THAT YEAR TURNED out to be extraordinary for publishing as well.
Three of Pierre’s books, The National Dream, The Last Spike, and The Great Railway Illustrated—a short text from both books, with pictures—were on bestseller lists at the same time. Back when Pierre first proposed the illustrated version, I was quite certain it couldn’t work, especially following so close to the release dates of the originals, but I was wrong.
An eight-part CBC series based on The National Dream was in production. After it aired, the three books went on to sell more than 175,000 copies each. Those sales and Pierre’s ongoing roles on TV, in newspapers, and on radio counterbalanced the fact that not all reviewers loved Pierre’s versions of history. The Berton extravaganza continued unabated.
The year 1972 also saw M&S’s publication of Sylvia Fraser’s first novel, Pandora. I first met Sylvia at somebody else’s launch party. I don’t recall whose book it was but I do recall a large non-smoking house with a veranda and several doors that allowed people to go outside to smoke. Back then, I still smoked about a pack a day and found that smoking provided me with an excuse to take a break from a crowd. Smoking was also a fine occupation for my hands when I was nervous, and our launch parties tended to make me nervous.
Sylvia was on the veranda, talking to someone and looking beautiful. She was slender, with a small waist, but she filled out her soft, light-blue silky dress, her hair was soft and blond, her eyes very blue, her hands animated, her nails long and red. (Later I discovered that she used to chew her nails and wore fake, acrylic glue-ons.)
I had just finished reading the manuscript of Pandora and couldn’t wait to tell her how riveting I had found it, how I had never read anything remotely like it, and how excited I was that we would be publishing it. Pandora is the story of a little girl in a wartime Canadian town. The minutely portrayed accoutrements of that era were as riveting as the writing itself. It’s a story you are pulled into, then dragged along to witness both the young heroine’s golden-curled innocence and the brutality that overtakes her.
That’s what I started to tell her when she stopped me in mid-sentence and stared at me with barely disguised fury. The next moment she was in tears, running to Jack McClelland and demanding to know why he had betrayed her confidence. He had promised not to show the manuscript to anyone until she had done another draft. Jack, deflecting her accusations, denied that he had given it to me. Knowing Jack, I shouldn’t have been baffled. A generous explanation of his slip-up is that he forgot his promise when he gave me the manuscript, but it is more likely that he had been hoping for a spectacular cat-fight between two blondes.
Sylvia and I didn’t speak for months, a state of affairs that could have continued longer had Julian and I not bumped into her and her lawyer husband, Russell, on our 1972 honeymoon in Barbados. We were all gravely underdressed in bathing suits with nowhere to hide past sins, so we became friends.
We travelled around the island, drank lots of dark and stormies, discovered a shared delight in jumping on trampolines (mostly Julian), and gossiping about other writers, editors, and Jack, of course. Both Russell and Sylvia were funny, warm, engaging, and adventurous.
Harold Town had drawn the soft, gentle image of the young girl for the cover of Pandora. He offered to sell the original to Jack or to me but neither of us could afford the price. Russell bought it as a gift for Sylvia and it still hangs, framed, in her King Street apartment. Much later Harold lambasted me into buying one of his bugs-in-machinery series that I have hidden in our basement, hoping someone one day will need such a painting.
In addition to the Bertons and Pandora, M&S published A Whale for the Killing, one of Farley Mowat’s saddest books, the story of a stranded whale he tried to save and send back to sea. It was harassed, shot, and killed by Newfoundlanders, thus ending Farley’s love affair with the island. And probably theirs with him. Once again, Farley was surrounded by controversy.
And in 1972 Mordecai Richler returned to Canada from London. Jack introduced us (again) at a garden party at their home in Quebec. Mordecai was rumpled and at his acerbic best. Florence Richler was gracious and effervescent in a pink-and-blue dress. Brian Moore and his wife, Jean, old friends of the Richlers, were there. Brian and I had a long conversation about Catholics, a novel I had loved, and a much shorter one about The Revolution Script, which I had not liked. I could not understand why he had written it.
I had first met Mordecai in 1970. He had asked what I thought of the manuscript of St. Urbain’s Horseman. We were in the Park Plaza Roof Lounge, and I was on my third drink (he drank Macallan). He listened to my extravagant praise and the very few suggestions I made, which, of course, he ignored. St. Urbain’s Horseman won the Governor General’s Award in 1971. In the Richlers’ garden a year later, Mordecai talked about the grand award ceremony and the hilarious notion of someone in Canada standing in for the Queen.
While it wasn’t evident at the time, the most notable book of 1972 was Margaret Atwood’s Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature, published by the House of Anansi.I It became the most-discussed book of the decade about Canadian writing and is still taught and debated at universities. It focused on the themes and ideas that had been central to Canadian fiction and poetry. Oddly, given how the book changed the conversation about Canadian literature, it grew out of a need to raise money for the House of Anansi. Jim Polk, to whom Margaret was married at the time, told me that the manuscript began with twelve people typing feverishly in the August heat, drinking wine and exchanging thoughts, before Margaret pulled it all together into a book.
The first printing was an optimistic 4,000 copies.
Survival has now sold more than 150,000 copies—a phenomenal number for a book of literary criticism.II Of course it was not only literary commentary, it was a tribute to the wellspring of Canadian literature, a handbook that allowed readers to feel a sense of belonging, even pride in the culture their country had produced. Though it was criticized for its focus on survival as the central theme of Canadian literature, even its detractors had to admit that it was a powerful analysis and one that could draw in many of our most important literary works.
It was, in short, the perfect book for its time.
As Pierre Berton noted, with reference to his railway books, “the nation is bound together by its creative artists and not by parallel lines of rusting steel.”
Two other major events defined 1972. The federal election in October was humbling for the Trudeau Liberals and for Canada’s “philosopher king”: in Maclean’s Peter Newman called it “his fall from grace.” Trudeau had campaigned confidently in T-shirt and jeans, but far fewer Canadians had voted for him. He was now in a minority government situation. The election was rather cheering for Julian, who had been rooting for Robert Stanfield. A lifelong Tory, he had worked on the Stanfield campaign and believed that Stanfield would have been a great prime minister. Sadly for Julian, and maybe for the country, he never got that chance.
And, of course, 1972 was the year Canada won the Canada-Russia hockey series. The whole country exploded in exultation at Paul Henderson’s legendary winning goal. Jack commissioned Jack Ludwig,III a novelist, journalist, teacher, and, ever since his Winnipeg childhood, passionate hockey lover to follow our team. He was there “when Ken Dryden took off on a rink-long dash that ended with him draped over Henderson,” and for the triumphant roaring of “O Canada” with not a dry eye in the arena. Nor in Toronto where we watched the game. I still remember how everyone stood and sang. There was no longer any doubt that I had become a Canadian.
* * *
THE MOST IMPORTANT day of 1972 for me, though, was Boxing Day, when my daughter Catherine was born and forever changed my life. Having children tends to put everything else into perspective, particularly publishing.
My mother was our first visitor. She came from New Zealand, wanting to see her first grandchild and trying to determine the priorities of her own life. Sylvia Fraser was our second visitor, and though Sylvia remarked that the baby looked way too pink and much too small, she was willing to take on the responsibilities—if that’s what they were—of godmother. Earle Birney sent the baby this short verse:
Welcome, welcome Catherine Porter,
Lovely momma’s lovely dorter,
Looks just like her
Only shorter.
Jack arrived at the hospital with a large box of manuscripts in lieu of more traditional baby gifts and told me I would have plenty of time now to catch up on my reading. As an added bonus, he was willing to grant me a full four weeks of vacation time.
I. Margaret wrote that Dennis Lee’s editorial skills were indispensable for the book.
II. Northrop Frye’s The Bush Garden: Essays on the Canadian Imagination was published in 1971. It was much talked about in bookish circles, but it had modest sales. Northrop Frye had been one of Margaret Atwood’s professors at the University of Toronto.
III. My favourite Ludwig novel is A Woman of Her Age, published in 1973. I got to know Jack much better during the editing of that book and I liked almost everything about him. He was brave and uncompromising, despite the constant pain from his polio-afflicted leg.