Walt Whitman illustrated by Charles Pachter

I have never met Walt Whitman, and before John Robert Colombo introduced me to the writings of Richard Maurice Bucke, I had not read the poetry and writings of neither of them. I thought of Walt as being a pioneer of the American Poetry tradition, and did not know that he travelled through Canada with Bucke well over 100 …years ago now. This new volume was originally published as a QuasiBook by Colombo and Company and is a very interesting,labour-intensive compilation of writings and photographs. I worked on it, on and off, over the last couple of years, but couldn’t decide on a suitable cover, other than reproduce yet another picture of “Old Walt.” JRC showed me a picture of an inscribed rock in Bon Echo Provincial Park which was donated to the province by the Denison family. There was an interesting, long, narrow boat floating in front of the rock containing many people in period dress.

And then, last fall I had the pleasure of meeting with Charles Pachter in his studio in Toronto. (He has on Lake Simcoe too!) and we discussed using his art work for a cover of one of my proposed books, but that’s another story, and we concluded with a very interesting tour of the many floors of the studio, including the garage and the back shed. I noticed a un-titled picture on the wall in a back room and immediately asked “Where’s that?” Charlie replied “Bon Echo.” In an internet second, I had an epiphany, remembering the rock face inscribed “Old Walt” and with Charles’s permission we had an excellent front cover. Yes, there are pictures of the Rock & Walt on the back.

I visited Charles again to show him a layout of the cover, and he approved, but he was having a hectic time packing his art to travel safely to a showing in British Columbia in conjunction with the Winter Olympics in February.

You might ask where’s the moose? but the copyright notice states that the art was created in 1993, perhaps before the moose silhouette motif was created? However I do remember seeing a picture of a younger QEII on mooseback.

 

Toronto Railways Lands on Souster’s Book

I was first introduced to Raymond Souster in January 2006 by John Robert Colombo. Ray had written alot of unpublished poetry since his “fall from grace” from Oberon Press. John Robert Colombo first introduced Raymond to Oberon in 1969. Raymond was now blind and still living at home with his wife Rosalia. He wrote his poe…ms at the kitchen table with the assitance of a CNIB writing tablet — a thick black piece of cardboard and a spiral bound exercise book which were all carfully numbered and set aside for his Archives at McGill University.

His first series of 3 volumes was entitled “Catching Up,” his second series of 4 volumes “Up To Date,” and his third series of 4 volumes entitled “Getting Ahead.”

The latest single volume of poetry entitled “Millennium Madness” There are over 600 poems with an index.
Raymond style has evolved over the years, but he now predominately write a 20-second poem — a poem of from 2 to 8 short lines. The reader can read a couple and its like rain off a duck’s back, but then the next one is a zinger.
Raymond published and was paid for a poem that appeared in “The Toronto Star” in 1936. It is collected in Volume 1 of the Collected poems published by The Oberon Press. Now this means that Raymong has been published in 9 (that’s nine) decades! If you don’t believe me count them on your fingers — I just did to double check that the figure 9 was correct. Not many authors can make such a claim.

The cover is a wrap around with French flaps featuring “The Toronto Railway Lands” by Geoffrey James. The tall towers are reflected in a mud puddle, and the condo towers are under construction with cranes with a view of the Rogers Centre before it was so named, formerly The Sky Dome I think.

 

A Reflection on Edwin Drood

Some years ago now I received a letter from Richard F. Stewart wondering if I would like to publish he book. Richard was in Scotland and he had written a book entitled End Game: A Survey of Selected Writings about The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens. I asked to see the manuscript and he sent it along as an e-mail attachment as Richard lived in Scotland, and we agreed that I would publish it.

About the Author: Richard F. Stewart was born in Dundee in 1936 and educated there and at St. Andrews University. He laboured to pass on some of this education to the British soldier during ten years in the Royal Army Educational Corps, but eventually threw down his chalk and joined the administrative staff of Manchester University in 1968. He survived this for 25 years before rescue by early retirement. The author of one other book, And Always A Detective … (a sort of history of detective fiction), he now dabbles in books, bowls and baby-sitting.

About the Book: Charles Dickens’ last, unfinished book, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, is probably the most written-about novel ever. Few works of fiction have full-length assessments devoted to them, yet Edwin Drood has at least a dozen such, not to mention the array of attempts to complete the novel itself and the almost countless articles purporting to solve the mystery of The Mystery of Edwin Drood. This distinction has of course come about because the book is unfinished – and is a mystery. An unfinished Pickwick might tease but would scarcely tantalise in the way Edwin Drood has done. As G.K. Chesterton remarks, ‘The only one of Dickens’s novels which he did not finish was the only one that really needed finishing’.

When Dickens died on the 9th June 1870 at the age of 58, he had completed half the story. No notes were found to show how he intended the tale to finish and the reader is left pondering a series of riddles – has young Edwin Drood been murdered? if so, where is the body? what part is played by John Jasper, Edwin’s opium-addicted uncle? who is the mysterious stranger, Datchery, who comes asking questions in the quiet cathedral city of Cloisterham? Yet Dickens has bequeathed us a wealth of hints and clues in the part we have, but despite – or perhaps because of – these, no two commentators seem able to agree on the outcome of the story. And growing by what it feeds on, a unique cottage industry geared to finding the answers has developed over the last 130 years, with amateur detectives fabricating those hundreds of books and articles, each claiming to have found the key to Dickens’ plot. They range from the sombre to the hilarious, invoking mesmerism, paranoia, schizophrenia, telepathy, cyphers, Thuggee and Sherlock Holmes (to name but a few) in the search for a solution.

In this book the author lists and assesses all the main solutions, completions and commentaries and several minor ones as well. Readers will not only be able to trace the development of an amazing literary phenomenon – they should emerge well-equipped to produce their own solution.

After the text was set, I invited Jean-Pierre Cagnat to do the cover with a caricature of the author, and he did so with his usual character insight and humour. It is a fine tribute to a man who spent many years compiling this reference work.

Jean Pierre never met Dick and he did this from a couple of photographs I sent him, and I’ll drop one of them in here.

After this first book we went on to do two more and I enclose thumbnails of them here: … And Always A Detective (originally published in 1980) and The Great Detective Case of 1877: A Study in Victorian Police Corruption.

 

Re: Henry St. Clair Whitehead

It was Bob Weinberg’s idea in the first place. I discussed the project with April Derleth since her father had published two volumes of Whitehead’s fiction in the 1940’s — Jumbee and West India Lights. April agreed and I borrowed the Arkham archival copies of the two books in dustjacket. plan to the art work from the two Arkham editions and add a third volume containing other uncollected stories from the pulps. One story “The People of Pan” that was already collected merited a Weird Tales cover, and that story will be published in the third volume.

Right in the middle of this project I learned that Christopher and Barbara Roden of Ash Tree Press were also publishing the same project in three volumes, and the first volume had already been released. The stories were already in the public domain when Derleth published them, so there was no question of infringing any copyrights.

I telephoned Christopher to advise him that I was proceeding with the same project, and continued to collect the stories. The majority were from Weird Tales and many had been published in various anthologies over the past twenty years. I did not want to abandon this project especially since Arkham House had published the two volumes already, and both had been out of print for years

Before I can project I still have to find three of the stories, and one correspondent has advised there may be some more htat don’t have bibliographic data available which makes them even more difficult to locate. I append the list below, if anyone can assist I would be most grateful.

Want List for Whitehead

1. The Gladstone Bag, (ss) Black Mask Sep 1925

2. Gahd Laff!, (ss) Black Mask Jun 1926

3. The Return of Milt Drennan, (ss) Mystery Stories Jan 1929

4. The Great Circle, (ss) Strange Tales of Mystery and Terror Jun 1932; Bizarre Fantasy Tales Fll 1970

5. Ruby the Kid, (ss) Nickel Western Apr 1933

6 Litrachoor, (pm) The Writer; Omniumgathum, ed. Jonathan Bacon & Steve Troyanovich, Stygian Isle Press 1976;
The Writer Etchings & Odysseys #6 1985

 

Two Illustrators Meet in The Red Flame

This is long convoluted tale and the title is in fact the end of the story not the beginning of it. I’ll post it now and expand on it later