In Other Words

by Anna Porter

  * * *

  YEARS LATER TED used to visit me at Key Porter Books, the company I would co-found. He complained about the 1990 Bethune film based on his book and screenplay, about Donald Sutherland’s ego, and about the damage done by the Cultural Revolution in China. He had found Mao’s wife, the actress Jiang Qing, terrifying when she was in power and pathetic afterwards. He liked to talk about the difficult story of his life.II He had been shocked by Nikita Khrushchev’s so-called secret speech at the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party in 1956, the speech that revealed some of Stalin’s purges, the murders of fellow Communists he no longer trusted. Ted still felt terrible guilt about testifying against a comrade at his trial by fellow Communists in Spain in the 1930s. He had sworn false testimony in the belief that his words would help heal a rift in the Party.

  My own feelings about Stalin and Khrushchev (and Lenin and Marx and even Engels) had been consistent since I’d first heard their names as a child in Hungary. My mandatory lessons about the birth of Communism, about the Great Leader, Stalin, and the shiny-headed Mátyás Rákosi failed to improve my first impressions. Vili and his friends joked about them all, but only where they were sure no informer would overhear them. I suspect Ted liked to tell me about his own Communist sympathies because he felt he needed to explain himself to someone who had witnessed the 1956 Hungarian Revolution.

  * * *

  I. Andreas Schroeder wrote in Founding the Writers’ Union of Canada that Gordon came to Canada every year for the AGM to take notes and, presumably, report back to the Stasi. He stopped coming in 1976 after a union motion condemning the Soviets for persecuting writers.

  II. Ted’s story in This Time a Better Earth is worth a serious read. It describes his difficult childhood, and his guilt about having taken his beloved sister to an asylum for the insane. It evokes a time of heroes who fought for a cause they believed was right and worth dying for. Not enough has been written about the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion of Canadian volunteers in the International Brigades that fought against Franco in the Spanish Civil War.

  Assembling a Book on the Linoleum Floor

  MANAGING EDITOR WAS only the first of my five or so titular promotions. I was executive editor for a few months, then editorial director, then editor-in-chief, with vice president added for extra spice. Each time, I think Jack figured a new title meant he didn’t have to give me a raise. He was right. Those days at M&S were so jam-packed with new faces and manuscripts that I barely had time to think about money. Jack, on the other hand, thought about it most of the time. The firm was running out of cash, he said, and what was left wouldn’t be wasted on staff stipends. If anyone felt it was not enough, he or she could leave. He considered it a privilege to be at M&S with the country’s best authors. And it was, indeed, a privilege.

  With two notable exceptions, Jack was unable to fire anyone. The closest he came was clipping printed advertisements for suitable jobs and placing them on the desks of those he wanted to be rid of. One notable exception involved one of our many vice presidents, who told Jack he had to make a choice between himself and me. I stayed. The second firing would rock the entire company, but more about that later.

  Periodically Jack would complain about the general incompetence of people who worked for him, as when he announced to a roomful of booksellers at the company’s annual big fall list launch party at the Royal York Hotel that he was, sadly, “surrounded by idiots.” We, his senior staff, dutifully arrayed behind him on stage, took it reasonably well, though someone had to restrain Peter Taylor, our director of marketing, from grabbing the mic and making a few observations of his own.

  Peter was irrepressibly witty, always full of ideas for how to sell books, never lost for words, friendly to newcomers like me. He was thin, wiry, and almost completely bald. His novel Watcha Gonna Do Boy . . . Watcha Gonna Be? was published by M&S before he came on board. We became friends as soon as we met.I

  The building itself, at 25 Hollinger Road, was cruel and unusual punishment for even the most dedicated employees. Brick with a tin roof, it was perishingly cold in the winter and nightmarishly hot in the summer. Some days in mid-winter the snow-removal crews would leave out most of East York or decide not to de-ice the roads off Eglinton Avenue, east of the Don Valley Parkway, so that even showing up for work was an act of courage in face of civic indifference. Midsummer, the place turned into a sauna. Jack would sometimes be shirtless, as would a few male staff; the women wore as little as possible and hovered over fans. The floors were covered in linoleum that sweated as we did.

  * * *

  IN THE EARLY summer of 1969, in preparation for the publication of Harold Town’s Drawings, after an excruciatingly sweaty debate in the boardroom, I laid out the sticky, curling, damp photostats of Harold’s drawings along the continuous corridor. The line started before reception, went past Jack’s office, turned the corner, carried on past Sam Totten’s office and the editorial bunker, all the way to the door of the art department. Since I spent most of the day on my knees, arranging drawings, I was glad that I had given up my London miniskirt and worn long cotton pants—rather than my new quite fashionable, beige imitation-leather pants—that didn’t ride down when I was bent over.

  Frank Newfeld had already planned the design of the book; Robert Fulford, art critic and columnist for the Toronto Star and recently appointed editor of Saturday Night magazine, was writing the text.

  It’s hard to overstate Harold Town’s fame at the end of the 1960s. In 1968 alone he had had eight one-man shows and been part of many others featuring the work of his generation’s best-known artists, Painters Eleven. He had represented Canada at the Venice Biennale; he was profiled everywhere, revered, collected, and discussed; he won international awards; he reviewed other people’s work, appeared on talk shows, debated, fought, argued, and lambasted those who dared to criticize or contradict him.

  He was not only one of the country’s most celebrated artists but also a man given to great flights of belligerent verbal abuse with a full lexicon of sexual and scatological references, including some I had not heard even in the company of American servicemen stationed in the United Kingdom. My London boyfriend had been a captain in the US Air Force, a veterinarian in civil life, and delightful company. Some of his less gentle-hearted friends, however, did manage streams of interesting invective.

  Harold’s drawings were even more eclectic than his language. He had experimented with a variety of styles and media: heavy blacks, light pencil sketches, pastels, gouache, charcoal, brush, ink, in a wide range of colours and surfaces. He did soft portraits, such as one of Allen Ginsberg, figures in motion, dancers, and the surreal Enigmas—grotesque figures with temples for heads and objects sticking out of their asses—Picasso-style nudes, horses, ancient warriors, queens, and some pure whimsy, such as “Michelangelo Composing a Sonnet by Candlelight.”

  He was a lanky, broad-shouldered man, pale, with soft mousy-brown hair and grey sideburns that ran down the sides of his face all the way to his chin. He had an intense, fixed look with a pair of long lines between his eyebrows that made him seem angry even when he was not. That day, he wore white pants and some sort of pleated twill jacket in defiance of the heat.

  Jack had warned me about Harold’s insatiable ego, his inability to compromise, and the likelihood that we would be sorting through pictures for the rest of the day, the night, and maybe the week. Harold considered each drawing to be of such superior quality that leaving out even one was an insult to his genius.

  While Bob Fulford admired Town’s prodigious talent, he did not think that everything he had ever produced was a work of unparalleled brilliance. One of his ways of dealing with Harold’s flights of verbal fancy was to listen, chew on his pipe, nod sagely, and postpone the decision until it had become obvious, even to Harold, that the book could not accommodate all his drawings.

  Bob’s experience as editor of the venerable magazine Saturday Night must have taught him a great deal of patience. The e
ighty-two-year-old magazine was an institution but, according to Jack, in a very precarious financial state. One wrong move and this could be its last year. In a strange way, Jack both delighted in and sympathized with Saturday Night’s plight, as M&S was in a similarly precarious situation.

  Balding, with black-framed glasses that had a habit of slipping down his nose while he was in contemplation, Bob also had a smiling, thoughtful, and cheerful attitude to the whole improbable day. Frank had, surprisingly, held his temper in check for the better part of an hour, then left. Harold and Bob appeared not to notice the heat or the dampness. Each was determined to wrestle the other into submission—Harold to include more than the designated number of works, Bob to urge discernment.

  My job was to get down on the floor and move the sheets of sticky paper in and out of order, or just onto a pile of what Harold bitterly called “rejects.”

  Harold didn’t directly address me while I was squatting or kneeling, but he did have a few choice words he urged me to pass on to my boss when the “son of a bitch” dared show his face again. Jack had mentioned that he loved Harold but did not much like him. He was tired of the tirades and of picking up the tab every time they went out for drinks. He thought Harold was depressingly cheap when it came to paying his own way.

  Jack was also critical both of the fact that Harold had a “lady” in addition to his wife and annoyed that Harold often reneged on paying her for her research work. I met Iris Nowell, Harold’s lady, one evening when the four of us had dinner in a restaurant on King Street. Harold harangued Jack for his lack of attention to the quality of paper in Drawings and the amount of promotion he felt entitled to and didn’t get. For some mysterious reason, then, Harold sang “Bye, Bye Miss American Pie,” with its anti-Vietnam overtones and unforgettable image of “the day the music died.”

  Iris was blond, with soft grey eyes, quiet, smart, and very attentive to Harold. When she expressed an opinion about something, he berated her:II I think the subject was dogs or cats. Harold hated all pets but especially dogs and cats. He wanted Iris to write a book about the dangers they posed to humans. He talked about movies he hated, about Toronto landmarks slated for destruction by bureaucrats who knew the value of nothing, about critics—particularly art critic Clement Greenberg, who had promoted the work of Jack Bush, a Canadian artist whom Harold despised—and about a proposed book on his own famous Christmas trees. They were miracles of lights and construction displaying hundreds of fabulous old things he had collected over the years. Even after a tree toppled under the weight of its decorations, the surviving objects remained treasures in Harold’s studio.

  But back to the linoleum floor. Bob Fulford, who must have appreciated my efficiency in placing damp paper in straight lines and my dumbfounded diplomacy about the final choices in Drawings, invited me to lunch a few weeks later. He was then, and is now, the most interesting and erudite conversationalist, one of the most quoted people in the country. He discussed art, museums, Jane Jacobs’s ideas for cities, Expo 67 and why it was such an important event, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and what it should be broadcasting, movies, and filmmakers. Unlike some of the writers I met later in Toronto, Bob was an anti-Communist, and we found we shared a suspicion of the Soviet Union verging, at least on my part, on vehement dislike.

  To my great relief, we did not talk about Harold’s drawings.

  Bob had been writing a movie column for some years as Marshall Delaney. I tried to persuade him to write a book about films and filmmakers for M&S. Though I failed to convince him, eventually he did publish his Marshall Delaney at the Movies, but not with us.

  * * *

  DRAWINGS WAS PUBLISHED in time for Christmas, 1969. It was a handsome book but suffered a little from “show-through”: some of the strong blacks were showing through the paper under the finer drawings on the reverse side of the page. Harold was, predictably, unhappy. Jack, in a mischievous moment, assured him that the choice of paper would have been a part of my job. Harold raged and shouted and refused to speak to me for a while. Perhaps because of my childhood, I am not comfortable around violence, whether physical or verbal, and Harold, as I said, was very good at invective.

  I knew I had been forgiven when he set me up for a date with his close friend Sig Vaile. Siggy was quiet, restrained, and charming. He told lovely stories about his growing up in Ontario along with a few amusing Harold tales, but we were, clearly, not destined for each other. We belonged to different worlds, though we managed to have a couple of very pleasant dinners at rather swish restaurants. At the time, I was still somewhat involved with a young Jewish lawyer named Harvey, whose parents actively disliked gentiles, particularly Hungarians.

  Harold was disappointed but not discouraged. He assumed that my relationships were of a temporary nature and that eventually I’d be looking for someone he would find acceptable.

  * * *

  I. Years later, Key Porter published his still very funny Bald Is Beautiful. (With so many balding boomers, surely it’s time for a new edition.)

  II. Iris Nowell has written several books, including Hot Breakfast for Sparrows: My Life with Harold Town and Harold Town.

  All Those Glorious Manuscripts

  WE USED TO get an average of fifty manuscripts a week, more in early January when would-be authors delivered on their own New Year’s resolutions. Of that lot, few made it to a second reading, and maybe one was eventually published. Reading them was disheartening but Jack felt it was perfect for editors-in-training. I can’t remember all our slush-pile readers, but I know Philip Marchand was succeeded by a coterie of equally talented young people: David Berry, who remembers that every inch of the floor-to-ceiling shelves was filled with manuscripts, most of them barely readable; Patrick Crean (later at Somerville House, Key Porter, Thomas Allen, HarperCollins); Greg Gatenby (founder of the International Festival of Authors); and Wailan Low, who married poet Earle Birney, went on to study law, and became a judge.

  Everyone was encouraged to take home manuscripts from the slush pile, in case we missed an important new voice we should be publishing. One of Jack’s many stories of missed opportunities was Sheila Burnford’s The Incredible Journey. The way he used to tell the story, he had read the manuscript and thought who in hell would believe such an incredible tale. Three spoiled pets traversing the wilderness in search of their home. Five million copies and a movie later . . .

  My own best slush-pile find was Dennis T. Patrick Sears’s The Lark in the Clear Air; he was an original voice and a formidable new talent. Not a young writer, he had already lived a couple of hard-working lives, and his next book, Aunty High Over the Barley Mow (1977), was his last. The multi-talented Jennifer Glossop (she could edit fiction, non-fiction, illustrated books, and children’s stories) finished editing Dennis’s second manuscript after he died. Jennifer was one of my first hires. Without dwelling on the irony, she mentioned years later that she had started at M&S on April Fool’s Day, 1970.

  Every evening I took home a couple of huge white canvas bags full of manuscripts and read till the early hours. Some we had already decided to publish; others had been recommended for a second read. It was the beginning of a habit that lasted for my entire life in the book business.

  That’s where I read Rudy Wiebe’s huge manuscript of Big Bear in one night. I had planned to stop for a couple of hours’ sleep, but couldn’t put the damned thing down. It was riveting then and is still riveting now, though other books have been written about the great Cree chief and his defiance of white authority. Charis Wahl was appointed Wiebe’s editor, but the copy editing was farmed out to a meticulous freelancer. I had the unenviable task of presenting the author with the marked-up manuscript in Calgary. Rudy thanked me, then went to his room, and returned a few hours later with all the pencil marks rubbed out. Charis, who had disagreed with the copy editor’s work, was pleased, and Big Bear was published with Rudy’s long sentences intact.

  I read Gabrielle Roy’s slender Windflower under th
e dim lights of our Broadway Avenue balcony. It was almost word-perfect. I read Margaret Laurence’s The Olden Days Coat and her short-story collection A Bird in the House, Brian Moore’s The Revolution Script and Catholics, Eric Arthur’s text for The Barn: A Vanishing Landmark of North America, and hundreds, no, thousands of other manuscripts during those years.

  Everyone at M&S seemed to be imbued with a sense of mission, as if part of a magnificent experiment, with Jack as the exalted master magician, and the rest of us inspired apprentices. The experiment was publishing Canadian authors: novelists, poets, academics, children’s writers, historians, anthropologists, journalists, and politicians.I We published anthologies, essay collections, reprints in the New Canadian Library, art and photography books, memoirs. Despite the financial problems, we continued to publish more than a hundred books a year, and we were wildly optimistic about the fate of every one of them.

  During the summer, the warehouse, which occupied most of the building, was slightly cooler than the rest of the building because it had a lot of large fans: we were anxious to preserve the books. They were the only things of real value in the building, Jack used to say. The books, unlike the rest of us, were insured.

  Our editorial meetings were endurance tests. They took place in the brown-walled corner boardroom of the building, where it was almost impossible to open any windows. The marketing staff brought notepaper and the editors filed in and talked about what they were editing; they tried to get sales projections from the marketing people, who were, at best, defensive. They didn’t want to commit themselves to predictions. Peter Taylor was usually quite direct and merciless in assessing a book’s sales potential. Paul Dutton, M&S jacket and advertising copywriter (and, with bpNichol, Steve McCaffrey, and Rafael Barreto-Rivera, one of the sound poetry group The Four Horsemen), often attended because he had to come up with copy.II