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August 25, 1990


Watch enough old movies (pandemic anyone) and you can fill in this scene--- businessmen, sex, court corridors. This is the backdrop to a scene from Morley Callaghan's novel, The Man With the Coat, (1955), from which we quote:

As a businessman, Singerman might say he couldn’t afford to be associated with an old fighter who was an outcast from a place where the best people went. “I won’t be an outcast,” Mike said so loudly that his own voice in the darkness startled him and he sat up in bed. Then he heard a cat in the lane behind the building. The window was open a few inches. The weeds that bothered his hay fever grew in the lane. Again he heard the cat dragging at the lid of the garbage pail. The lid clattered and rolled and he jumped up, slammed the window shut, then he clenched his big fists with the broken knuckles and stood in a trance for a long time.

A more directly biographical account is Morley Callaghan's story of accompanying a lady friend to the coliseum one night, and finding out she fed the stray and feral cats there. This unnerving experience ended suddenly, when his friend threw the crumpled paper bag, which had held the meat, behind and beyond the cats.

Morley Callaghan (February 22, 1903 to August 25, 1990), Canadian novelist, is about due for a revival.

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