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| Glad Day by William Blake |
Author's Note: Today I'm sharing Part 2 of my friend Jearld Moldenhauer's statement. This part, titled 'Glad Day Origins', is about the founding of the original Glad Day Bookshop located in Toronto, Ontario. Jearld ran the store from its founding until 1991, when he sold the store to John Scythes. John in turn ran Glad Day until 2012, when he sold it to a group of community investors. You can visit Glad Day at 598A Yonge St. in Toronto, just north of the Yonge and Wellesley intersection.
As for Jearld, he also founded the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives, and several activist
organizations that formed the core of Canada's gay liberation movement.
These days he runs a photography gallery, Dar Balmira, in Fes, Morocco.
Jearld has a website (which this statement can also be found on) that showcases his photography. You can Visit Jearld's Website Here.
Comments and feedback on this special 2 part guest series are encouraged and welcome!
Glad Day Bookshop:
Origins
After coming out in 1965, my sophomore year at Cornell University, the world as
it had been up until that moment began to turn upside down. It took some time
to develop an understanding of this new world I was entering, but natural
curiosity drove me toward an ever greater investigation of the gay world and,
ultimately, of my place within it. I reached a point where my attractions to
other males my own age and a few years younger became irrepressible, while the
realization of my own hypocrisy and repression became more and more
intolerable.
I had allowed a
heterosexual relationship to develop, driven more by the young woman’s interest
in me than my interest in her. She and her family had immigrated to the United
States from Germany after the war, and in retrospect I realize that I was
fascinated by their cultural differences more than anything else. For years I
had been studying German and this represented my first genuine exposure to this
world.
The social pressures of that time pushed many into
heterosexual relationships, as if this involvement might help me overcome what
I had been unconsciously brainwashed into thinking, that homosexuality was
everything that could possibly be bad. At the time it was criminal, sinful, considered
a psychological abnormality, and of course was totally taboo socially and
almost guaranteed career failure were it to become public. The very definition
of a modern day taboo! As I later came to realize this also made homosexuality
both quite challenging and very exciting.
For a short time I even sought out psychological counseling
at the University Health clinic. A crusty old shrink was assigned to me and I
suppose if anything, my experience with him pushed me down the path of activism
with a radical analysis of what was wrong with the attitude towards homosexuality
in my society.
The shrink just sat
there, saying almost nothing at a time when I needed someone to engage with
intellectually. His strategy worked, although I’ll never be sure if the results
were what he anticipated. After only a month or so I abruptly stopped my
sessions with the psychiatrist as well as my heterosexual involvement, and
finally took control of my own life.
This final push
toward genuine individuality likely wouldn’t have happened if I had not
discovered various authors and was in the midst of carefully reading and
thinking about their books. I was fortunate enough to have a friend who taught
French; she led me to the works of Andre Gide, someone who had been far more open
about his own coming out and take on human sexuality than anyone else in his
time. As well, old Gide finally received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1947,
probably the only known queer to have been so recognized, before or since.
I devoured his novels and found my way to Gide’s journals
and autobiographical writings. I considered him something of an inspiration and
a sort of gay father figure. At about the same time I read Donald Webster
Cory’s (a pseudonym for Edward Sagarin) The
Homosexual in America and other compilations, all of which gave me a better
cultural context to understand the world I was entering.
As I recall it was
the title and subtitle of Norman O. Brown’s Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytic Meaning of History that grabbed my attention while browsing in
a bookshop. Brown’s work led me to Herbert Marcuse and both gave me the deep
analysis of sexual repression and insights into the path to liberation that I
had been searching for.
As my ‘gay
consciousness’ developed I was interested in the larger picture, in
understanding how things had come to be the way they are. Without that
understanding any meaningful change is impossible. The more I read the more I
appreciated the critical edge that being homosexual gave so many creative people
throughout history. While gay rights seemed one logical strategy, I saw it
primarily as a way of making more people comfortable with their own repressed
homosexuality.
During the two
decades from just before Stonewall (about 1967) until the full impact of AIDS
(1987) there was a spirit of spontaneity and experimentation in the air that
made gay life an exciting adventure. In the aftermath of the epidemic, the
dullness that accompanied what I’ll call quasi-assimilation robbed gay life of
almost everything that gave it promise.
Like so many young gay males I was drawn to New York City’s
Village with its thriving gay culture. In 1966, three years before Stonewall, I
began making trips down to Manhattan whenever there was a school break. In 1967
I visited Craig Rodwell’s recently opened Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop on
Mercer Street, the world’s first dedicated gay and lesbian bookshop. Of course
these visits helped plant the seeds of my own career. In those pre-Stonewall
days the offerings were pretty slim, but later, in tangent with Stonewall and
the enormous volume of literature that started to appear the very next year,
Craig was certainly in the right place at the right time to make the most of
it.
Unfortunately, the
tiny spaces the store occupied (on Mercer Street and later on Christopher
Street) and his shortness of vision failed to realize the potential that Glad
Day, A Different Light, Giovanni’s Room, Lambda Rising, and Calamus Bookstore were
to achieve.
The year after Stonewall an entirely new kind of literature
about the experience of being gay emerged from New York. Gay activists, many of
whom were experienced journalists, began writing accounts of the previous year.
This phenomenon quickly snowballed in a place where there were sympathetic gay
editors like Bill Whitehead and Michael Denneny. Novels, personal accounts,
even the first pro gay psychological reinterpretations made it into print. In
bookstores there was a new type of literature to display for customers hungry
to keep abreast of the emerging culture. The New York Times’ Sunday Book
Review and the Village Voice published reviews and ads for many new
titles.
I had just returned to Toronto after a 9 month absence.
After the University of Toronto fired me for starting the University of Toronto
Homophile Association (UTHA), I saw the bright side and embarked on my first
trip abroad. It lasted nearly 8 months. My new life in Berlin was cut short
when my father died suddenly and I made the mistake of leaving Germany to be
present at his funeral. With no money to return to Europe, I instead returned
to Toronto where I had friends I could stay with until I found a job and
apartment.
In the year I was absent not only had the new gay lit
started to appear, but also meetings of the UTHA were overcrowded, mostly with
townies anxious to plug into the new social movement. Soon after I returned
George Hislop, one of the people who regularly attended UTHA meetings, made the
decision to form a general community gay organization he called the Community
Homophile Association of Toronto (CHAT). Almost at the same time a smaller
group of young gay male activists formed the Toronto Gay Action (TGA). At York
University Roger Wilkes organized a campus gay organization. Within a few short
months where before Toronto had a single gay group there were now 4.
I needed to get back into the movement so I started by attending both UTHA and
CHAT meetings, as well as becoming a founding member of TGA. Because of my
reading habits I paid close attention to both the Village Voice and The
New York Times, and therefore read reviews and saw ads for the first
Post-Stonewall books.
Toronto being a serious book town, I scoured many shops
looking for the new titles. Alas,
no one had any of them in stock! This was hard to believe since Toronto is the
equivalent of New York when it comes to Canada’s publishing world. Most
American and British publishers had offices in Toronto, or were represented by
Canadian publishers.
The new titles were therefore easily available to
booksellers. Yet all I could find were the same dreadful anti-gay psychiatric
tracts that littered shelves in the Pre-Stonewall days. Irving Bieber, Lawrence
Hatterer, Charles Socarides. Even old post Freudian writers like Stekel and
Kraft-Ebbing with their ‘case studies’ to attract readers were still kicking
around. It was frustrating and exposed a dimension of English Canadian
mentality I came to despise. And exactly whose fault was this — the publishers
and distributors? Or the booksellers? I suspect it was both. But unless one
examined the publisher’s catalogs from that time it would be impossible to know
which was more responsible.
My reaction, after a month or so of thinking about it, was
to consider setting up my own book service. After a few phone calls I realized
it wouldn’t take much money at all to start up. In those days publishers
offered generous credit terms so one actually had 60 to 90 days to try and sell
the books. As I’ve explained elsewhere, hardcover books were very expensive
items in Canada, so initially I shied away from purchasing any.
My own knowledge of gay literature both past and present was
in its infancy, so I ordered many of the titles that had been important to my
own coming out and philosophical development. When the new gay literature
titles appeared in paperback editions those were added to my little inventory.
And how did I sell the books?
In the very beginning it was out of a knapsack I carried
from one gay meeting to another.
To build the business I put together a small mimeographed catalog that I
advertised in the Toronto sex newspaper, Tab.
Tab was essentially heterosexual in
character and very much a cheap sensationalist rag with a ridiculous cover
story (and sleazy photos) to help sell the thing. At least they accepted my
little ads, something I later learned would not be the case with either the Toronto Star or the Globe and Mail. I’m pretty sure I also advertised in Guerilla when it appeared on the scene
in June 1970. Guerilla would later
show solidarity by allowing TGA and The
Body Politic to hold meetings in their space. If I remember correctly, Issue 1 of The Body Politic was designed on Guerilla’s layout boards.
I’d like to end this bit of history by talking about how and
why I chose the name Glad Day. It’s a reference to the 1796 watercolour by
British poet and painter William Blake. The watercolour depicts a naked man
dancing in the spectral light of a rainbow with the colours spread out behind
him, almost as if the naked man himself were the prism through which light
passed.
I was introduced to Blake’s work in a number of ways, first
through many visits to the Andrew White Art Museum at Cornell, which held an
exhibition of many plates Blake himself created. Each is a unified work of art
in watercolour, the poetic text surrounded by his imaginative artwork. I was so
taken by the beauty of these creations that I returned to the Museum several
times to take in both the artwork and poetry.
A year or so later Allen Ginsberg gave a week of free
lectures on campus and I was delighted by the opportunity to hear his
presentations. Blake loomed large in his own inspiration and philosophy, so the
week deepened my appreciation of both men. My German professor at the time
(Mark Goldman?) was heavily involved in the anti-war movement and worked at a
small Ithaca based press that was created to publish anti-war literature. That
small Ithaca based press was named the Glad Day Press.
I have read that Blake’s painting may have been inspired by
a prison break, symbolic of liberation from the shackles of oppression and
repression. In 1970, on my long backpacker’s trip hitchhiking around Europe, I
stopped for several weeks in London where I rented a bed sitting room while
exploring the great city. This ‘residence’ allowed me to apply for a card to
the Reading Room of the British Museum. There I was able to sit in the Rare
Book Room and be handed, one by one, any of the original copies of Blake’s
books I wished to see.
What I like about all of Blake’s work, including Glad Day,
is the depth and breadth of his vision. He was not by any means a man of his
time or of any time. I am always amazed that some of his work was not banned
and the man destroyed by the Establishment forces of his time. How his radical
perceptions of both religion and conformity failed to rile the Church and
Monarchy to the point of denouncing his writings as heresy I have never quite
understood. Perhaps his talent was so great and his ego so humble that he
skirted the wrath of those who could have destroyed him.
When it came time to choose a name for my knapsack full of
books, Glad Day struck all the right notes for the greater task at hand.
My vision of sexual liberation goes beyond
the gay rights movement and Blake’s writings resonate far more in my
imagination than a mainstream queer agenda that time has shown to be one of
increasing conformity. The critical power that once came with Outsider status
seems to have been traded for a dull mirror through which spectral light no
longer shines.
