Barney's Version - Mordecai Richler [78]
4 Waterloo, where the Duke of Wellington, and the Prussian field marshal Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher, defeated Napoleon on June 18, 1815.
5 Actually, the 2CV was a Citroën. It was introduced at the Paris motor show in 1948, and taken out of production in 1990.
6 Not Odets, but Arthur Miller in Death of a Salesman, p. 138. Viking Press Inc., New York, 1949.
7 Actually, according to my diary, Blair and my mother stopped over on October 7th, and the conference was in Edinburgh.
8 The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit was written by Sloan Wilson (1955); and it was The Hucksters, by Frederic Wakeman, that was made into a movie starring Clark Gable, Deborah Kerr, and Sydney Greenstreet: MGM, 1947. Now also shown in a computer-coloured version.
9 Las Meninas.
10Actually, it was L. P. Hartley in The Go-Between, p. 1. Hamish Hamilton, London, 1953.
11 It had to be some other book, as Bonjour tristesse wasn’t published until 1954.
12 Described as a Citroën on this page.
13 Voltaire.
14Santa Fe in New Mexico.
15 Actually, it was Jean-Paul Sartre.
16Actually, it was David Copperfield. See Catcher in the Rye, by J. D. Salinger, p. 1. Little, Brown, Boston, 1951.
17 Actually, Quemoy and Matsu are in the Taiwan Straits, and the mainland Communists didn’t begin the shelling until August 1958. Threatened by the American secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, they suddenly confined the bombardments to only odd days of the month. Then, in March 1959, the bombardments ceased altogether, without explanation.
18 Pat Boone (b. Charles Eugene Boone, June 1, 1934) did not have his first hit single until 1955: “Two Hearts, Two Kisses.” Dot Label.
19 Actually, it was Auden. See Selected Poems, Faber & Faber, London, 1979.
20 Actually, James E. Chaney, twenty-one, was black.
21 Jackson Pollock (1912–1956).
22 The entry for Clara, in McIver’s handwritten journals, lodged in the University of Calgary, reads: “I would rather slit my wrists, as C —– did (unsuccessfully, faute de mieux, like everything else she has undertaken).” Notebook 31, Sept.–Nov. 1951, page 83.
23 The entry in McIver’s handwritten Notebook 31, Sept.–Nov. 1951, p. 89, does not include the last sentence. “Capable of murder one day, I fear” has been added later, after the fact.
24 “Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale / Her infinite variety …” Antony and Cleopatra, Act 2, Scene 2.
25 The Scream.
26 Charles de Gaulle airport never existed under any other name. The airport referred to is doubtless Le Bourget.
27 The Ford Escort didn’t go into production in England until January 1968.
28 In 1970–71, his last season with the Canadiens, Beliveau was actually paid $100,000
29 Three strikes.
30 Patrick Bowles was the translator of Molloy. Wainhouse translated de Sade and was the author of Hedyphagetica. A Romantic Argument After Certain Old Models, Scenes of Anthropophagy, and Assortment of Heroes.
31 Dirty Book.
32 Less than twenty-four hours. this page.
33 The original handwritten entry in McIver’s journal, lodged in the Special Collections Library, University of Calgary, reads: “ … if not precisely celibate, which would go against her otiose nature. But this afternoon, interrupting me at work again, she was back to subject me …” See Notebook 112, p. 42.
2
The Second Mrs. Panofsky
1958–1960
1
IMISS THE OLD DAYS at Totally Unnecessary Productions when I could be yanked out of a boring production meeting in our boardroom because Miriam, her visit unexpected, was waiting for me in reception. Balancing Saul on her hip, holding Mike by her other hand. Her shoulder bag weighed down with a baby’s bottle, diapers, a colouring book and crayons, at least three matchbox cars, a paperback Yeats or Berryman and the latest issue of The New York Review of Books. An apologetic Miriam shepherding a stray she had discovered panhandling on Greene Avenue or shivering in a doorway on Atwater. One morning it was a cadaverous teenager, shoulders hunched against anticipated blows, his smile at once ingratiating and sly. “This is Timothy Hobbs,” she said.