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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. A Gentleman of Pleasure, written by Brian Busby, not only spans Glassco's life but delves into his background as a member of a once prominent and powerful Montreal family.
Busby recounts his favourite Glassco hoax on the official A Gentleman of Pleasure blog:
Squire Hardman ranks as John Glassco's most accomplished, audacious and outrageous hoax. It's also by far the least common of his books, which pretty much explains why it has received so little attention. Infamous, yet unknown, like the very best literary hoaxes the work's history is as complex as it is entertaining.At 1320-lines, Squire Hardman is one of the very few poems that Glassco wrote with any ease – but then, he rarely struggled when writing pornography. His inspiration was The Rodiad, a flagellantine fantasy in verse that is ascribed erroneously to the nearly-forgotten English playwright George Coleman the Younger. Glassco's Squire Hardman is similar in style and theme, though it does depart in one important manner; where in The Rodiad the flagellator is a man, the hand wielding the whip in Squire Hardman belongs to a woman. Here Glassco's own fantasies and desires hold sway.
To learn more about A Gentleman of Pleasure, or to order online, click here.
To arrange an interview with Brian Busby, contact –
Jacqui Davis, MQUP Publicist, jacqueline.davis@mcgill.ca
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