Prufrock: Flashback Overload, Toronto’s Classy Con Man, and Tolkien’s Love Story

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The anti-self-help self-help guru: “Svend Brinkmann is the self-help guru who paradoxically presents himself as the antidote to self-help culture. In this provocative and entertaining book he urges us to liberate ourselves from the edicts of the self-help industry, with their phoney promises of happiness and self-realisation. We should resist their mantra of ‘self-development’, and their exhortations to be forever positive and optimistic. He calls upon us to stand firm against pointless, perpetual incommands to be ‘true to oneself’.”

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The personal origins of J.R.R. Tolkien’s story of Beren and Lúthien.

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Prufrock and Other Observations at 100: The “reviewers of the Prufrock volume were more indifferent to the poems than outraged by them, as Arthur Waugh had been. The anonymous reviewer in the Times Literary Supplement found them to be ‘untouched by any genuine rush of feeling,’ while the Literary World thought they were satiric teasings aimed at reviewers. Prufrock ‘was found to be neither witty nor amusing,’ and Eliot was advised that ‘he could do finer work on traditional lines.'”

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Steven Knepper on the life and work of the late Wilmer Mills: “When Mills left Louisiana,

he took a farmer’s practical skills with him. While working on his verse, Mills would support himself and later help to support his family as a carpenter, furniture maker, basket maker, bread baker, and gardener. Indeed, Mills credited this manual work for shaping him as a poet. In an interview, he said, ‘When I work with my hands, I feel a broadening of connection-making ability. I am able to see how things fit together, how things work in a series of steps, almost how a story fits together.'”

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The vitality of the Berlin Painter.

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Essay of the Day:

In The Walrus, Michael Lista writes about the rise and fall of Toronto’s “classiest con man,” James Regan:

“It was the morning before Canada Day 2016, and James Regan needed somewhere to live. A distinguished, even handsome, man of sixty-two with silver hair and a trim moustache, Regan presented himself at the Chestnut Park Real Estate office, a luxury brokerage in the heart of Summerhill, one of Toronto’s most desirable neighbourhoods. Smartly dressed, he approached the receptionist and inquired about renting an apartment.

“His taste was exquisite. He had recently moved out of an opulent rental that he’d outfitted with close to $17,000 in furniture—a striking double-pedestal banded dining-room table set made of yew wood by England’s Bevan Funnell, two Regency armchairs, and a pair of chinoiserie cherry-wood nightstands. He drank good French wine and had his eye on an Audi A4. He seemingly knew everyone—judges, lawyers, politicians, nhl players and executives. He presented himself as a devout Catholic, a family man devoted to his son, Brandon, and Brandon’s mother. Claiming to run a thriving consultancy, he hobnobbed at the city’s most exclusive social clubs, hotels, and events.

“Regan was met in the boardroom by Robin Ennis, one of Chestnut Park’s realtors. The client was in a hurry: he needed an apartment immediately. As it happened, Ennis was looking to rent out the top floor of her own home, a spectacular detached Victorian on Avenue Road just a few blocks away from Chestnut Park—Ennis herself lived on the main floor. She showed Regan the upstairs apartment, and he agreed to sign for the $2,500 monthly lease, so long as they could finalize it right away. But before Ennis could draw up the agreement, she told Regan, she needed a bank draft for the first and last months’ rent, a credit report, and a criminal background check.

“Regan showed up at 290 Avenue Road the next morning, Canada Day—without the certified cheque and bona fides. Instead, Regan brought his art. In a mellifluous voice, he told Ennis that he had some valuable paintings—Canadian pastorals in the style of A. Y. Jackson—that he was hoping to store in the rental unit ahead of the move. Ennis hesitated. But he seemed so respectable, which is why, when she was called away to another real estate offer, she gave Regan the keys.

“And so on the day we celebrate our independence, Robin Ennis became the latest Canadian to lose hers to James Regan. When Ennis pressed Regan about the background checks and the rent money, he assured her that all would be sorted out early next week. But by then, Regan had changed tack, telling Ennis that they’d be dealing with the matter before the Landlord and Tenant Board (ltb), the tribunal established under the Residential Tenancies Act to mediate rental disputes. Ennis was stunned. Regan added darkly, ‘You have no idea who you’re dealing with.'”

Read the rest.

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Photo: Jupiter’s south pole

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Poem: Graham Barnhart, “Cultivating Mass”

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