Toronto Book Awards – 2003, Toronto Public Library.
Better to Have Loved: The Life of Judith Merril
by Judith Merril & Emily Pohl-Weary
Between the Lines
Better to Have Loved: The Life of Judith Merril
Known as “the little mother of science fiction,” Judith Merril burst onto the New York literary scene in 1948 with a disturbing story about nuclear radiation. Her life was a microcosm of alternative cultural and political movements. Born into early Zionist circles, she ventured as a teenager into the Trotskyism of the 1930s and 40s.From there she became involved with emergent science fiction, resistance to the war in Vietnam, the free university movement and tuning-in and tuning-out. In 1968, Merril moved to Canada to live and work in Rochdale, Toronto’s student-run university, and founded the Merril Collection of Speculative Literature at the Toronto Public Library. It is North America’s largest collection of science fiction and fantasy. The second half of her life was a constant adventure within the alternative and experimental worlds of science fiction, political activism and Canadian literature.
Better to Have Loved journeys amongst the people, places and things Judith Merril loved.
Judith Merril & Emily Pohl-Weary
Judith Merril (d. 1997) was a pioneer of twentieth-century science fiction, a prolific author and editor. She was also a passionate social and political activist. In fact, her life was a constant adventure within the alternative and experimental worlds of science fiction, and radical politics. Better to Have Loved is handsomely illustrated with original art works, covers from classic science fiction magazines, period illustrations, and striking photography. In many ways, it is a history of U.S. science fiction in its early years.
Emily Pohl-Weary
Emily Pohl-Weary is the granddaughter of Judith Merril. When Merril died, she left Pohl-Weary with a partially completed manuscript, a dozen tapes of interviews they had conducted during her last year, and complete instructions about everything she wanted included in the book.
Emily Pohl-Weary’s cultural writing appears regularly in Toronto’s independent weekly, Now magazine, and in other cultural magazines across Canada. She is the editor of Kiss Machine: A Conga Line of Arts and Culture (www.kissmachine.org).
After three years as co-editor and managing editor of Broken Pencil (www.brokenpencil.com), Pohl-Weary now serves on the board and is its fiction editor.
A pop culture junkie, Pohl-Weary is currently editing an anthology called Girls Who Bite Back: Witches, Mutants, Slayers and Freaks for release in spring 2004 with Sumach Press. She is also completing her first novel, Sugar’s Empty, about a slacker girl who’s haunted by her dead boyfriend.
Excerpt from Better to Have Loved: The Life of Judith Merril
I phoned an old friend who was living in Toronto, a mathematics professor named Chandler Davis. He had been teaching at the University of Toronto since he got banned from all U.S. universities because he wouldn’t sign the loyalty oath. He was happy to hear from me and said, “Sure, come along, all of you. We can put you up.”
We stopped to see him and he was eager for news of what had been going on in Chicago and New York. He invited a friend of his to come over, and the friend turned out to be poet Dennis Lee, who was then very much embroiled in starting Rochdale College. Dennis told me all about the plans for Rochdale.
Suddenly I realized, “This is where people who have even more urgent need than I do to leave the States are coming. I should be here too, because I can be of use.”
So I signed up with Dennis as a resource person for Rochdale, went home and packed up all my goodies. Shortly after that, I wrote to him.
Nov. 17, 1968
Milford
Dear Dennis:
I think the last delay is now past. I was foolish enough to drive on the Long Island Expressway in a storm, thereby losing car (not that much damage, busted radiator, but unbelievable situation whereby it costs more than the value of the car – unless virtually new – to get towed off the highway for repairs!) Which complicated all arrangements. Now have definite arrangements, reservations, etc. Will leave here 6pm Friday evening, with local friend driving hired trailer. Depending on customs delay, should arrive in Toronto any time after 3am on Saturday.
If you have not already done so (Chan was going to try to phone you after I phoned him last night), can you send me a formal/proper sort of letter of a sufficiently pompous nature to reassure the customs/immigration people that I am entering Canada as a (staff? faculty? resident?) Member of the College, so as to make sure I don’t flunk out on your immigration point system? I think anything giving the impression I am Honorably Employed and with Assured Residence will do … ???
Sending copy of this to Chan so whatever message you leave there will not need any explaining. See you Saturday – or whenever you get back from wherever you are then – Best, Judy Merril
I returned to Canada as a landed immigrant. I left the repression in the United States and came to the freedom of Rochdale. Of course, it was months later when I paused to think and realized that truly, in my heart, I had immigrated to Canada.
Rochdale, and Toronto at that particular time, meant different things for different people. I think the best illustration I can give of what it meant for me is something that occurred when I was living in the first apartment I had in Rochdale, which was on the third floor, overlooking Bloor Street.
I had been there only two or three weeks when I got a phone call from Peter Turner (who had been Ann’s boyfriend in New York – Ann was, she thought, on her way back to England to register for a psychiatric nursing course. As it turned out, she stayed in Toronto to start the first youth clinic in the city.) He told me he had just gotten his draft notice and wanted to leave the States. He asked if I had room for him. I told him I did.
The day he arrived he was sitting in the living room of the apartment, looking out the window. I was in the back of the living room, and out of the corner of my eye I saw him suddenly jump back, away from the window.
I was surprised, and then I realized what was going on. The taxis in Toronto, or at least the most frequent taxis on Bloor Street, were the same colour and appearance as cop cars in New York. A whole string of them would park or cruise along the street in front of Rochdale. The first couple of days I was in that apartment I did exactly the same thing, because I had taken the precaution of going downstairs, standing out in the street, and realized it was possible to see up into my window.
We had gotten that kind of consciousness in New York, where you would notice what was supposed to be an electric company van parked across the street for several days, and you knew that there was a listening device in there. So every time something that looked like a cop car drove by, I jumped back out of the sight of the window, and now Peter was doing it.
I started laughing and said, “Peter, they’re taxis.”
He sighed with relief.
That situation was, in distilled form, the essence of the difference I felt between the Toronto of 1969 and where I had come from; this felt like a free country.1
1From Better to Have Loved: The Life of Judith Merril by Judith Merril & Emily Pohl-Weary. Published by Between the Lines. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
Tags: Arts Toronto, Rochdale
