Like all definite techniques this one imposes limits. People whose talk is not plain have little voice in these stories, for their terms would inevitably blur into the language of the writer’s own thinking and confuse the writer’s with his created world. When such people appear it is never in the foreground: the woman “who was interested in the new psychology” is not allowed to speak for herself. Overtones of sophistication are similarly avoided. In a bar a man spends an evening discussing American architecture — but in indi-rect discourse very far out of the limelight. Lawyers, advertising men, journalists, architects, even a student on a grad-uate fellowship may be characters in the stories but none of them is caught reading. One newspaperman who faked some exposés of Toronto bootlegging finally went west on a harvesters’ train claiming that he “didn’t want to be an author, just write one book something like Anna Karenina.” Even that much of a literary allusion is rare.
Obviously this style sacrifices some of the powers of language. Monosyllables become obtrusive at times and there are so many people named Joe or Mary or Frank or George that all the characters tend to become memorably nameless. But these sacrifices are justified. “Very Special Shoes,” for one, conveys in five and a half pages more than many full-length novels on the same theme — death, the desolation that follows, and its resolution. Life first: “Mrs. Johnson sat down, spread her legs, and sighed with pleasure and licked the ice cream softly and smiled with satisfaction and her mouth looked beautiful.”
Then the death:
It was to be an operation for cancer, and the doctor said the operation was successful. But Mrs. Johnson died under the anaesthetic. The two older sisters and Mr. Johnson kept repeating dumbly to the doctor “But she looked all right. She looked fine.” Then they all went home. They seemed to huddle first in one room then in another. They took turns trying to console Mary but no one could console her.
A few paragraphs later the story is completed:
. . . as she stared at them, solemn-faced, she suddenly felt a strange kind of secret joy, a feeling of certainty that her mother had got the shoes so that she might understand at this time that she still had her special blessing and protection . . .Of course now that they were black they were not noticed by other children. But she was very careful with them. Every night she polished them up and looked at them and was touched again by that secret joy. She wanted them to last a long time.
A social attitude is implied by this choice of words, and their ability to project the stories does not explain it away. In at least six stories it is explicit. “I can see that I have been concerned with the problems of many kinds of people but I have neglected those of the very, very rich,” the author says. Naturally there is poverty in those of the stories that evoke the Depression period. But what seems to me marked is not the “kinds of people” so much as the insistence on their common humanity . . . Callaghan the artist takes sides very seldom, but when he does in these stories it is in indignation at barriers set up by wealth or social confidence or learn-ing. The stature and dignity of a human being is at stake. . . there is unrelieved desolation sometimes, tragedy, absurdity — but every pattern leads out into a larger atmosphere of mercy and wonder . . . Many a writer in the last decade has forged his style in the same cause, but I can think of not one whose force of conviction brings it to such a burning focus.
Margaret Avison
THE EXILE CLASSICS SERIES
THAT SUMMER IN PARIS (No. 1) ~ MORLEY CALLAGHAN
Memoir 6x9 247 pages 978-1-55096-688-6 (tpb)
It was the fabulous summer of 1929 when the literary capital of North America had moved to the Left Bank of Paris. Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Joyce, Ford Madox Ford, Robert McAlmon and Morley Callaghan... amid these tangled relationships, friendships were forged, and lost... A tragic and sad and unforgettable story told in Callaghan’s lucid, compassionate prose.
NIGHTS IN THE UNDERGROUND (No. 2) ~ MARIE-CLAIRE BLAIS
Fiction/Novel 6x9 190 pages 978-1-55096-015-0 (tpb)
With this novel, Marie-Claire Blais came to the forefront of feminism in Canada. This is a classic of lesbian literature that weaves a profound matrix of human isolation, with transcendence found in the healing power of love.
DEAF TO THE CITY (No. 3) ~ MARIE-CLAIRE BLAIS
Fiction/Novel 6x9 218 pages 978-1-55096-013-6 (tpb)
City life, where innocence, death, sexuality, and despair fight for survival. It is a book of passion and anguish, characteristic of our times, written in a prose of controlled self-assurance. A true urban classic.
THE GERMAN PRISONER (No. 4) ~ JAMES HANLEY
Fiction/Novella 6x9 55 pages 978-1-55096-075-4 (tpb)
In the weariness and exhaustion of WWI trench warfare, men are driven to extremes of behaviour.
THERE ARE NO ELDERS (No. 5) ~ AUSTIN CLARKE
Fiction/Stories 6x9 159 pages 978-1-55096-092-1 (tpb)
Austin Clarke is one of the significant writers of our times. These are compelling stories of life as it is lived among the displaced in big cities, marked by a singular richness of language true to the streets.
100 LOVE SONNETS (No. 6) ~ PABLO NERUDA
Poetry 6x9 225 pages 978-1-55096-108-9 (tpb)
As Gabriel García Márquez stated: “Pablo Neruda is the greatest poet of the twentieth century – in any language.” And, this is the finest translation available, anywhere!
THE SELECTED GWENDOLYN MACEWEN (No. 7) GWENDOLYN MACEWEN
Poetry/Fiction/Drama/Art/Archival 6x9 352 pages
978-1-55096-111-9 (tpb)
“This book represents a signal event in Canadian culture.” — Globe and Mail The only edition to chronologically follow the astonishing trajectory of MacEwen’s career as a poet, storyteller, translator and dramatist, in a substantial selection from each genre.
THE WOLF (No. 8) ~ MARIE-CLAIRE BLAIS
Fiction/Novel 6x9 158 pages 978-1-55096-105-8 (tpb)
A human wolf moves outside the bounds of love and conventional morality as he stalks willing prey in this spellbinding masterpiece and classic of gay literature.
A SEASON IN THE LIFE OF EMMANUEL (No. 9) ~ MARIE-CLAIRE BLAIS
Fiction/Novel 6x9 175 pages 978-1-55096-118-8 (tpb)
Widely considered by critics and readers alike to be her masterpiece, this is truly a work of genius comparable to Faulkner, Kafka, or Dostoyevsky. Includes 16 Ink Drawings by Mary Meigs.
IN THIS CITY (No. 10) ~ AUSTIN CLARKE
Fiction/Stories 6x9 221 pages 978-1-55096-106-5 (tpb)
Clarke has caught the sorrowful and sometimes sweet longing for a home in the heart that torments the dislocated in any city. Eight masterful stories showcase the elegance of Clarke’s prose and the innate sympathy of his eye.
THE NEW YORKER STORIES (No. 11) ~ MORLEY CALLAGHAN
Fiction/Stories 6x9 158 pages 978-1-55096-110-2 (tpb)
Callaghan’s great achievement as a young writer is marked by his breaking out with stories such as these in this collection... “If there is a better storyteller in the world, we don’t know where he is.” — New York Times
REFUS GLOBAL (No. 12) ~ THE MONTRÉAL AUTOMATISTS
Manifesto 6x9 142 pages 978-1-55096-107-2 (tpb)
The single most important social document in Quebec history, and the most important aesthetic statement a group of Canadian artists has ever made. This is basic reading for anyone interested in Canadian history or the arts in Canada.
TROJAN WOMEN (No. 13) ~ GWENDOLYN MACEWEN
Drama 6x9 142 pages 978-1-55096-123-2 (tpb)
A trio of timeless works featuring the great ancient theatre piece by Euripedes in a new version by MacEwen, and the translations of two long poems by the contemporary Greek poet Yannis Ritsos.
ANNA’S WORLD (No. 14) ~ MARIE-CLAIRE BLAIS
Fiction 5.5x8.5 166 pages ISBN: 978-1-55096-130-0
An exploration of contemporary life, and the penetrating energy of youth, as Blais looks at teenagers by creating Anna, an introspe
ctive, alienated teenager without hope. Anna has experienced what life today has to offer and rejected its premise. There is really no point in going on. We are all going to die, if we are not already dead, is Anna’s philosophy.
THE MANUSCRIPTS OF PAULINE ARCHANGE (No. 15) MARIE-CLAIRE BLAIS
Fiction 5.5x8.5 324 pages ISBN: 978-1-55096-131-7
For the first time, the three novelettes that constitute the complete text are brought together: the story of Pauline and her world, a world in which people turn to violence or sink into quiet despair, a world as damned as that of Baudelaire or Jean Genet.
A DREAM LIKE MINE (No. 16) ~ M.T. KELLY
Fiction 5.5x8.5 174 pages ISBN: 978-1-55096-132-4
A Dream Like Mine is a journey into the contemporary issue of radical and violent solutions to stop the destruction of the environment. It is also a journey into the unconscious, and into the nightmare of history, beauty and terror that are the awesome landscape of the Native American spirit world.
THE LOVED AND THE LOST (No. 17) ~ MORLEY CALLAGHAN
Fiction 5.5x8.5 302 pages ISBN: 978-1-55096-151-5 (tpb)
With the story set in Montreal, young Peggy Sanderson has become socially unacceptable because of her association with black musicians in nightclubs. The black men think she must be involved sexually, the black women fear or loathe her, yet her direct, almost spiritual manner is at variance with her reputation.
NOT FOR EVERY EYE (No. 18) ~ GÉRARD BESSETTE
Fiction 5.5x8.5 126 pages ISBN: 978-1-55096-149-2 (tpb)
A novel of great tact and sly humour that deals with ennui in Quebec and the intelectual alienation of a disenchanted hero, and one of the absolute classics of modern revolutionary and comic Quebec literature. Chosen by the Grand Jury desLettres of Montreal as one of the ten best novels of post-war contemporary Quebec.
STRANGE FUGITIVE (No. 19) ~ MORLEY CALLAGHAN
Fiction 5.5x8.5 242 pages ISBN: 978-1-55096-155-3 (tpb)
Callaghan’s first novel – originally published in New York in 1928 – announced the coming of the urban novel in Canada, and we can now see it as a prototype for the “gangster” novel in America. The story is set in Toronto in the era of the speakeasy and underworld vendettas.
IT’S NEVER OVER (No. 20) ~ MORLEY CALLAGHAN
Fiction 5.5x8.5 190 pages ISBN: 978-1-55096-157-7 (tpb)
1930 was an electrifying time for writing. Callaghan’s second novel, completed while he was living in Paris – imbibing and boxing with Joyce and Hemingway (see his memoir, Classics No. 1, That Summer in Paris) – has violence at its core; but first and foremost it is a story of love, a love haunted by a hanging. Dostoyevskian in its depiction of the morbid progress of possession moving like a virus, the novel is sustained insight of a very high order.
AFTER EXILE (No. 21) ~ RAYMOND KNISTER
Poetry/Prose 5.5x8.5 240 pages ISBN: 978-1-55096-159-1 (tpb)
This book collects for the first time Knister’s poetry. The title After Exile is plucked from Knister’s long poem written after he returned from Chicago and decided to become the unthinkable: a modernist Canadian writer. Knister, writing in the 20s and 30s, could barely get his poems published in Canada, but magazines like This Quarter (Paris), Poetry (Chicago ), Voices (Boston), and The Dial (New York City), eagerly printed what he sent, and always asked for more – and all of it is in this book.
THE COMPLETE STORIES OF MORLEY CALLAGHAN (NO. 22–25)
Fiction 5.5x8.5 (tpb)
ISBN 978-1-55096-304-5 (v. 1) 328 pages
ISBN 978-1-55096-305-2 (v. 2) 320 pages
ISBN 978-1-55096-306-9 (v. 3) 344 pages
ISBN 978-1-55096-307-6 (v. 4) 334 pages
Attractively produced in four volumes, the complete short fiction of Morley Callaghan appears as he comes into full recognition as one of the singular story-tellers of our time. Introductions by Alistair MacLeod, André Alexis, Anne Michaels and Margaret Atwood.
CONTRASTS: IN THE WARD. A BOOK OF POETRY AND PAINTINGS
Poetry 7x7 168 pages ISBN: 978-1-55096-308-3 (tpb)
In 1922, while the Group of Seven was emerging as a national phenomenon, Lawren Harris published his only book of poems – Contrasts – the first modernist exploration of Canadian urban space in verse. Harris also wandered the streets of Toronto, sketching and creating a powerful set of city paintings. Lawren Harris ~ Contrasts: In the Ward brings together for the first time Harris’ original book of poems, and sixteen colour images of the artist’s early urban paintings in this compact, beautiful-to-hold-and-read, genre-crossing collection. Edited and introduced by Gregory Betts.
Table of Contents
COVER INTRODUCTION
Two Fishermen
The Runaway
Silk Stockings
A Girl with Ambition
Rocking Chair
A Wedding Dress
Three Lovers
The Cheat’s Remorse
It Must Be Different
Getting On in the World
The Novice
The Two Brothers
Magic Hat
Younger Brother
This Man, My Father
The Lucky Lady
A Couple of Million Dollars
The Blue Kimono
With an Air of Dignity
The Way It ended
Lady in a Green Dress
A Pair of Long Pants
Father and Son
It Had to Be Done
The Homing Pigeon
We Just Had to Be Alone
The Insult
The Faithful Wife
A Separation
Possession
Dates of Original Publication Questions for Discussion and Essays
Selected Related Reading
Of Interest on the Web
Exile Online Resource
Editor’s Endnotes
Guide
Cover
Contents
The Complete Stories of Morley Callaghan - Volume Three Page 29
