Welcome to this cyberplace, set up as a space for news and reviews of A Gentleman of Pleasure and occasional jottings about John Glassco. Five years have now passed since publication, and I've moved on to other projects, but I'm leaving this up with the thought that those drawn to Glassco's writing will find something of interest.

26 October 2011

John Glassco's Mysterious McGill Graduation

Winter in Montreal in 1927. Student life at McGill had depressed me to a point where I could not go on. I was learning nothing; the curriculum was designed at best to equip me as a professor destined to lead others in due course on the same round of lifeless facts. I was only seventeen and had the sense of throwing my time and my youth into a void.
Memoirs of Montparnasse famously begins with Glassco quitting McGill, the very institution at which his father served as bursar. The poet's university transcript records: "Left Dec. 10th 1927." True. Another hand has added "To study in France." Not true. Although the transcript clearly indicates that he completed only two of the four years required to earn his BA, Glassco made an appearance as a graduate with this image and these words drawn from the 1929 Old McGill.

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