Colombo-Plus

Assorted “Colomboisms”

I thought to myself, Colombo, you’ve finally slipped your trolley.” – Hugh Garner, author, on being invited to read a short story in a literary series at the Royal Ontario Museum, One Damn Thing after Another!

John Robert Colombo instructed me on the secret history of Canada (since I ignored all of it, its entire history was of course secret to me). – Alberto Manguel, Argentine-born, France-based, Canadian author / editor, “Destination Ithaka,” Passages: Welcome Home to Canada with a preface by Rudyard Griffiths

… one of my favourite writers and a man who basically supplies me with enough quotes to fool the world year after year after year. – Roy MacGregor, personal communication

The truth about Colombo is that he has the wisdom of an old man and the enthusiasm of a young man. – Reg Hartt, cinéast, reacting to the criticism of JRC

It’s not mentioned in any of Harbourfront’s current online bumpf, but the original host of the series was John Robert Colombo. He was a benign, nurturing presence with genuine stature in the literary community and a real interest in young poets. – Robert Priest, poet and columnist, “The Great Gatenby,” Now, 24 July 2003

… all of these, and much else, have been catalogued by that compulsive collector, John Robert Colombo, in his anthology of sightings, tales, and stories called Windigo. – Margaret Atwood, author, “Eyes of Blood, Heart of Ice: The Wendigo,” Strange Things: The Malevolent North in Canadian Literature (1995)

It might help, also, to take a half-step back from the phenomenon of “Colombo.” – Dennis Lee, poet, in a letter addressed to fellow poet Al Purdy

Not much respected by this poet. – Dennis Lee

We need our Gatenbys and Colombos – Al Purdy replying to Dennis Lee

He tends to go through contrasting phases – Milton Wilson, critic, writing to Al Purdy

Someone should build a shrine to John Robert Colombo.–Melanie Fogel, website reviewer

“Scientists and Thinkers” – Great U of T Alumni (300), updated 1999, updated 2008

JRC’s command of his territory is magisterial. – John Clute, editor and critic of fantastic literature

John Robert Colombo is a national treasure. – Spider Robinson, SF personality, in a review in The Globe and Mail

Canada’s most reticent poet. – Howard Engel, author, reviewing a book in The Toronto Star

The search for the civilized Canadian can end in the person of John Robert Colombo. – Mari Pineo, reviewer, The Vancouver Sun

Unlike so many of his contemporaries, he is more interested in making complex feelings plain than in making the simple obscure. – Mavor Moore, man of the theatre, reviewing for The Toronto Telegram an appearance at Toronto’s First Floor Club in 1959

 

John Robert Colombo, a freelance editor and journalist of talent, has a quick, witty, and entertaining mind and a rare feeling for words and the contemporary scene. – Miriam Waddington, poet, reviewing a book in The Globe and Mail

 

 

The lieutenant of the Canadian literary establishment. – Robin Mathews, poet and critic, writing in The Canadian Forum

You must be the most sophisticated of poets. – Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Russian poet, in Bulgaria

You are a one-man Colombo. – Robert Zend, poet, in conversation

 

 

Hail Colombo, the Gem of the Literati. – J.L. Granatstein, historian, review article

The Great Collector. – Douglas Hill, SF editor,

The Globe and MailColombo the Discoverer. – Robert Lewis, editor, editorial, Maclean’s

Canada’s Mr. Mystery – Robert C. Girard, seller of books on UFOs

A Master Gatherer – Robin Skelton, man of letters, review, The Globe and Mail

 

I like you, Canada man. – Yevgeni Yevtushenko, Russian poet, in Toronto

A major figure in the Canadian literary world … that assiduous impresario of novelty … his peculiar role in the world of Canadian letters, where he stands somewhat near the centre …. – George Woodcock, man of letters, Literary History of Canada

 

 

Vous êtes un excellent ambassadeur. – Roland Giguère, Quebec poet, private communication

Before you can say “anthology” he has already been collecting for a year. – Joey Slinger, columnist,The Toronto Star

I don’t know why they’re so hard on Colombo; he’s really quite amusing, you know. – Nathan Cohen, drama critic, to Robert Weaver

A unique and irreplaceable artist. – Hugh Hood, author, in a blurb written for a collection of poems

A definite ornament on the literary scene. – Louis Dudek, poet, on CBC Radio

He’s by a long way the busiest beaver in the forest of Canadian letters, a one-man word-works. – Robert Fulford, critic, in a review

If Colombo’s entire oeuvre has a metaphysical subtext, it may be that the universe itself is a work of a single author, a highly quotable one.” – Fraser Sutherland, man of letters, introducing the poet at Toronto’s Art Bar

No punishment can be too severe for him! Right. – poet, Irving Layton, letter to Al Purdy

When you embarked on this venture you could not have known what a contribution you would make to stitching the country together. (The transcontinental railway did more, but is used less.) – John Polanyi, scientist, in a personal letter

The combination of culture and common sense is John Robert Colombo. – Allen Spraggett, writer and broadcaster, personal communication

I have a theory that for John Robert Colombo the entire cosmos is a single poem, and all that remains is to connect the dots, so as to reveal its true shape. – Fraser Sutherland, man of letters, introducing the poet at Toronto’s Art Bar

Colombo is the real thing. – Judith Merril, SF personality

 

Other Sources of Interest and Information

2. Enjoy some of JRC’s poems on the University of Toronto’s Literary Homepage:

< http://www.library.utoronto.ca/canpoetry/colombo/ >

3. Read recent reviews and commentaries that JRC has contributed to the webpage of Lighthouse Editions which is an Internet site with blog overseen by Dr. Sophia Wellbeloved in Cambridge, England.

< www.gurdjieffbooks.wordpress.com >

4. Check out JRC’s other and earlier website. It needs to be updated but it includes more information on the books that he has published, complete with publishing details and ISBNs.

5. This is the personal website < www:colombo-plus.ca > . There is another website, the professional one: < www.colombo.ca >. Check it out too.

November 2008

JRC is a man-of-letters. He has written, compiled, and translated more books than any other serious Canadian author. More than 200 titles of his books have been published between 1960 and mid-2008. In addition, he has edited or co-written about the same number of books for Toronto-based publishers during the same period that appeared under the names of other Canadians (some of them household names).

* He is a poet of note and his poetry has appeared in many standard anthologies and magazines, including Atlantic Monthly. He is designated an honourary member of the League of Canadian Poets. The National Film Board of Canada released a short film that brilliantly animates two of his poems.

* He is an occasional contributor of reviews and articles to Graphis International, Le Devoir, The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Star, National Post, as well as to many magazines and specialist publications. He has been a guest on innumerable radio and television programs and was a weekly guest on CBC Radio’s Morningside. He hosted two television series, CBC-TV’s Colombo Quotes, and KarowPrime’s Unexplained Canada.

* He is a specialist in a number of cultural areas. He has been called “the Master Gatherer” for his compilations of Canadiana; John “Bartlett” Colombo for his dictionaries of Canadian quotations; “Canada’s Mr. Mystery” for his books on the supernatural and the paranormal; “Superfan” for his ground-breaking compilations and studies in the field of Canada’s fantastic literature. He was designated an honourary member of the Friends of the Merril Collection, the world-class research library of fantastic literature, a special collection of the Toronto Public Library.

* Among his Ontario-based books are Ghost Stories of Ontario, Mysteries of Ontario, Haunted Toronto, and The Toronto Puzzle Book. Yet most of his collections deal with the country as a whole and sound a note that is “pan-Canadian.”

* He has taught at Atkinson College, York University, Downsview, Ontario, which awarded him is an honourary D.Litt. He has also taught at Mohawk College, Hamilton, Ontario, where he became the country’s first writer-in-residence in a community college.

* He has advised at various times in the past the Canada Council, Ontario Arts Council, North York Arts Council, Canadian Scene (a news service for the ethnic media), and Humber College’s President’s Committee.

* A little-known fact is that he is one of the best-known Canadian authors in Bulgaria; with the late Nicola Roussanoff, he compiled and co-translated five books of Bulgarian history and literature, one of them, The Balkan Range, being on recommended reading lists. A book of his selected poems was translated and published in Romania.

* He is a licensee of Peter Urs Bender’s Secrets of Power Presentations and speaks and leads courses in this field on the executive level.

* He is an adviser to the Ghosts and Hauntings Research Society of Toronto and a consultant to the Ontario Skeptics Society for Critical Inquiry. He was one of the invited speakers at the official opening of the Centre for Inquiry (Toronto) in October 2008.

* He is a regular contributor of reviews and commentaries of books and events relevant to “consciousness studies” to the website of Lighthouse Editions of Cambridge, England.

* He worked unpaid as managing editor of The Tamarack Review for twenty years, when it was regarded as the country’s ranking literary quarterly.

* His compilation Colombo’s Canadian Quotations is the “unacknowledged source” of much popular Canadian lore and expression. The book is responsible for the designation of Yonge Street as “the longest designated street in the world.”

* He established literary readings at the Bohemian Embassy, a now-legendary Toronto institution, and organized the first literary readings at Harbourfront, the foundation of its famous International Festival of Authors and Weekly Reading Series.

* He is included in the University of Toronto’s list of “Great U of T Alumni (300)” drawn up in 1999 and updated in 2008 under the heading “Scientists and Thinkers.”

* JRC describes himself as “the country’s most quoted author … only nobody quotes me … they quote other people’s quotations from my books.” (For instance, his first “quote book” is responsible for the popularity of Pierre Berton’s quip: “A Canadian is somebody who knows how to make love in a canoe.”)

* Peter C. Newman wrote in an unsolicited letter to JRC, “In a very real way you have become the guardian of perpetuating the Canadian psyche–in a fascinating and readable fashion.” SF author Spider Robinson wrote in The Globe and Mail: “John Robert Colombo is a national treasure.”

Favourite Projects

JRC is occasionally asked to identify his favourite literary and editorial undertakings. Here he offers seven projects that have yielded particular (and unanticipated) pleasure.

1. All my life I have been writing poems and as a poet I see myself in my heart of hearts. After years of public activity on that front – founding venues for presentations, establishing outlets for publications – I withdrew from the poetry and literary scenes and concentrated my time and energy on writing what I wanted to write. I take pride in the three, double-columned volumes of The Poems of John Robert Colombo issued by Battered Silicon Dispatch Box in 2005 and 2006. The tomes consist of some 3,000 poems composed between the late 1950s and the early 2000s. A parallel project has been the publication of The Aphorisms of John Robert Colombo, as well as issuing annual poetry collections, an activity that I initiated in 1996 which includes End Notes which appeared in January 2008. I have never suffered “writer’s block,” but in the past, until I took this remedial measure, I did suffer “publisher’s block.”

2. As a long-time reader of “fantastic literature” (my omnibus term for science fiction, weird fiction, and fantasy fiction), I was thrilled to have the opportunity to compile what I like to call the world’s first anthology of Canadian science fiction. The anthology (in a field important for its anthologies) is called Other Canadas and it traces the history of highly imaginative reconfigurations of the land and the country from Cyrano de Bergerac’s crash-landing in New France to what I dubbed “the national disaster scenario,” one of four characteristics of the country’s legacy of fantastic writing. I went on to co-edit (with librarian friend Michael Richardson) the world’s first anthology of Canadian horror fiction, Not to Be Taken at Night, and then Years of Light, the so-far sole book-length study of Canadian SF fandom, focusing as it does on the life and work of Leslie A. Croutch of Parry Sound, Ontario.

3. The imaginative legacy of the Native Peoples has long been of concern to me, partly because of its indigenous, autochthonous, aboriginal, and shamanistic dimensions. I was able to publish six popular collections in this field which focus on Inuit and Indian lyrics, Native folklore, and ground-breaking scholarly studies of the Windigo and the Shaking Tent. These publications attracted some popular but hardly any scholarly interest, at least until the present for they have proven to be quite influential are now being examined closely. I am quite pleased that I have had the opportunity to produce The Native Series which consists of a uniform edition of these six titles as trade paperbacks.

4. I take pride in the fact that I single-handedly (for a while at least) put what I call “mysteries” on the map of Canada. I am overstating my contribution, yet with the appearance of Mysterious Canada, I have been able to survey the contributions of Canadians to the world of psychical and the paranormal events and experiences. Some of these contributions are known around the world (though the Canadian connection is seldom recalled). With the first book I quickly realized the “evidence” for the reality of psychical phenomena comes from personal accounts, which I dubbed “memorates,” and that these make compelling reading. Since then I have published, mainly through my own imprint but also through commercial imprints, three dozen collections of “memorates.” The field is an interesting one but its perennial fascination is that it leads to no proofs — no firm conclusions.

5. Since the 1960s I watched out for a biographical study to be published of the life and work of Denis Saurat, the Anglo-French littérateur who had a special interest in occultism and its influence on literature, especially what he called “philosophical poetry.” No study ever appeared, so I researched, wrote, edited, and published three such books: O Rare Denis Saurat, The Denis Saurat Reader, and Early Earth. I have always felt that Saurat (a private passion) was a professor whose writings in a number of fields are well worth knowing, but are so little known for a number of reasons, one of them being the vendetta he had with Charles de Gaulle. I was lucky I struck while the iron was hot, as I was able to meet the author’s son Harold in Paris and he assisted me immensely, making my work his work too, as both of us were eager to preserve what we could of his father’s work, memory, and reputation. Harold died soon following the publication of Early Earth, which consists of the texts of Saurat’s contemplations on the prehistory of the Earth and the Moon, books of fascinating speculation.

6. Establishing the Colombo & Company imprint with my wife Ruth proved a turning point in my life because it offered me the opportunity to research what I wanted with an assurance that the result, if non-commercial in nature, would be published speedily if not profitably. Yet it proved to be somewhat commercial, so the operation is not “vanity” publishing, a term I will use from time to time, though the term I do prefer is “sanity” publishing. In ten years I produced some eighty titles in the unique QuasiBook format – cerlox bound celluloid covers for instant printed pages – and while their appearances hardly inspire positive thoughts, they served their purposes. With the advent and availability of print-on-demand technology, I have now issued the first post-QuasiBook titles: End Notes and Footloose.

7. I will mention, if only in passing, despite all the books that I have produced, I am known to most readers as “the Canadian Bartlett,” as I compiled Colombo’s Canadian Quotations, the first of seven collections of “important or interesting” quotations by Canadians about all subjects and by other people on Canada. I take pride in collecting these “trifles” as I regard each and every one of them as a “treasure.” My “quote books” bear the motto (taken from a turn-of-the-last-century publication): “Canada only needs to be known in order to be great.”

March 2008