The first book listed in
the blog title is Brian Busby’s biography of John Glassco, the second a
Selected Letters of the same Quebec writer.
Busby is an indefatigable
investigator and compiler of Glassco’s life and work. His findings, in A Gentleman of
Pleasure: One Life of John Glassco – Poet, Memoirist, Translator, and
Pornographer, were made more difficult by his subject’s mischievous lies and
diversions, as well as Glassco’s discretion, which caused the late writer to delete and burn
material which would be likely to compromise him personally in some way. It’s especially understandable
he’d protect himself from puritanical condemnation since a darker element of
this often-experienced (among writers) story concerns laws prosecuting
homosexual behaviour during the years of Glassco’s sexual awakening. But I was
surprised to learn that Glassco’s caution was also sparked by a concern for
others condemned, in ignorant and stupidly judgemental hearsay, for the writer’s
lifestyle by association. Surprised, because Glassco comes across as a self-regarding pleasure
hound, one unabashedly in pursuit of the sexual conquest, the next drink, the
slot of endless days bathed in diversion and aesthetic enjoyment, whether of
sights and sounds, or the words – in writing or reading – that would honour
them.
The especial joy, though,
arrives in The Heart Accepts It All, Selected Letters of John Glassco,
where Busby edits a pruned but revelatory archive of personal correspondence
which captures Glassco in a wide variety of moods and subjects. I was
particularly delighted to learn of Glassco’s brilliantly perceptive off-the-cuff
criticism of contemporary writers and books. (It shouldn’t have been as much of
a surprise, however, since his Memoirs of Montparnasse displayed wise and lively arguments during the
dialogic disquisitions in that book.) D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s
Lover gets raked over the coals for the English novelist’s “projection of
himself into a woman; his real love-object is Mellors”. Now, I don’t agree with
it, but his case, made with more development than I’d care to type out here, is
nevertheless forceful and (to my mind) original.
Busby strikes a judicious
and respectful balance between adoration of his subject, and wart-exposure. And
it’s a difficult task because the complexity of the excellent, unfashionable,
oft-overlooked writer offers no easy answers, or even thematic lines. At once
selfish and compassionate, a connoisseur and decadent, Glassco demands
exploration from many angles, and these letters (and the biography which sets
the table) afford the reader a chance to appreciate the subject through
searing wisdom, heartbreaking loss, and humbling experience.
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