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The first biography of Canada’s most enigmatic literary figure, a self-described “great practitioner of deceit.”
John Glassco (1909-1981) holds a unique position in Canadian letters and a somewhat notorious reputation throughout the world. He is best known for his Memoirs of Montparnasse, the controversial chronicle of his youthful adventures and encounters with celebrities in the Paris of James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, and Ernest Hemingway. Less known are his poetry, his instrumental role in the foundation of modern translation, and his numerous – and widely popular – works of pornography.
A Gentleman of Pleasure not only spans Glassco’s life but delves into his background as a member of a once prominent and powerful Montreal family. In addition to Glassco’s readily available work, Brian Busby draws on pseudonymous writings published as a McGill student as well as unpublished and previously unknown poems, letters, and journal entries to detail a vibrant life while pulling back the curtain on Glassco’s sexuality and unconventional tastes.
In a lively account of a man given to deception, who took delight in hoaxes, Busby manages to substantiate many of the often unreliable statements Glassco made about his life and work. A Gentleman of Pleasure is a remarkable biography that captures the knowable truth about a fascinatingly complex and secretive man.
A Gentleman of Pleasure launched March, 2011.
Click here for the book’s order page.
Click the links below, or scroll down, to view additional information |
Brian Busby is an independent scholar and the author of several books, including Character Parts: Who’s Really Who in CanLit. Visit his personal blog, The Dusty Bookcase.
Brian Busby on John Glassco’s attitude towards his works of pornography |
John Glassco’s Memoirs of Montparnasse inscription to Kay Boyle |
Louis Dudek on Glassco’s Memoirs of Montparnasse |
Brian Busby on John Glassco’s autobiographical sketch |
Watch Brian Busby’s full lecture featuring celebrated literary translator and close friend to John Glassco, Sheila Fischman and Dr. Richard Virr, chief curator of McGill Library’s Rare Books and Special Collections here.
Download pictures from inside the book.
Download the high resolution cover image.
Quotes from A Gentleman of Pleasure
“Glassco’s memory suggests another side to Bethune. Late in life, he spoke of his treatment to Fraser Sutherland: ‘Glassco recalled Bethune would come and see him in his room in the hospital, and that he had a real healing calm. There was something much more than just the technical and medical aspects. One time he came into the room and walked past Glassco’s bed and went over to the window and stood with his back to him and just left, but leaving behind a kind of healing power.'”
“He found pleasant distraction from the dying days of Expo and his troubles at home through Margaret Atwood, who, having accepted a teaching position at Sir George Williams University, was newly arrived in Montreal. ‘He had a little moustache and blinky eyes,’ she recalls, ‘so he looked a lot like the walrus in Alice in Wonderland’s ‘The Walrus and the Carpenter.’'”
“A run-in with Gertrude Stein, a pornographic movie enjoyed in the company of Peggy Guggenheim, and the sipping of wine with James Joyce at his Square Robiac apartment, each of these events presented in Memoirs of Montparnasse represents a fleeting encounter; a person met, never to be seen again. There is no evidence that he was so much as in the same room with even one of these eminent expatriates.”
“Mona’s pleasant evening comes to a rather jarring conclusion in the vestibule of her Westmount home, where Taylor ends their relationship and joins Glassco in an awaiting taxi. For his part, Glassco romanticizes the sudden breakup, ‘envying them their sentimental parting.’ He writes: ‘I myself had no one to sentimentalise over, because the only person I loved was coming with me.'”
“Glassco’s attraction to the plump, rough, and fun Sibley had much to do with her androgynous nature. Like the girl skier in the unwritten story he’d once shared with Edel, Sibley was made glamorous by her boyish clothing. Had she worn skirts, Glassco admitted, he would not have found Sibley nearly so appealing.”
“More often than not the writing would be motivated by depression and despair, a pattern Glassco recognized in an early entry: ‘I think that when I am happy I never want to write about myself – in the first place I don’t dare ‘handle’ the emotion, and in the second I still possess (probably according to the ‘Doctrine of Reminiscence’) the feeling that happiness is so much the natural state of man that it is quite self-supporting and a happy man needs do nothing else but be happy, while he can.'”
A Gentleman of Pleasure in the press
Author, literary translator, liar – The Montreal Gazette
Open Book: A Gentleman of Pleasure, by Brian Busby – The National Post
Review: Brian Busby’s A Gentleman of Pleasure – The Walrus
The Greatest Literary Hoaxster You’ve Never Heard Of – Booktryst
Sporting Lives – Men’s Fashion
Quotes from the press & reviews
“Black-leather dandy, and elegant, martini-sipping beat, John Glassco was a one-man, literary underground. Impeccable in style and provocative in intent, his pornography is poetic, his poetry is arty, but all his writing has the precision and grace of beautiful lies. Yet, his genius has gone too long unheralded and unsung in his native land. Bravo to Brian Busby, then, whose exhaustively researched, exquisitely written, and endlessly interesting biography reveals Glassco’s vivid complexity, intricate deceptions, and the convoluted genesis of his deathless triumphs in memoir, translation, lyric, and, yes, his odes to the joys of womanly sadism and boyish masochism. Busby gives us a detailed portrait of a grand bon vivant and a singular intellectual, who was likely English Canada’s most gifted, truly radical writer.” George Elliott Clarke, Department of English, University of Toronto
“In his own elegant prose and with a profound appreciation of his subject’s life and work, Brian Busby introduces us to the life, the times, and the writings of a man who was not merely a gentleman of letters and pleasure but also a fabulist of the first order. Busby’s treatment and analysis of Glassco’s best-known work, the controversial Memoirs of Montparnasse, should lay to rest any questions still surrounding its composition. Read this book too for an exceptional and intimate gaze into the life and times of a pioneering translator of Franco-Québécois writers into English; an award-winning poet; and a noteworthy author of literary pornography. All combine quite comfortably to make A Gentleman of Pleasure a tremendously good and satisfying read.” Sheila Fischman, literary translator
“Original and richly detailed, A Gentleman of Pleasure gives John Glassco the audience he deserves.” Andrew Lesk, University of Toronto
“A good treatment of a fascinating and complex figure that reads effortlessly.” David Staines, University of Ottawa
“Whatever their opinion on Glassco, students of Canadian literature should enjoy this book, which depicts an era of literary abundance, where Montreal had two English dailies, where a Canadian book could reasonably expect to get multiple reviews from publications across the country – an era that has passed us by as surely as the lost generation.” – The Montreal Gazette, read the full review
“Busby, editor of several literary anthologies, is far from moralistic in his approach, but his biography is a lesson, nonetheless, in how quickly the pursuit of pleasure turns to misery.” – The National Post, read the full review
“Brian Busby’s new biography, the culmination of years of research, draws on archives as far away as Estonia to separate fact from fiction in the life of a man who disdained truth in favour of a good story. By following Glassco’s career through his later years as a writer, local politician, and gentleman farmer in Quebec’s Eastern Townships, Busby asks implicit questions about the creation of literary reputations in Canada.” – The Walrus, read the full review
For review copy requests or questions:
Jacqueline Davis
Publicist
McGill-Queen’s University Press
1010 Sherbrooke, Suite 1720
Montreal, QC H3A 2R7
Tel: (514) 398-2555
Fax: (514) 398-4333
jacqueline.davis@mcgill.ca
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