Waste No Tears

by Hugh Garner

A strange mixture of power, tension, and torment, Waste No Tears is a shocking exposé of social evils with a forceful message for both sexes. Ignored by some critics, dismissed by others, this novel about the abortion racket is the stuff of Hugh Garner claimed that it had been written in 10 days as part of a struggle to ward off incipient starvation; he was paid $400 for his efforts. Dark and disturbing, the story is a kind of memoir penned by Tom Matterson, a Cabbagetown son who spends 20 years making the 10-block journey from the street of his birth to skid row. Told from the perspective of its male narrator, the novel contains lurid descriptions of rapacious sex and harrowing depictions of death, boozing, brawling, blackmail, and back alley abortions. In Waste No Tears , the men are always tight and the women loose, and it is this downward spiral of sexual incontinence and drunken regret that propels the novel toward its morality-play conclusion.

198 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2014

About the author

Hugh Garner was a Canadian novelist.

Born in England, Garner came to Canada in 1919 with his parents and was raised in Toronto. During the Great Depression, he rode the rails in both Canada and the United States and then joined the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War. During World War II he served in the Canadian navy. Following the war, Garner concentrated on his writing. He published his first novel, Storm Below, in 1949. Garner's most famous novel, Cabbagetown, depicted life in the Toronto neighbourhood of Cabbagetown, then Canada's most famous slum, during the Depression.

Garner's background (poor, urban, Protestant) is rare for a Canadian writer of his time. It is nevertheless, the foundation for his writing. His theme is working-class Ontario; the realistic novel his preferred genre.

In 1963, Garner won the Governor General's Award for his collection of short stories entitled Hugh Garner's Best Stories. Garner struggled much of his life with alcoholism, and died in 1979 of alcohol-related illness. A housing cooperative in Cabbagetown is named in his memory.

Reviews

[JC · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this over three evening visits to the North York Central Library, mostly while listening to Alan Bush on YouTube and later Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos (which I keep on my phone). I don’t have a Toronto library card, so I couldn’t bring the book home with me, which helps me focus on just reading to make the most of my time at the library. The intervening period between my second and third visit lasted about two months, mostly because my parents took a few weeks off from work, and I had no reason to wait around at the library to meet up with them for Friday night dinner, which has become a thing for us.

Like Dorothy Livesay, I discovered Garner while reading about Gabrielle Roy in a book called “Critics and Comrades: Women, Literature, and the Left”. Garner’s book “Cabbagetown” was mentioned in close proximity to Roy. Fascinatingly, Cabbagetown is an affluent neighbourhood in Toronto now, boasting an unrivalled cluster of Victorian housing in a city that has wasted no time shedding away its architectural history in most other neighbourhoods. I’ve wandered about Cabbagetown a handful of times, admiring the houses. Yet the fact that such a wealthy neighbourhood lies directly adjacent to Regent Park, one of the poorest neighbourhoods in Toronto, is oddly fitting for its association with a writer like Garner, who spent much of his literary career exploring themes of inequality and poverty. Emily Robins Sharpe in an introduction to "Hugh Garner's Best Stories" wrote of Garner:

"During the early 1930s, he read all the socialist, communist, and anarchist books at his local public library and became a member of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, the socialist political party that would be succeeded by the New Democratic Party. He also wrote for the leftist magazine Canadian Forum. He retained concerns about communism but, determined to get to Spain, was willing to throw in his lot with the party in order to support the Spanish Loyalists.”

Garner is fascinating, not only because he was engaged in radical politics while living in Toronto, but because this unique literary lens that he offers allows a fascinating glimpse into Toronto’s history, which I have grown rather interested in in the past couple years. Skid row, the teleological endpoint of this book, is located near Yonge and Dundas, and even my most recent visits to the area have shown that this legacy continues today. This past summer one visit to the area included a brief perusal of the Mackenzie House (home to the revolutionist W.L. Mackenzie) before stopping by Page One Café, where a friend of mine works. At this time this barista was in a podcasting program with me. I suppose living around this area (where homelessness is still prevalent, and the affordability of housing has only been worsening) had him thinking about possibly doing his podcasting project on homelessness. However, he eventually did his project on mental health, which is a subject not totally unrelated to homelessness. Most of the homeless people I have spoken to at drop-in centres and food counters are barely scraping by on ODSP or some similar disability support program, and the fact so many people who are disabled (by the prevailing socio-economic structures) are also homeless reflects a profoundly tragic failure of our economic system.

This book was a fascinating exploration into the structural violence pervasive in reactionary patriarchal societies both in Garner’s time, and today as well. How many women continue to die because they are denied basic reproductive rights? Most of the characters in this Garner novel are despicable people. They prey on vulnerable women who need abortions, and then scurry into the dark to protect themselves when someone ends up dead in a gutter. This is the same type of socio-economic system that still persists today, propping up male-dominated resource extraction towns that are inextricably linked with missing and murdered indigenous women all over Turtle Island.

The anarchist and Catholic worker Peter Maurin spoke of a yearning “to make that kind of society where it is easier for men [sic] to be good.” This recalled for me the horrible rape scene in Ursula Le Guin’s “The Dispossessed”, where Shevek the idealist anarchist from the moon descends into the worst version of himself imaginable as he becomes enculturated into life in A-Io. I want to be clear, and not suggest that rapists have any excuse. Rapists are the sole cause of rape. Period. I also believe though that certain ways of organizing society incentivize certain types of behaviour. If one exists in a culture that objectifies women and treats them like property, would not that increase the likelihood women would be victims of violence? The notion of 'rape culture' relies on a notion that certain cultural patterns legitimate rape and assault as acceptable human actions or inclinations. I believe it also cannot be divorced from economic and class exploitation. The main character in this Garner novel is the most despicable person you can imagine — a truly chauvinistic piece of shit. Yet you see him at the end of this novel, drunk and homeless, and recognize that most people are victims in this society as well as oppressors. Oppressors love making oppressors out of their victims. A society founded on the principles of divide and conquer turn people against each other. They keep the violence horizontal, because it is in the interest of those in the ruling class. It is convenient when immigrants are blamed, or women in the work force, or queer people — even ’rednecks’ are convenient scapegoats for rich white liberals.

What I think Garner recognized is that this is a team game. We’re in this together. We need solidarity to rise above this mess together. There are bigger enemies out there than ourselves. Garner himself lived in the midst of skid row, holed up in the Warwick Hotel once located on Jarvis, just north of Dundas, very close to where Page One Cafe sits today (where my friend works). Page One Cafe’s windows, today, are filled with typewriters. The cafe’s name alludes to a writer starting out on a journey to create a new narrative. That’s certainly something we need today. The story Hugh Garner told all those decades ago is still with us. Structural violence is still the reality most working people face daily: just trying to survive, afford their meds, healthy food, and their rent in a half-hygienic space. We need each other if this old story is to be dismantled, and another story is to be actualized — one where it is easier for people to be good, as Peter Maurin would put it. It is like when Chung-Sook says in Parasite, after her husband calls the matriarch of the household 'rich but nice': "Not 'rich, but still nice.' She's nice because she's rich. Hell, if I had all this money. I'd be nice, too!"

What if the abundance our planet offers was shared with everyone, while its constraints were also respected? Another story is possible. Another world is possible.

[Myfanwy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mostly just relentlessly depressing.

[Bernard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good to see these oldies in print!

A Canadian pulp tale that has a bit of everything - drunkeness, lesbianism, a blackmailing old lady, dodgy abortionists, nymphomaniacs.

All packed within its 156 pages.

Quite racy for its time (published in 1950.)

A fast, entertaining tale that can be read in a day or two.

I've since read a few more of this author's books, all of them good.

[Adam Dunn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked it a lot.
Read for it's setting in Toronto in the late 1940's, this book could have been set in any major city, Toronto doesn't stick out which was disappointing.
The book starts slow but Garner's direct writing style will get you through. The first half of the book is a drunken man and the women who cheat on him, who he then knocks around. At about page 75 the abortion racket part of the book starts and hold on, cause this is the good stuff. The pulpy goodness comes out with an old hag blackmailing our narrator and lots of shady back alley dealings. No one is getting out of this in one piece and I loved the boozy old dame putting on the screws, I pictured either Bette Davis in Baby Jane or even Mrs Slocombe from Are You Being Served? in the season ten episode 'The Hold Up'.

[Tan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was probably my least favourite of the Ricochet reprints - the narrator is drunken rapist who has no problems beating on the women in his life. With no actual mystery involved, I'd recommend the David Montrose books over Hugh Gardner's.