23. Richard Writes a Book - Part 3

What is Missing

 

Illustration by William Lackey in Crazy White Man showing Richard standing alone in front of the island cabin he shared with Nan, with two Ojibway people in the canoe.

“Every individual’s story has its enthralling aspect, though the essential pivot is usually omitted or obscured by most autobiographers.” 

- Anthony Powell, Books Do Furnish A Room

 

“No one can tell the whole truth about himself.”

             - Somerset Maugham

 

“They all said I was crazy," Richard Morenus begins in his 1952 book, Crazy White Man (Sha-g-na-she Wa-du-kee). "When I finally began to agree with them, it was then too late for me to do anything about it. I was seated in a canoe, well past the last outpost of civilization, headed northward toward the bit of insular real estate I had bought, sight unseen, deep in the Canadian bush country. ... I was on my own." 

But of course, Richard was not on his own. When he arrived on what is now Winoga Island near Sioux Lookout, Ontario in early May of 1941 he was accompanied by his wife Nan. Together, the couple lived on the island for about six years, with Nan proving herself more than capable of surviving in the remote outdoors. There must have been severe strains on the Morenus marriage during these years, for they were divorced in 1947. 

 

In Crazy White Man, published by Rand McNally, Richard omits Nan completely from his book. He may have felt, some would say correctly, that a story of a man surviving alone in northern Ontario for six years made for a more entertaining story, benefiting his book sales, his career, and his reputation. Details like his wife did not fit with his carefully constructed man-against-nature account. It is possible that, even though Nan had died two years earlier, Richard decided to expunge his former wife from his narrative due to lingering animosity after their divorce. Perhaps he did not want to upset his new, sixth wife Nora by writing anything about his fifth wife Nan. Or, who knows, maybe he and Nan had made a deal years earlier that she would not be included in any future book he might write about their time on the island. After all, they were both writers competing to cover the same material. Richard won in the end.

 

No Photographs

 

There are no photos in Crazy White Man, just illustrations by William Lackey. Richard and Nan had taken a camera with them into the bush and they used it. For example, Nan mentions in her 1946 Maclean’s article that they gave old Jim Chief a photograph. “It was a snap of him we had taken on his last canoe trip before freeze-up,” she wrote. “For once Jim was overcome. He stared in wordless fascination at the first picture of himself he had ever seen.” 

 

Richard writes in his book, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, that he found two reasons why taking pictures in the bush was extremely difficult. “One was that, when I had the camera along, there was never anything to take a picture of,” he explains. “The other was that, when there were things I wanted to take pictures of, I had no camera with me.” He adds that he “deplored the usual planned and posed photography that might give what I write the unpleasant flavor of a publicity article.”

 

So, if they had a camera with them, why are there no photos in Richard’s book?  First, it would have destroyed the illusion (which it was) that he was alone in the bush. Nan would have either been in the photos or she would have been the photographer. Second, I think Richard destroyed all the photos of their time on the island. 

 

Through a series of events, I now possess all the photographs that Richard left behind. Kim Clark and Richard Mansfield, owners of Winoga Lodge Island near Sioux Lookout, Ontario – once Nan and Richard’s island - sent me a box containing of hundred of photos of Richard from his infancy to his sixth marriage to Nora Smith. There is not a single photo of Nan (or any of Richard’s other five wives before Nora) in the box, nor is there a single photo of the island. The closest I found were photos of Richard re-enacting his time on the island, taken – likely in Michigan – for book promotion purposes.

 

Reworking of Previously Published Material 

 

Crazy White Man had the working title From Broadway to Bush, the same title as Richard’s Maclean's magazine article of 1946. In the book, he reworked material from his article, eliminating any references to Nan in the process. For example, while it had been Nan’s illness that prompted the couple’s move to northern Ontario, Richard writes in Crazy White Man that it was he who had been ill. Here’s a comparison of the text from each piece:

 

• “From Broadway to Bush:” “I looked at my watch again—that badge of my profession I wore on my wrist. It was a stop watch, a cruelly clever instrument of inexorable time. My wife and I had been stop-watch slaves in New York for more than 10 years, I as writer-director of network programs, she as one of the more popular actresses who suffer daily in serials before the microphones. The big red hand of the studio clock had bound us until we were accountable to it for every one of its measured minutes. Its gifts were liberal, but the cost was great in ruined digestions, tired bodies, and nerves as taut as piano wires. Something had to snap. It had been Nan.”
• Crazy White Man: “The glance at my watch, the badge of my profession that I constantly wore on my wrist, had been thoroughly unconscious. It was a stop watch, a cruelly clever instrument of inexorable time. I had been a slave to it in New York for more than ten years as a writer-director of network radio programs. The watch, like its oversized prototype on the studio wall, had a second hand, and I was accountable to it for every one of its measured minutes. The resultant cost was great in ruined digestion, a tired body, and nerves as taut as piano wires. Something had to stop.”

There are many more examples of Richard’s reworking material from his two Maclean’s article into his book. Here are a couple of short examples from his article “Dogs on Ice” (September 15 1948) which four years later transformed into a chapter in his book called “Hot Dogs on Ice.” (For more examples, see blog post “Getting Around in Winter.”)

 

• First line of the article: “Streetcars, elevated trains, and subways—that is what transportation meant to me until my wife and I decided to leave New York and make our home in the Canadian bush.”
• First line of the book chapter: “Up to the time I moved to the north, streetcars, elevated trains, buses, and subways had been about all that transportation meant to me.”

And another:

 

• From the article: “In New York it had been a very simple matter to buy a dog, or any number of dogs, of any size, shape or breed. You merely went to a pet shop, picked out your dog, and led it away on a leash.”
• From the book: “In New York it had been a very simple matter to buy a dog or any number of dogs of any size, shape, or breed. A visit to a conveniently located pet shop, the selection of the dog, and it could be led away on a leash.”

These can be considered examples of self-plagiarism, a term that, according to Miguel Roig (2015), refers to authors who reuse their previously disseminated content and pass it off as new product without letting their reader know that this material has appeared previously. [Source: Roig, Miguel. “Avoiding Plagiarism, Self-Plagiarism, and Other Questionable Writing Practices: A Guide to Ethical Writing.” United States Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Research Integrity, 2003, 2015. www.ori.hhs.gov ] (Note: The US Office of Research Integrity states that self-plagiarism is NOT considered research misconduct.)

 

Richard did not exactly conceal from his readers his previously published articles in Maclean’s – he mentions them about halfway through his book, stating that “Scott Young [musician Neil Young’s father], then nonfiction editor, had given me considerable encouragement toward continuing with a series.” But he does not reveal that those articles were about his experiences in the wilderness with his wife Nan. Of course, disclosing that fact would have destroyed the tenderfoot-alone-in-the-bush narrative he presented in Crazy White Man.

 

Illustration by William Lackey

While I have no evidence to prove it, it is possible that Richard consulted Nan’s published articles in Maclean’s magazine during the writing of Crazy White Man. It is interesting to compare their differing accounts of their encounters with Jim Chief, or as Richard calls him, Wa-she-ga, which he says means “the old bent one.” For example, here are excerpts from their respective writing about their visit to the old chief’s wigwam:

 

• In Nan’s article October 1946 article “Jim Chief” for Maclean’s, she implies that she and Richard arrived unannounced at the wigwam of the old Ojibway chief and his wife, “We moored the dogs and toboggan a discreet distance from his grounds and climbed the low rise on which the wigwam squatted in a stand of balsam. … Smoke tumbled from the apex of the wigwam, and we heard a steady stream of chatter from within as we stood before the tightly closed flap. We waited five minutes . . . ten. No one appeared. It was impossible that Jim and his squaw had neither seen nor heard our dogs’ noisy arrival. The conversation from within had disintegrated into giggles and prolonged laughter. Dick looked as mad as I felt. ‘Enough of this,’ he said, and giving the flap doorway a vigorous shake, he called sharply, ‘Jim!’ The flap fell away and Dick stepped in, pulling me after him.”
• Richard writes in the chapter of his book entitled “Nichies” (an abbreviation for nichi-nabi meaning Indians) that he received a much different welcome to the wigwam than the one described by Nan. “It was March of the second winter before I had the opportunity to call upon Wa-she-ga. It was a beautiful clear day and cold. I had informed him well ahead of the time that I might pay him a visit, and he was eagerly anticipating it. When I arrived at his camp, it was undoubtedly the first time in his life that he had received a social call from a white man. When he heard me, he came out of the wigwam to greet me. I stooped over and pushed back the entry flap and followed him inside.” 

I cannot help but conclude that Nan’s is the more accurate account, and that, for reasons of his own, Richard did not want to convey the awkwardness of their unexpected visit to Jim Chief’s wigwam.

Crafting his Reputation 

 

At the end of Crazy White Man, Richard declares that he never became used to living in the bush. 

I didn’t get used to the cold, the storms, the blizzards, or the rains. I didn’t get used to the unending struggle against the elements. I didn’t get used to hard physical work. I endured them all, but I didn’t get used to any of them. And notwithstanding all these and more things which I never got used to, I still love the bush. I love its grandeur, its majesty, its dignity; its virginal primitiveness, its insidious and fabulous charm; the greatness of it; its challenge. I knew its strength and had felt the immensity of its power. I respected it. And I was no longer afraid of it. The bush had taught me many things. But I never got used to it.

With a memoirist’s focus on self, Richard wanted to demonstrate to his readers the struggle and achievement of his six years on what is now Winoga Island. He had suffered and he had overcome, he tells us. He had persevered through numerous challenges and in the end reached a personal triumph. As a source of historical truth, however, Richard’s book must be read not for its accuracy but for its many insights into life in the Canadian wilderness during the 1940s. I for one, however, cannot forget that Nan Dorland was there with him.

Nan and Richard Morenus, c. 1943. Source

 

NEXT: PART TWO: Nan and John - Partners in Prospecting: Click HERE

 

PREVIOUS: Richard Writes a Book - Part 2: Click HERE

INDEX TO BLOG SERIES: Click HERE

 

 

©Joan Champ. All rights reserved.