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A Surprising Symbol of Scottish Sovereignty

Fascinating, and timely obit of Ian Hamilton, 97, who in 1950 was part of a crew that broke into Westminster Abbey and absconded with an ancient 336-pound stone, a symbol of Scottish sovereignty, later conveying it back to Scotland from whence it had been taken to England in 1296. Hamilton and his cohorts broke into the Abbey with just a crowbar, and located the heavy relic under the Coronation Chair where kings were crowned. Moving it, the stone split into two pieces, but they somehow got it out of the building and into a car.

This was of course long before the current popular movement agitating for Scotland’s independence from the UK. Ever since Brexit was imposed on the UK in 2016, I’ve been lamenting its impact on the country, and in particular on Scotland. With the third British Prime Minister of the past seven weeks now taking office, the chaos Brexit has engendered is clearer all the time.

As a lover of Scotland, my hope is that the country will become independent in coming years and re-join the EU as an independent nation. Hop-skipping along the map from the Republic of Ireland to Scotland and then onto the European Continent, the EU could in the future become a strong economic and political bulwark as the chaotic 21st Century advances toward what kind of future we know not.

I must add this: I love Great Britain, and England, too, but, the UK is not apt to rejoin the EU—even the Labor party, which I hope to see win a majority in Britain’s next general election, is not yet advocating a re-do on Brexit—so I hope to see Scotland independent one day soon. I know Mr Ian Hamilton, RIP, would have approved.

A tip of the cap to NY Times reporter Richard Sandomir, who wrote the obit of Ian Hamilton.


Axios Tries Fake Influence Campaign to Make the Bestseller List

How much is there to detest about media company Axios? Ahh, let me count the ways…

1) As reported on the news site The Defector, then picked up in the Atlantic, they are currently trying to game the NY Times Bestseller List by strongly encouraging staff members to buy six copies of the site founders’ new book for which the company will reimburse them. With 500 employees, they’re trying to gin up evidence of sales momentum to get a leg up on the list. See this for what it is: the moral equivalent of straw donor political contributions, and a dishonest, inauthentic sales and influence campaign.

Read Robinson Meyer’s 2-min read in the Atlantic to get the whole dastardly tale. I imagine the NYT Books Dept and Survey people have all seen this by now, and are adjusting their metrics accordingly. Disappointed in the book’s authors Jim VandeHei, Mike Allen, and Roy Schwartz, published by Workman, unfortunately. #books #astroturf #bestsellerlists

Ruth Gruber: Friend, Mentor, Surrogate Grandmother by M.G. Turner

Ruth Gruber April 2007

A few months ago, while undergoing an ultrasound for something disconcerting I’d found on my body—which mercifully turned out to be, officially, nothing—I was suddenly hit by a wave of gratitude for an old friend: author and photojournalist Ruth Gruber, who despite our wide age gap was one of my closest confidants, and even at times a surrogate grandmother.

The reason for my gratitude was simple: in 1944, as a newly appointed general by the Roosevelt Administration she personally escorted 972 refugees to America; many, though not all, were Jewish. Among these refugees was a man named Alex Margulis who, as chronicled in Ruth’s 1983 book Haven, would go on to invent the CT Scan, MRI, and other examples of medical imaging technology which have saved an unfathomable and beautifully absurd number of lives. As I was having my procedure I couldn’t help but think of Ruth, and all she meant to me, and to the multitude of people who knew her. After passing away in 2016, at the age of 105—nerd that I am, I admit it’s titillating to use the actual numerals for her age, as in the Chicago Manual of Style only numbers under 100 are spelled out—she left behind a legion of admirers, followers, and yes, even fans. I consider myself as belonging to the latter category, but at the start my connection to her was a personal one. Yet beyond personal and professional appreciation lies my aforementioned feeling, gratitude: especially as the technician utilized that life-saving device and informed me with a wink that, because the doctor did not want to see any more, I was “good.”

***

I don’t recall the first time Ruth and I met, but it had to have been around my seventh or eighth year—as in 2004, when I was still very young I subjected her to an interview, filmed by my mother on a camcorder, one steamy day in August, while I was on summer vacation. I still have the video, rendered into digital form but no less evocative of that early VHS period: amid wavy lines there I am, in almost knee-high white socks, sitting lackadaisically in a stuffed armchair, rattling off a list of question I had memorized, forgotten, then memorized again; while Ruth herself, looking dignified and very well at just ninety-three, listened and nodded and tried with honesty and precision to answer my questions—the questions of an eight year old who was very much wowed by her, and kept repeating after her every statement “That’s a great answer!” in an effort to impress a woman who could not have been kinder-hearted or more willing to engage with a young person.

It is important to stress the reason for my early acquaintanceship with her which soon blossomed into a friendship: my father was her editor—and according to a quip she made on more than one occasion at dinner parties and events to the chagrin of some present, he was her favorite editor. This favoritism was likely rooted in her appreciation of his no-nonsense editing style, and his direct, fearless approach to publishing. It matched her own brand of journalism, which was in the words of one of her mentors Edward Steichen to “Take pictures with her heart.” Not only did she take pictures with her heart, she wrote with it too! As any of her readers know there is a declarative majesty to her prose that is only outmatched by her subject matter; she had so much to say and a great deal of life experience to back it up—whether becoming the youngest Ph.D. in the world, doing so in Germany in the mid-thirties and seeing the tail end of the Weimar Republic give way to Nazi Germany; or having tea with Virginia Woolf in London—the very subject of her thesis—and being struck by the author’s corrosive nonchalance, and low-grade anti-semitism, while still managing to hold a nuanced view of her; or when in 1944 she, as mentioned, escorted by ship nearly a thousand refugees who were escaping persecution in Europe, and fighting for them to be accepted by the virulently anti-immigrant State Department, despite President Roosevelt being considered a friend to the Jews.

This is to say, she had something unique—content. Like other, more famous writers and journalists of the time—Hemingway, Dos Passos, and Gellhorn come to mind—after literally living her stories, she put her experiences into words that could be understood by everyone. But her egalitarian style permeated not just her written work but the way she spoke about her career—this held even while speaking about it to me on that sultry day in 2004 when my mom and I stopped by to see her to conduct and impromptu interview. There would be many days and evenings like this, when we would look at each other, and one of us would ask: “Do you want to go see Ruth?” and the answer was always, invariably, the same.

***

Ruth had been living in the Eldorado—a quintessentially regal Central Park West apartment building—for several decades when I first became acquainted with her. Just going over there was a grand experience for me; at the time I had not yet glimpsed New York’s magisterial splendor; the lobby looked like an art deco palace. But visiting Ruth was the start of something more than architectural or stylistic appreciation. I can easily recall these visits as the first time I considered an importance beyond the aesthetic; or rather, that the aesthetic and the moral and meaningful could coalesce into something highly impactful: the notion that one’s life could be an adventure.

Ruth Gruber embarking on the voyage to bring nearly 1000 refugees to America in 1944. They sailed from Naples, Italy, crossing the Atlantic protected by a convoy of US warships. The story is told in her book, “Haven,'” and the 2000 CBS miniseries of the same name, with Natasha Richardson cast as Ruth.

It was this adventurous spirit that Ruth embodied, as well as a presentation of self that prized dignity and demeanor. Whenever we saw her—it didn’t matter if we had come on three consecutive Sundays—she got dressed up; always with her light gold hair perfectly coiffed; her jewelry always tasteful; her greetings broad and demonstrably delighted, as if she wanted us to know, really know, how glad she was that we had stopped by. And we stopped by many times, whether to simply have tea and talk, or to take her out to Central Park, or have dinner with her and another close literary friend who remains dear to us.
It was on these nights that my conception of an intellectual community was formed—namely that such a thing could exist, and that I could be a part of it. This feeling carried over into my schooling; in college I had the unique experience of going with my archives class to visit the New York Public Library to see Virginia Woolf’s diaries, which my friend had been mentioned in, however unkindly by the sadly disturbed writer, whom Ruth saw as a woman trapped by her own mind. Though Woolf used an anti-semitic slur in her journal to describe Ruth, she did not hold a grudge beyond feelings of sadness and disappointment.

Ruth Gruber photo “The Embrace”

While I stood with my class looking at Woolf’s pages—most of which were written in a flourishing lavender hand—I knew that among them were those referring to my friend.

Despite Woolf’s callousness, I cherish these kinds of synchronicities. Growing up in New York brings one into the vicinity of great people, particularly if your parents happen to know some of them. These same great people can in their own way sum up entire eras, especially if the person in question is a centenarian. Ruth was born under President Taft and died in November of 2016 while Barack Obama was mercifully still President—though about to leave office to make way for the degraded eventuality that was to come. In one final act of goodness, to add to her litany of mensch-like deeds, the recently turned 105-year-old was taken by her daughter to the polls and cast her last vote for Hillary Clinton. It is unclear whether in the coming hours Ruth was cognizant of the election results, or fully grasped their implication, but it didn’t matter, for she had raised her voice one more time. This was something she’d grown accustomed to, whether from her efforts to counter the anti-semitism and isolationism of the United States government; or in 1944 reporting for the NY Post on the fate of refugees on the ship Exodus; or her early contributions to the newly-named field of Feminism in the 1930s.

***

Ruth Gruber is showing me a hinged, painted case my mother, artist Kyle Gallup, made. Inset in the case is a collage Kyle also made comprised of photos Ruth took documenting the refugees on the Exodus ship. It became part of the cover art for Ruth’s book—”Exodus 1947: The Ship that Launched a Nation”—which my father published with Ruth in 1999.

Despite her far-reaching influence, my dearest recollections of Ruth remain rooted in more personal soil. She was simply an older woman whom I cared for, and who at times felt like a surrogate grandmother to me. Given that my biological grandparents lived far away and I did not see them often, Ruth became a special friend, who was not relation nor teacher, but a figure whose influence was hard to define or put into a single box. It was in fact so unique, that, due to my own immature faculties at the time, I was unable to fully comprehend how lucky we were to know her and be close to her.

Yet where nomenclature fails, one recollection appears to sum up this relationship. And it was that, in my third grade year, she took it upon herself to attend Grandparents Day on my behalf. While most children had their family relations with them, Ruth was at my side, explaining who she was to the awed faces of the class. I remember my mother thanking her, and Ruth saying it was her pleasure—in her parlance everything was almost always “her pleasure”—and walking her back to her Central Park West apartment building where I knew we would soon have another one of our special get-togethers. Sometimes the canvas of memory is confused, disjointed, opaque; but not my memories of Ruth. There is a single beam of clear light which is cast upon all my imagistic renderings of her, and it starkly illuminates the privilege of having sat in her company, of hearing her stories that always seemed to conclude thematically with the victories of dignity over oppression, of passion over indifference—I took these tales to heart without deciding to, for there was something so indelible about her influence. Among her many gifts was the ability to make you feel that life could be made better by the simple act of putting pen to paper, or pressing the camera shutter. Sometimes the simplest actions have the greatest impact; sometimes saving one life can save many others.

Ruth’s influence transcends an easily measurable calculus; many close to her said if she had been a man she would have won the Noble Peace Prize, but Ruth herself did not think in those terms. She simply did the work she was passionate about, and believed to be right, and encouraged others to do the same. For a long life well-lived what more can anyone ask?

M.G. Turner

October 1, 2022

“The Barrens,” Recommended for all Reading Group and Book Clubs

 

Readers of this blog may recall earlier posts about The Barrens: A Novel of Love and Death in the Canadian Arctic, by the father-daughter team of Kurt Johnson and Ellie Johnson. We just got the fantastic news that the book has been chosen by the Women’s National Book Association for their annual Great Group Reads program. In the WNBA’s announcement they write, “The annual list features 20 books that were chosen by a reading committee of 46 readers out of hundreds of submissions. The books were chosen for literary merit and for their ability to promote meaningful discussions.” The authors and I are thrilled that members of reading groups and book clubs, in particular, will have an opportunity to discover this powerful and entertaining novel.

The Barrens is a gay coming-of-age story that features two college-age women protagonists who set out to canoe the mighty Thelon River. It combines a stirring wilderness tale with an intimate, personal story. Kirkus Reviews loved the book: “Experienced canoeists Kurt Johnson and Ellie Johnson, a father-daughter writing team, present a vibrant, tender novel of love, loss, stamina, and self-discovery….A poignant and engaging thriller with a formidable lead character.” (Full Kirkus review)

Publishers Weekly ran a column by Kurt Johnson chronicling the backstory behind the novel, including Ellie’s own journey through the Canadian Arctic as a teenager.

If you’re a member of a reading group or book club looking for your next great group read, I suggest you check out The Barrens, which was published in May 2022 by Arcade Publishing.

Sold—Public/Private: My Life with Joe Papp at the Public Theater
by Gail Merrifield Papp

Delighted to announce that our literary agency Philip Turner Book Productions has sold PUBLIC/PRIVATE: My Life with Joe Papp at the Public Theater by Gail Merrifield Papp to Applause Theater and Cinema Books. News of the deal appeared first in Publishers Weekly’s Deals column today.

The author has worked in the theater world for most of her career, starting at the Repertory Theater of Lincoln Center, and then at producer Joe Papp’s New York Shakespeare Festival/Public Theater from 1965-1991. As Director of New Plays and Musicals Development, she was responsible for some of the Public’s best-remembered productions. Gail Merrifield and Joe Papp married in 1976 and were together until his death in 1991. She lives in New York City.

To offer readers of this blog a sense of the book, below is a portion of the pitch letter I sent to publishers.

Gail Merrifield Papp has written an engrossing and highly entertaining book that blends an affecting memoir of her life alongside the founder of the Public Theater Joe Papp with a behind-the-scenes portrait of the influential theater’s dazzling history. She opens with the Public Theater’s beginnings more than a half-century ago in a narrative that spans the decades-long association the couple enjoyed until Joe’s death in 1991. During that span, the Public mounted hundreds of productions, from Shakespeare in the Park to such plays as for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf and Sticks and Bones, to the musicals Hair and A Chorus Line—with many actors whose careers were launched at the Public, including James Earl Jones, Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, Colleen Dewhurst, Martin Sheen, Gloria Foster, George C. Scott, Diane Venora, Morgan Freeman, and dozens of others.*

In a witty conversational style, the author paints a comprehensive portrait of the creative process of one of America’s most acclaimed theater artists, highlighting the innovative ways the Public operated, driven by Joe’s ambition to create a year-round producing home focused on original plays and musicals from new voices, while employing non-traditional casting which made it a home for scores of the most creative people in American pop culture. In  Public/Private she traces the founding of the Shakespeare Festival, when its role was for a time limited to small venues around New York City, later moving into Central Park where its Shakespeare renditions became an indelible feature of summer in the city, and the Public’s evolution toward cultural renown and national significance, a beacon for social change.

New aspects of Joe Papp’s many battles with the establishment are also highlighted, from tilts with Robert Moses to theater critics to conservative poohbahs in the US Congress. The scourge of AIDs is also documented, in the form of people close to Joe and Gail, Larry Kramer’s play The Normal Heart, and in the toll it exacted on Joe’s son, Tony.

Her touching remembrances lend the narrative a keen, emotional edge, which will captivate readers and bring a human side to the legendary figure whose theater continues to thrive today, operating at both the Delacorte Theater in Central Park, in the theaters on Astor Place and at Joe’s Pub, a live music venue dedicated in his honor.

At a time when America remains divided over issues of race, identity, and sexual orientation, Public/Private reminds us that theater is a powerful force for social change and community-building, a place for people to gather.

*A marvel of the book will be its impressive appendices of more than thirty pages appearing under the headings: Featured Actors, Choreographers, Composers, Directors, and Playwrights.

To read more about Gail Merrifield Papp and what you can expect to discover in her upcoming book, visit GailPapp.com.

 

 

 

 

Remembering My Dad, Earl I. Turner, on Father’s Day 2022

My father, Earl I. Turner (Feb 7, 1918-July 8, 1992), was a dear man who showed me so much about being a kind and decent person. Here’s a letter he wrote for his three children on May 8, 1978, four days after we’d opened Undercover Books, our bookstore in Shaker Heights, Ohio. Jewish tradition embraces the idea that a parent may offer to their children what’s termed an “ethical will,” which is pretty much what he gave us here, with its discussion of ethics in business, while standing up for one’s self. The photograph was taken on a visit he made to the Canadian Rockies in 1982, a sightseeing journey that he gloried in. My own enjoyment of gorgeous scenic views was no doubt inspired by him. His handwriting and signature were very distinctive, and I’m always comforted when I see his script on something, as here. Thank you, Dad, gone thirty years, love for you always.

Ernest Hemingway and the Agony of Inspiration by M. G. Turner

As a writer, I’ve had multiple run-ins with Ernest Hemingway. The first was in the spring of 2021, following the airing of the Ken Burns documentary, and the most recent was last month, after buying a large Hemingway boxed-set, which I wolfed down in two-weeks. The set included The Sun Also Rises, and A Farewell to Arms, which I had previously tried to read all the way through and failed.

This time I did not fail. But perhaps I should have. You see, for the past year I have been completing a novel that has its stylistic roots in what I like to think of as “modern gothic” with what I hope is fluid and frankly beautiful prose. My work tends to come from a much different aesthetic place than those who follow the Hemingway method, i.e., Raymond Carver, Tobias Wolff, and George Saunders; yet to my chagrin I found, as I pressed through the great and tragic author’s oeuvre I was losing my sense of self, my sense of who I am as a writer. There are some writers, and artists in other fields, whose voice and style are so magnetic, so enveloping, that they instill in the reader or viewer the sense of nothing having existed before or after them. Hemingway is a quintessential example of this, and an author whom most aspiring writers need to tangle with at some point. And for me, this past month, my collision with Hemingway came, and I left the ring, as it were, feeling as if I’d been continually punched in the face. This could be due to the quick, jabbing, declarative nature of Hemingway’s prose—it stands to reason that he himself was an avid boxer—and clearly brought this quality into even his most lengthy, involved novels such as A Farewell to Arms and For Whom the Bell Tolls.

Some writers—I’d even say most—try a different approach with the reader. Some lull, some soothe, and some entertain. Hemingway does none of the above. Hemingway berates and belittles, but he also rescues and redeems. Which is why, even when I recently felt his voice becoming my own, and my boundaries yielding to his force of will, I did not put his books down, did not shunt my new boxed-set onto a high shelf, did not flee the ring. I stood firm. I withstood. I, and most importantly, my young novel survived.

***

I work with fiction writers almost every day, as an editor and a literary representative. Most of the time I think half of my job is to help each writer tangle with the demons embedded in their prose, thorny eruptions that can spring up at any moment. In even more poetic terms, I see myself as a Horatio, Hamlet’s loyal friend, who stands fast as the ghost of his father the fallen confronts the young prince and forces him to wrestle with his conscience. On the page we come face to face with ourselves, and when we read books we come face to face with other people. Naturally every writer, when working in the most effective capacity, will bring themselves to the page, so it stands to reason that when one reads Hemingway they not only read him, they face him, and sometimes even face off with him.

If you’ll allow one more boxing metaphor, when we pick up, say, A Farewell to Arms, we are contending with an experience that Hemingway has transmuted to the page in terms as stark as he could muster. He dares you to withstand him and what he experienced. You feel like you are slogging through the mud, feel like you are tangling through the trenches, and when Henry’s dear love Catherine Barkley dies in childbirth he makes you go through it with him, mourning her to the last page as he denies us even a smidgen of satisfaction. “After a while I went out and left the hospital and walked back to the hotel in the rain.” Henry does not cry. He does not scream. He simply stumbles on, injured and broken, just as we, having made it to page 332 stumble on.

I know all this sounds like I don’t like Hemingway very much. Quite the contrary—I love him. But it is precisely this love, this agony of inspiration, that writers must learn how to handle. When I was younger it was easy to read a page or two of A Moveable Feast and think, okay this is how it’s done, and immediately run to the computer or a notebook and put down a litany of irredeemably declarative sentences. Now that I am a bit older, this doesn’t happen as readily, and I am able, perhaps because of my sense of self—fragile though it continues to be—to manage it, and am able to cross the tightrope of influence and homage.

As Rainer Maria Rilke posited in Letters to a Young Poet an artist must work with whatever is only theirs, and no one else’s. This sounds easy enough, and yet it is probably one of the hardest things a writer can do, and maybe the biggest accomplishment next to putting a period on the final sentence of a great work. How does one withstand, to use a word I’ve deployed already too often, the gravitational pull of someone so monumentally important to our culture and still have faith and confidence in what they’re offering a reader? I know I used the second person when posing that question, but I am talking about myself as much as others. How was I supposed to let my own novel live when Hemingway had seemingly dashed apart my style with a few choice sentences? The word “confident” kept flooding back to my mind, because the way he comes across on the page is as someone who is so utterly convinced of his literary excellence and aesthetic brilliance that anything less—or more importantly, different—is exactly that, less.

But I am here to say: this is false. Though his confidence, even certainty in his style, made him the great writer we know him as, it does not mean other possible fictive valences are worthless, or worth less than his own. When analyzed further, how could it possibly be the only way? A signature of life is its diversity and essential uniqueness. Human beings are varied, not only in terms of race and creed, but also in personality, and yes, style. One writer cannot define the entirety of the canon, no matter how hard they try, or people try for them.

***

But again, I love Hemingway. And I also love what I am working on—you must. This may sound conceited, or foolhardy, but I think loving the pages on your desk is essential to those pages finding an audience and living. I believe a literary figure like Hemingway must be seen in the context of his times, for today, due to his lack of preamble and exposition, he might not have made it out of the pages of minor publications. But in the same way, do we judge Wilt Chamberlain, the only professional basketball player ever to score 100 points in a single game, by the standards of excellence in the current NBA? We do not.

This is all to say that ideas about the greatest writer or the greatest style are inconclusive. I firmly believe anyone, regardless of ultimate success, when they put pen to paper—or fingers to keyboard—are trying to put down the greatest sentence ever. No one enters this field with dreams of mediocrity. We slip into the ring bravely, and work with what we have, with what is most accessible; eventually, if we are lucky, we eschew all influence and find that now vague concept: our voice, that which comes solely from ourselves. We may have influences. We may have shadings in our work that relate or are in conversation with those who came before, but at heart our best work is apt to come when we are in touch with our innermost quality of command, our innermost narrative, our personal dreams. Hemingway had his dreams. And we have ours. But I suspect we will continue to box with him, and writers of all styles, backgrounds, and understandings, until this experiment ends—and let’s hope it never will.


 

 

 

 

M.G. Turner
June 2022

“Hearts on Fire: Six Years that Changed Canadian Music, 2000-2005,” the Latest Addition to My CANRock Library

Really excited to have my hands on a copy of HEARTS ON FIRE: Six Years that Changed Canadian Music, 2000-2005 by Michael Barclay, the latest book in an ongoing series of in-depth histories of independent Canadian rock and folk music. It examines the rise of a couple dozen Canadian bands who broke lots of new artistic and sonic ground—and while sharing few commonalities apart from the fact they largely or partly hailed from Canada—put the Canadian music scene on the global map in a new way in the first decade of this millennium.

The bands and solo artists in the new book represent wide swathes of indie music from Canada: anthemic, quasi-orchestral rock, with Arcade Fire, Broken Social Scene, Stars, Metric, Owen Pallett, and  The New Pornographers; country rock roots-folk sounds with The Sadies and Blue Rodeo, and singer-songwriters Sarah Harmer, Kathleen Edwards, Hawksley Workman, Feist, and Joel Plaskett; headbangers are not overlooked with Constantines, Danko Jones, Black Mountain, and Fucked Up. And The Hidden Cameras, God Speed You Black Emperor, Hot Hot Heat, Peaches, Sam Roberts Band, Royal City, Wolf Parade, The Dears, Tegan and Sara, and AlexisonFire, also appear. A lot of artists whose music I knew already, and a number of others I’m glad to discover.

It’s the latest installment in what amounts to a publishing rarity—a nonfiction trilogy*, though I’m pretty sure the three authors involved, Barclay, Ian A.D. Jack, and Jason Schneider, didn’t envision it as such when they published HAVE NOT BEEN THE SAME: The CANROCK Renaissance 1985-1995 (HNBTS) in 2001; it was very well received by fans and musicians alike, which led to an expanded version in 2011. That’s when I first became aware of the book.

A prefatory note in the second edition explained they’d begun working on the first version in the late 1990s, so collectively this enterprise has been going on now for parts of four decades. They’ve had the same publisher throughout, ECW Press. As an editor and literary agent myself I want add, to ECW’s credit, they have consistently put out well-designed and edited books, very readable volumes that do justice to the authors’ vision for their books.

I got my copy of the sturdily-bound 750-page trade paperback of HNBTS soon after my discovery, in 2009, of the dynamic Internet radio station CBCRadio 3, then a vibrant outpost for independent Canadian rock on the digital airwaves. It offered a passionate tribe of music lovers and fans dozens of hours of music every week. A cadre of talented hosts helmed the live programming with information, patter, contests, a new Track of the Day every weekday, brief interviews with musicians, and each day, a highly interactive blog featuring a Topic-of-the-Day with the hosts reading comments by contributors who minted memorable blog names for themselves. My handle was PSTNYC. According to the wiki on Radio 3, it “had its genesis [within CBC, Canada’s national broadcaster] in a late-1990s proposal to launch a radio network devoted to youth culture, comparable to BBC Radio 1 and Australia’s Triple J.” The station was supported by CBC for more than a decade, but poobahs there seemed to never quite understand the potential of it, even though the hosts—a lively group that included Craig Norris, Lana Gay, Vish Khanna, Amanda Putz, Lisa Christiansen, and Grant Lawrence, and musicians Tariq Hussain (a member of Brasstronaut) Graham Wright (of Tokyo Police Club), Jay Ferguson (from Sloan)—had loyal listeners for whom each host’s daily three-four hour show could be “appointment listening.” Sadly, live hosting was scuttled in 2015, and the station became little more than an algorithmic-driven entity. At its peak, the number of artists who created band profiles on the Radio 3 website and uploaded music to it numbered greater than 30,000. That’s a snapshot of just how active the music scene across Canada was, and is, a country whose population at the time hovered between 30-35 million. I attribute this, at least in part, to the prevalence of music education in Canadian schools. Radio 3 was a potent force for community-building which I still miss, as do the many dozens of friends in Canada and around the world I made in the course of the decade or so I was on the platform. Unfortunately, the website doesn’t even exist anymore as an archive of any sort.

I discovered HNBTS thanks to an album of songs by then-current bands covering songs by artists from the 1985-95 period which appeared in the first version of the book. It was organized, smartly, to promote the 2011 reissue. I heard those new version of older songs played on CBC Radio 3, and bought a digital download of it from Zunior.com, a digital musical seller that’s been a reliable source and supplier to me for many years. It’s operated by Dave Ulrich, a member of Inbreds, a band he played in with Mike O’Neill, included in HNBTS.

Around 2013, I started a companion to this blog called Honourary Canadian: Seeing Canada from Away, and have often written about Canadian indie music for both sites, attending shows by Canadian groups when their tours brought them into NYC. During this period, I also began attending the annual NXNE music festival in Toronto as press, and wrote many posts about the gathering for both of my sites. During the week of NXNE over five consecutive nights, I would hear upwards of four dozen groups at venues all across Toronto—the Horseshoe Tavern, Rivoli, Paddock, Danforth Hall, Dakota Tavern—hanging at the shows with friends from the CBC Radio 3 fan community. We would meet up for a picnic on the Saturday during the festival week, for which musicians would come to play under the trees—and in 2012, even in the trees—when Adrian Glynn and Zach Gray climbed this big beauty with their guitars to play for us.

With three authors to cover the musical waterfront, HNBTS discussed dozens of artists and groups. Here’s a partial list: Stompin’ Tom Connors, Barenaked Ladies, NoMeansNo, the Nils, Rheostatics, Skydiggers, Bruce Cockburn, Hayden, Cowboy Junkies, k.d. lang, Jr. Gone Wild, Sloan, Eric’s Trip, Thrush Hermit, Sarah McLachlan, Blue Rodeo, Tragically Hip, Ron Sexsmith, New Pornographers, Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet, and the Weakerthans.

The second installment in this troika of titles to be published was WHISPERING PINES: The Northern Roots of American Music…from Hank Snow to The Band, in 2009, by Jason Schneider writing on his own. The narrative in this book actually begins earlier than the other two, in the 1950s with Canadian country music, by looking at the careers of Wilf Carter and Hank Snow. Radio played a key role in spreading their music, especially when American country singer Conway Twitty encouraged them to bring their music to the US. Later chapters cover Ronnie Hawkins (who just died yesterday) & the Hawks, Ian & Sylvia, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Gordon Lightfoot, Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, Anne Murray, Bruce Cockburn, Kate & Anna McGarrigle, Murray McLauchlan, Neil Young, and The Band. Lest you think this all wouldn’t interest you, or would only cover unfamiliar bands, consider that the book’s meaty chapter on Hawkins, the Arkansas rockabilly pioneer,  covers his hiring of the outfit comprised of Levon Helm, Robbie Robertson, Rick Danko, Garth Hudson, and Richard Manual. He dubbed them The Hawks, and of course, later they would be known as The Band. This is pure gold for people who like to read about Bob Dylan and The Band. Simply said, the book offers a superb narrative chronicling the influence of Canadian musicians on the growth of country-rock in North America.

Each of the three books employs a modified oral history approach, with lengthy interviews with musicians, and analysis of social factors, including consideration of what distinguishes Canada from the USA in the cultural realm. For a taste of the writing, see this paragraph from pg 58 of HNBTS of the instrumental trio the aforementioned Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet:

“Formed in 1984, Shadowy Men became one of Canada’s most beloved bands, known for their musicianship, eventful live shows, absurdist wit, and innovative visuals. They are best known around the world for providing music on the Kids in the Hall TV show, including its theme, “Having an Average Weekend.” Featuring Brian Connelly on guitar, Reid Diamond on bass, and Don Pyle on drums, the surf-influenced Shadowy sound was decidedly retro, but considerably more advanced than their peers. The Shadowy Men were extremely talented musicians and boasted underrated compositional skills as well, set to creative and extremely danceable grooves. They also attracted attention via their series of 7″ single between 1985 and 1988, featuring gimmicky packaging such as a game board or a Jiffy Pop container.”

A number of factors have combined to reduce my ardent involvement in Canadian indie music in recent years, beginning with the disappearance of CBC Radio 3, though my appreciation of the music continues unabated, and I still purchase and download music from Zunior.com, especially on their annual Boxing Day sale. During the pandemic I really enjoyed listening to the acoustic Mantle Concerts by my fave Canadian rocker, Matt Mays, still posted on youtube. Other factors in that diminishment included 1) the arrival of the Trump administration, whose border policies made it hard for Canadian musicians to enter the US, especially with their CDs and other merchandise that were always a key money-maker for them; 2) the advent of COVID-19, of course, with venues closed for much of the past three years; 3) and NXNE was downsized for a few years, but I’m happy to see it looks like it will be back at full strength this June, so perhaps I’ll make it up to Toronto for it in 2023. I would love to visit there again, and go back to such venues as The Cameron House, a homey spot where I’ve heard many great shows over the years.

As a closing note, here’s a picture of a shelf of music books in my home library, including a number of titles from my CANRock library. Reading from left to right: Special Deluxe and Waging Heavy Peace by Neil Young; The History of Rock N’ Roll in Canada by Bob Mersereau; Lives of the Poets (with Guitars): Thirteen Outsiders Who Changed Modern Music by Ray Robertson; I’m Your Man: The Life of Leonard Cohen by Sylvie Simmons; The Legendary Horseshoe Tavern by David McPherson; Whispering Pines by Jason Schneider, Have Not Been the Same by Barclay, Jack, and Schneider, and Hearts on Fire by Barclay; Return to Solitude: More Desolation Sound Adventures with the Cougar Lady, Russell the Hermit, and the Spaghetti Bandit, The Lonely End of the Rink: Confessions of a Reluctant Goalie, Adventures in Solitude: What to Wear to a Nude Potluck, and Dirty Windshields: The Best and the Worst of the Smugglers’ Tour Diaries (the latter four are all by former CBC Radio 3 host and friend Grant Lawrence); Kick it Till Breaks, and The Trouser Press Record Guide, 4th (which I helped escort to publication as editor at Collier Macmillan Publishers back in 1989) and 5th editions by Ira Robbins; Million Dollar Bash: Bob Dylan, the Band and the Basement Tapes by Sid Griffin; Out of the Vinyl Deeps by Ellen Willis, edited by Nona Willis Aronowitz; Rifftide: The Life and Opinions of Papa Joe Jones, as told to Albert Murray, edited by Paul Devlin with an Afterword by Phil Schaap; and Astral Weeks: A Secret History of 1968 by Ryan H. Walsh.

*Some weeks after Hearts on Fire was published, and after I wrote this post, Win Butler of Arcade Fire was credibly accused in a number of news outlets including Pitchfork, of a history of behaving predatorily toward women. He claimed all the conduct was consensual, but the preponderance of public revelations weighed against him. When and if a paperback edition of Michael Barclay’s book is published I will be watching for any new prefatory material the author includes by way of reporting on this issue.

**While nonfiction trilogies are scarce, there are many in fiction, such as Canadian novelist Robertson Davies‘ Deptford Trilogy, comprised of Fifth Business, The Manticore, and World of Wonders.