1942: Frye has a dream about living in war-ravaged Stalingrad; reflects on “racial stereotype thinking” and the “Gestapo” of Moncton, New Brunswick.

[110] … Last night I dreamed I was living in Stalingrad with a Russian family: the wife a beautiful slim girl copied from some picture of a ballerina. They asked me how I got there & I said quite simple, B.C.-Pacific-Siberia, the Russian transportation system is wonderful east of Stalingrad – you’d hardly know there was a war on. An old woman came & knocked on the door: she was an evil malicious gossip, inquisitive & interfering, & well known to be a German spy. The girl said, “No, you can’t come in: go away, you old tart.” Yet we all had the feeling that sooner or later she would come in, & would order us around as she liked. The I suddenly heard cannonading, which I’d been only vaguely conscious of before, & I knew the Russians had retreated another ten miles. Gradually the old hag forced her way into the vestibule, soldiers (German) starting pouring in, & I woke up.

[111] I often wonder about intuitive racial-stereotype thinking: a lot of it is balls. For instance, there’s a big good-natured German in Moncton called Lichtenberg who had been a peaceful, thrifty, industrious contractor there for thirty years. For two wars the local Gestapo have cut their teeth on him: when the new is bad or they get tired of reading spy stories they’d go up and practice on him. Recently the Gestapo combed his whole house over, in response to some silly anonymous “tip,” & one of them found two large knobs in a dark closet. “Aha!” he said, stepped into the closet & gave one a twist, thinking of course it was a private transmitter set. It was an extra shower he’d installed. Incidentally, he’s a naturalized Canadian citizen, but married before that, so his wife, who belongs to one of the oldest Maritime families, is an enemy alien. Well, Dad’s friendship for Lichtenberg has come in for much unfavorable comment in that stinking little kraal Moncton, & the stinkers point out gleefully that “Frye” is really a German name, & that I look just like a German. It’s a beautiful theory, only it just happens to be wrong.

1942: A quite long entry, reflecting on various aspects of civilian life during wartime, including “fascist” tendencies within apparently healthy democracies.

[105] Down to collect Helen & we went to downtown Diana’s [coffee shop, 187 Yonge Street]: absolutely jammed with females. I never knew there were so many women in the world, or so few men. I felt a little like a stud: if I’d been in uniform I’d have felt completely so. There’s a curious sensation about being surrounded by so much female flesh that is hard to analyze. Also on the street, but not quite so bad there. If the war lasts long enough they may start drafting civilian males for stud duty: they’re very near it in Germany now and we generally do what Germany does a year or so later. I’d be category E for the Army, but I’m afraid 1-A for studding. The sendentary are the most sex-ridden of all men, despite a popular superstition to the contrary largely invented by them… A cheap & lousy bookstore has opened on Yonge & Charles. I went all through it to the back, where they had a shelf of semi-erotic books on what they refer to as “sex harmony” and emerged with a Hanford Milton handbook for 15 cents. It’s about time to read it.

[107] I wonder how far-reaching the stopping of travel & touring will be: an enoromous amount of our economy was tied up with it: in the Maritimes, for instance, the roads were a solid line of piss-and-postcard places between villages, where they thickened. Unsound economy, certainly, but wiping it out is a revolution of no small proportions. The effect will be healthiest in Quebec, I think, which was freezing into a Maria Chapdelaine pose of ye olde picturesque rutting & rooting queynte paysan, with of course the Fascist Catholic twist — the Vichious circle of church, pub, field & kitchen.

[108] … Friends of democracy are seldom frank about its failings & I don’t know if anyone has researched the persistence in it of the Aristedes complex. The great heart of the people can put up with conscientious, honest, and efficient government just so long and then they arise in their wrath and demand some form of picturesque graft or colorful tyranny. Recently the Socialist mayor of Milwaukee, who had served his city faithfully for years, was defeated by an obviously incompetent crooner. Now that “Glass Key” picture showed that it’s gangsters, not saints, who attract fanatical loyalty and are impossible finally to crush. Cf. the frank support of child labor in “The Great McGinty“: another film along much the same lines. As compared with the intellectualilzed & comparatively superficial analysis of a Fascist type of Citizen Kane, I think that’s the most important thing for the films to do.

1942:

 [104] Restless & at a loose end, besides being full of shit owing to my giving Helen breakfast in bed & lying down to eat it with her. At a loose end, bitching the day apart from a memorandum for the Retreat discussion on 27th, which [Walter] Brown has asked me to take. I had Jessie [Macpherson] to lunch yesterday to see if she had any ideas about it: she hadn’t. I don’t know why I’ve written down “at a loose end” twice, unless it’s a Freudian wish I had one.

[Note: Both Brown and Macpherson were university administrators.]

1942:

[103] The hay fever seems to have passed meridian: maybe I’m just getting asthma & I shall regret ever having given up hay fever. Got check today, the incredible sum of $165.11: I thought with the new tax it would be far less. So went to the Eglinton, meeting Saunders on the way, who said he thinks Jenny’s job is some for of counter-espionage (he said “National Research Council” to me), to see a new Dashiel Hammett, “The Glass Key.” Beautifully paced, very well acted, directed & photographed: a swell tough and utterly amoral movie about a successful, ruthless & quite likable Tammany gangster. A curious color-cartoon, on the invasion of Holland, done in puppets.

 

1942: Hayfever.  Again.  The war comes still closer to home…

[102] Stayed in bed all day: the process doesn’t seem successful, as I’m worse off than ever. Went out last night to Fulton Ave.: poor old Harold [Kemp] still finds the Air Force tough going & Roy [Kemp] is still worried [about the draft].

At this point the 1942 diary is the only one of Frye’s diaries that continues past the first week of September.

1942:

[101] Howard Smith has a book out: “Last Train From Berlin.” Howard was a very likeable boy, frank and open-minded in the best American way, somewhat naive, & a little sentimental, as Americans are. He is one of those who are so unwilling to be cynical that they tend to lack humor. I remember his showing me some Russian kopecks with “Workers of the World Unite” on them and saying: “Now have the Russians forgotten the world revolution?” I said something about the profound Christianity indicated by the “In God We Trust” on American coins and he laughed, though somewhat unwillingly.

[Bob Denham’s note, page 684, CW vol. 8: “Smith, who later became a well-known CBS commentator, was a Rhodes Scholar at Merton College, during the time NF studied there.  NF is apparently remembering this incident from their student days.”]

1942:

 Read Peter Quennell‘s “Caroline of England,” mostly out of the Harvey Memoirs, but intelligent and well written. It would be an amusing idea to write a skit on an English professor waking up in, say, Pepys’ time and trying to get hold of the language and customs. You’d have to know your stuff, but it would make good if somewhat obvious slapstick.

1950: A harrowing bus trip to New York City, plagued by hay fever all the way.

[590]… A tickly throat is a new misery to contend with, and one that give me a bad case of stage fright I wouldn’t otherwise have. I wish I didn’t associate New York so persistently with hay fever.

Note that this is Frye’s last diary entry for 1950.  Bob Denham’s endnote in CW volume 8, page 743, reads: “Among NF’s extant diaries none records his activities for an entire year. NF might have continued to write in this diary had he not, following the English Institute meeting, 8-11 September at Columbia University, broken his right arm in an automobile accident. The Fryes and Philip Wheelwright, the driver of the car, were on their way from New York to Princeton to see a production of Eliot’s Family Reunion when the accident, which hospitalized NF for a week, occurred. See Ayre, 226.”

1942: The difficulties with cultivating the young.

[98] A cousin of Helen’s living in Forest dropped in. Interested in music, & apparently planning to teach it. Asked her what she was working on & she said “Grade Ten.” Probed further & she said “Beethoven.” “One of the sonatas?” I suggested. “Guess so,” she said. She has a voice like a kitchen stove falling downstairs. I can’t understand the superstitious & barbaric notion in this country that it’s sissified to to cultivate an accent. The idea that correct & well-modulated speech is a fundamental cornerstone of culture doesn’t occur to my students, many of whom make noises like the cry of the great bronze grackle in the mating season. As it isn’t part of one’s education, I can’t teach it: I’m just the best friend who won’t tell them. The Yankee method of talking through the nowse and hawnking like a fahghowrrn is very widespread; some whine like flying shells, some mutter like priests, some chew & gurgle like cement mixers. Ten minutes of frank talking to this girl and I could raise her several notches in the scale of culture: she’s a bright kid and can take things on.

Aspects of this complete diary entry were included and expanded in “Reflections at a Movie,” Canadian Forum 22 (October 1942). The entire article can be found at the above link, reproduced in the Collected Works, volume 11, edited by Jan Gorak.

1950: No entry.

1942: The shape of things to come…

[97] Listened to Information Please programme last night.  I wonder what the popular appeal of that programme is based on: I think partly on the enormous prestige enjoyed by a man who is well-informed on non-controversial subjects. The amount of actual erudition [John] Kieran gets a chance to display is not impressive, as such things go, but shuch things go a long way, like the polysyllables of Goldsmith‘s schoolmaster [The Deserted Village, l. 213: Ed. “While words of learned length and thundering sound”]. By means of it I succeeded in scaring the shit out of [Bobby] Morrison and Beattie, who make three times the money I do. One doesn’t realilze the immense social prestige of the university until one gets a little outside of it. Speaking of them, I wonder if the dry rot at the basis of their lives is significant of an economic change in which the bustling, successful, money-making, super-selling young man is no longer a pure clear-eyed Alger hero but an embittered souse.

1950: Some inconsequential gossip as the new school year begins.