Howard O'Who's-that?

The Vancouver Courier ponders "The Curse of Canlit," looking at the work of native daughter June Skinner, who wrote as Rohan O'Grady.

"The closest parallel I can think of to June is Howard O'Hagan," says her son-in-law, chatting after the Courier's interview with June in an upstairs bedroom. "And he would not have survived at all into the Canadian canon if Michael Ondaatje had not found him and championed him."

Along the way the piece provides a glimpse at the story behind Dzyd Theo's Blvr. story about his obsession with O'Grady and Let's Kill Uncle.

Perhaps Schell-Lambert's article will be the spark needed to get Skinner's work back in print in her own country. If one of her books can affect readers the way it did him, she deserves at least a serious reappraisal.

"Apparently [Schell-Lambert] has old school friends as haunted by it as he was," says Mary. "I don't know whether to laugh or cry when I think of 25 years of 10-year-olds being exposed to that."

REMINDER: YOU NEED TO READ THEO'S PIECE.

TRIVIA: What do Ondaatje, P.G. Wodehouse, and Raymond Chandler have in common?

He's got legs

I wasn't going to read this NYT article on Captain America creator Joe Simon, but I'm glad I did, because it ends with this anecdote...a setup to today's Dizzies Trivia Challenge!

Comics may still cause Mr. Simon agitation, but they also introduced him to his wife, Harriet, who was a secretary at Harvey Comics. (She died in 1972.) “I met her when I came from the war in my military outfit,” he said. She asked him to pull up his pant legs. He dutifully agreed. “What did you want to see?” he asked.

“ ‘I won’t go out with a guy with pasty white legs,’ ” he recalled as her response. “I didn’t ask her if I passed the test, but we went out.” They were married for 25 years.

The question is: Which classic ’30s comedy ends with a woman asking her prospective husband to show her his legs?

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And a late-day reminder—come see me read tonight and maybe have some wine (?) at the Mercantile Library at 7! (More info? Why not check out ed-park.com?!)