Cramp’s School) named Ann Greves meets a young Cambodian musician/student named Serey. Over the objections of her father, they get together and live on the Bleury Street fringes of the music world.

Serey was able to get out of Cambodia before the killing times. But when, after four Khmer Rouge terrible years, the Vietnamese army moves in and opens the border again, Serey moves back home, alone, in search of his family.

Anne hears nothing from him, year after year. Then she sets off in search of her lover. Miraculously, she finds him. But she also finds Cambodia, a country suffering post-traumatic stress. And the reader — and tourist-in-preparation – learns about the horrors of the Killing Times. “Year Zero” was the slogan shouted by 14-year-olds with guns as they forced the entire population of Phnom Penh to leave their homes and start walking to the country: anyone who asked, “Why?” was shot down. And so it went, year after year.

I’ve seen the Killing Fields, but The Disappeared brings the history of the Pol Pot times alive. Whether it also catches the sense of life in Cambodia’s streets today, is a question I won’t be able to answer until I return.

For the Next Edition, Callaghan and Hemingway

by Douglas Gibson

Usually an author greets the news that his information is out of date with some resentment. Making changes for the next edition is troublesome, and implies at least a hint of error first time around.

That’s not the case with my reaction to the recent Toronto Star articles on what recently discovered letters by Ernest Hemingway tell us about his relationship with young Morley Callaghan. They confirm what I wrote about Hemingway’s support for Morley’s early work. Even better, they reveal that he was willing to invest in Morley’s fiction, literally, offering to put up half of the money it would cost the publisher to bring the book out.

Later in the Star series, we learn more about the boxing match in Paris where Morley knocked the much larger Hemingway down. This event plays a role in my chapter on Morley and is re-enacted in my stage play, but it’s fascinating to find just how long it continued to rankle with Hemingway.

And the Star’s revelations about the theft of Callaghan-Hemingway letters from a Toronto rare book dealer, my friend David Mason, and David’s assertion that the accused thief’s suicide in the Don Jail was actually murder is all wonderful new material, worth preparing for that future edition.

Naturally, I’m still collecting a few corrections from eagle-eyed readers, and welcome more. To some extent.

Editing Tips from Douglas Gibson (#16)

by JK

In this recurring feature, we’re sharing tips for editors from the desk of Douglas Gibson. Good for those starting out or old hands who need a reminder, these reminders form an engaging guide for sharp-eyed wordsmiths.

Tip #16
Sometimes there is a clash between the wide-ranging expectations of a publisher and the difficult detailed work that the luckless editor has to do on the manuscript. This (except in the case of schizophrenics who are both publishers and editors, cough, cough) reflects a basic difference in character. As the wise John Le Carré has one of his cynical characters remark in The Russia House, “Publishers can get their minds halfway round anything.” Editors, by contrast, can’t just be halfway professionals.


On the Robertston Davies Trail

by Douglas Gibson

The morning after the Arnprior show, Dave and Alison fed me kippers then took me on a sentimental journey to Renfrew. This was the town, sixty miles northwest of Ottawa, where Robertson Davies (born in 1913)  spent the years from 1919 to 1925.

The town (a little larger than its rival, Arnprior, to the east) had a huge influence on Davies during those formative years. As Judith Skelton Grant shows in her expert biography, Davies did not enjoy Renfrew, and he got his revenge with the portrait he painted of “Blairlogie” in What’s Bred in the Bone. “It thought of itself as a thriving town, and for its inhabitants the navel of the universe.” (The physical metaphor could, I suppose, have been worse.)

He wrote about its proud ignorance and its exclusivity (where newcomers were concerned), and commented on the three-layer cake of its inhabitants, with the Scots on top, followed by the French, then with the newer Polish immigrants at the bottom. Even at the age of 70, his feelings about Renfrew were so strong that he felt that he had to write “to get it out of my system.”

We began our tour with a visit to the McDougall Mill Museum, kindly opened for us specially by the very knowledgeable Mr. Gilchrist. The museum  building itself is hugely impressive, set beside a fast section of the Bonnechere River. Since Renfrew was at the heart of the timber trade, the museum is rich in examples of the tools of the trade involved in “hurling down the pine.” There are many photographs of the local bands that must have entertained young Rob Davies, and posters for the “O’Brien Opera House,” which we know he attended. For What’s Bred in the Bone he turned Senator O’Brien (who was in fact an important figure not only in the lumber trade, but also in the development of hockey, and the man behind The Renfrew Millionaires) into Senator McRory.

It was notable that the sports teams from the start of the century shown in team photos all featured Scottish and Irish names. By the 1950s there was a fair sprinkling of Polish names on the team.

We tried to trace the three Davies houses in Renfrew. Of the first house Judith Skelton Grant writes that “the Davieses were dismayed to find that the house . . . arranged for them was in the Polish section of town.” We found the house on Cross Avenue, and I roamed around outside, taking in the stark red-brick exterior. As if on cue a young man came out to check the mailbox just by the front door. I greeted him with my usual charm: “Hi there! Did you know that a famous author once lived in this house?”

“Huh?”

“Yeah, his name was Robertson Davies, a famous Canadian author. He lived right here when he was a boy, about a hundred years ago.”

If I’d told him that birds sometimes landed on the roof of his house his shrugging reaction would have been the same: “Whauuh,” followed by a determined return to the house and a slamming of the door.

We found the old site of the Renfrew Mercury office, where Davies sometimes helped his father (at the age of nine he even wrote a review of a local lecture, where a lady sang “very acceptably”). It is now a sporting goods store, right next door to the grand central post office on Raglan Street. We failed to find the second house, but did cross the dramatically  swaying suspension bridge that he crossed every morning to get to school. And we did find the dramatic final Davies House (now a Doctor’s Surgery) in the best part of town, marking the rise of the Davies family over those Renfrew years.

We did not knock on the doctor’s door. Although the woman who runs the sporting goods store had heard of him.

Recommended Reading: The Free World

by Douglas Gibson

Recently I had the pleasure of being one of the three judges of the Amazon.ca First Novel Award. I accepted the role when asked by my friend Stuart Woods, the editor of Quill & Quire, before the Amazon link became a major embarrassment. (Amazon is throwing its weight around, and if publishers don’t automatically agree with the new, worse terms they’re offered, their books are automatically de-listed – in their electronic form, at least – from all Amazon websites. That has happened to my book, and to all books published by ECW. There are other ways, of course, to get our books electronically, but doing business with bullies is not good.)

The judging process put me in touch with five fine books, by authors who were mostly new to me. In every single case I was glad to be introduced to the book, and enjoyed reading it. The judging process, expertly arranged by Stuart Woods, brought pleasant contact with Nathan Whitlock, whom I knew slightly and whose work I admired, and my old friend Kelly Duffin. I suspect that with the variety of opinions we brought to the (metaphorical) table we could have spent a week putting the five books in order, but after a full discussion it was clear that we all agreed on The Free World by David Bezmozgis as the winner.

The plot is simple. Three generations of a family of Latvian Jews escape to “the free world” of the title. In this case, that world is Rome, and the life that various refugee organizations offer to people in transit, while they choose their new home, and – after a tense time — are accepted by the officials of that country.

All of the family members adapt to their new life in different ways, including the grandfather who preferred the way things were back home. It’s a very sophisticated piece of fiction and is full of wry humour. (At one point, when an amorous young man suggests a horizontal tree branch as a solution to the lack of a private bedroom, the offended lady retorts, “What are we? Squirrels?” )

I recommend the book without reservation, and look forward to many more fine books coming from David Bezmozgis. But watch out, too, for more fine books from the other nominated authors.

Politics and the Pen

by Douglas Gibson

For 16 years now, the Writers’ Development Trust has been running a fundraising dinner at Ottawa’s Chateau Laurier Hotel, under the title Politics and the Pen. The theory is that if you offer people the chance to sit at a table with a politician (designated with a medal on a gold ribbon) and a writer (ditto, but with a green ribbon), they will gladly turn out for a good meal in aid of a good cause. The theory really works. This year 500 formally dressed men and women filled the Chateau’s main banquet room, and the Trust raised about $300,000 to distribute among deserving writerly causes.

I’ve attended many of these Ottawa dinners in the past. My book (you know the title) tells the story of how I was assigned to the central table of Prime Minister Paul Martin (whom I had not met) on the grounds that “Oh, Doug can talk with anyone.”

In those days I always attended in my role as publisher of many politically engaged books. Sometimes my role was a triumphant one, as when the Shaughnessy Cohen Award presented at the dinner went to Young Trudeau, by my authors Max and Monique Nemni.

This year I did double duty, because I was the proud Publisher of the Nemnis’ Trudeau Transformed, also nominated for the award. But my special pride was to attend this year as an author, with my green ribbon around my neck. I’m afraid that I was so proud of my new honorary status that I flaunted my medal and ribbon shamelessly to other writing friends . . . Richard Gwyn (this year’s winner), Max and Monique, Denise Chong, Terry Fallis, Graham Fraser, Jeffrey Simpson, Taras Grescoe, George Tombs (translator and author), Ray Robertson, Charlotte Gray, John Ibbitson, Paul Wells, and many, many more.

As for the politicians, our table was graced by my old journalist friend Peter Kent, and in the pre-dinner melee I chatted with old friends like Bob and Arlene Rae, and new friends like Tom Mulcair, Megan Leslie of Halifax (“Do I know Silver Donald Cameron? You should see the sign he puts up on the Arm”) and Peggy Nash (“Your daughter is one of my constituents”) amid others of all parties, all on their best behaviour. A pleasant and inspiring evening.

By way of contrast, I had a sharp dose of reality when I walked that afternoon down Sussex Drive to the site of the old Nicholas Hoare bookshop. It used to be a fine, elegant store, so well-placed and so spacious that I selected it regularly for launch parties and readings for books by important Ottawa authors like Jeffrey Simpson and Graham Fraser. On my retirement Jane and I even held a farewell soiree there for our literary friends.

Now the store is closed, for ever, with a sharply worded sign on the door explaining that the landlord, the National Capital Commission(!) had killed it by demanding a 73% rent increase.

Peering through the streaked windows, I could see that all of the elegant shelves had been pulled down and tossed into a splintered heap, with stray chairs riding on top of the jagged pile.

Is there anything sadder than a deserted, shuttered bookstore?

Arnprior Is a Priority

by Douglas Gibson

The day after my time swanning around the Chateau Laurier as one of the Honoured Guests at Politics and the Pen, I was picked up at the hotel and whisked an hour west to Arnprior. The whiskers were my old friends David Lewis Stein and his wife, Alison. Dave is famous as the author (whom I’m proud to have published) and Toronto Star columnist who dressed like a Damon Runyon character, a fedora always perched on his head. He was also famous as the man who really knew Toronto city politics, inside out, and was the ultimate streetwise, big-city guy. And now he has retired to Arnprior, a little town of about 8,000 in the Ottawa Valley, where Alison’s family has ancient links.

How are they doing? Very well indeed, to judge from my happy stay with them at the big Victorian house that sits about 100 yards away from the distinctive Arnprior Museum, where Alison puts in volunteer time. About fifty yards down the main street is Gwen Storie’s bookstore.That evening the amazing Gwen and her staff rearranged the store to accommodate 40 paying customers ($15.00, including a delicious snack in the bakery next door) and I gave my show.

And we sold 26 copies! If you walk down the street in Arnprior, the odds that the first person you meet has a copy of my book at home are pretty good!

The more serious message is that a good local bookstore can act as an important community centre, and I’m glad to do all I can to help the Gwen Stories of this world.

Editing Tips from Douglas Gibson (#15)

by JK

In this recurring feature, we’re sharing tips for editors from the desk of Douglas Gibson. Good for those starting out or old hands who need a reminder, these reminders form an engaging guide for sharp-eyed wordsmiths.

Tip #15
Every so often the book world erupts in furious argument about whether a new title should be classed as “fiction” or “non-fiction.” My advice here is to follow The Bartender’s Rule: If a drink has any alcohol in it, it’s an alcoholic drink.
So it is with fiction. Even if a book is 99% true, the 1% that is invented makes the book fiction. Consider the horror of congratulating a non-fiction author on a particularly striking fact, or true-life scene, and being told “Oh, that scene? I made it up!” Follow The Bartender’s Rule.

Missed the previous tips? Check out Tip #1, Tip #2, Tip #3,  Tip #4, Tip #5, Tip #6, Tip #7, Tip #8,  Tip #9,  Tip #10, Tip #11, Tip #12, Tip #13, and Tip #14.

Uxbridge (Or, More Formally) Tuxbridge

by Douglas Gibson

Uxbridge (or, as Terry Fallis amended it, since it was a formal dinner, “Tuxbridge”) staged a fine “Book Lover’s Ball” on April 14 in aid of the local Library.

The setting was the local “Wooden Sticks Golf Club,”  a name that spoke to the ancient tradition of golf clubs with hickory handles. I was able to mention that in my ancient Scottish village, I actually grew up playing golf with “wooden stick” clubs, which at the time seemed normal to me. But then, true to my “make things last” Scottish roots, that evening I was wearing the tux that my parents gave me as a 21st birthday present. Dinner jackets don’t change much over 47  years, and nor does my lean shape — nor my respect for my parents’ admonition that if I looked after the tux properly I “should get many years of wear out of it.”

The excellent Terry spoke about his three books (The Best Laid Plans, The High Road, and this fall’s Up and Down, which will prove that he can make readers laugh, and also make them cry) and delighted the audience after the salad course. I did my stuff after the (very fine) chicken course, talking about a few of the authors featured in my book, and telling stories about them.

But the best speaker of the evening  — and by far the best storyteller — was Michael, a local dentist. He spoke about his family’s experience  escaping from Vietnam as “boat people” who were sponsored by kind people in Uxbridge. The local librarian made a special point of always asking him what he was reading, and, like dental patients flossing before an appointment (an interesting professional analogy), he read voraciously, to be always able to answer her question.

When the family was moved away from Uxbridge to downtown Toronto, although his parents both worked two jobs, things were hard for the young family in a tough area. In time their Uxbridge friends contacted them with an offer that would bring them back to Uxbridge, with a down payment on a house supplied by an anonymous benefactor. The family accepted gladly, on one condition: that they learn the name of the benefactor, in order to pay him or her back.

It was the librarian.

Now here was Michael (like his brothers and sisters a successful professional) giving back to the Uxbridge community by providing major sponsorship for this fundraiser for the Uxbridge Library.

Stories really matter, don’t they?