In 1971, the world of Canadian letters was stunned by the appearance of an astonishing new literary voice. It belonged to a 40-year-old Toronto advertising executive named Martin Myers. Published in England, Canada and the United States, his first novel, The Assignment, was celebrated by critics. Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, then senior book reviewer at The New York Times, called it brilliant, saying he read it in one complete sitting, all through the night.
Zero Mostel, Peter Ustinov, Dustin Hoffman and director Joseph Strick wanted to option it. On the strength of it, Myers earned $10,000, a sizable sum in those days, and a teaching job for $14,000 at the University of Toronto's Scarborough campus.
Over the better part of the next decade, Myers produced two other well-received comic novels, The Frigate and Izzy Manheim's Reunion. But then, unable to support himself financially, he returned to the more dependable, more lucrative world of advertising.
"I simply ran out of money," Myers, 78, explained in a recent interview. "I couldn't support my family. And I couldn't deal with the fact that I wasn't making a living. So I went back to Baker, Lovick and then to McLaren and then finally set up my own shop with two partners." They sold to a British conglomerate several years ago.
Now, more than 25 years after publication of his last novel and retired from the business world, Myers is making a comeback as a writer. This past summer, he produced his first non-fiction book, The Urban Loft: Creating a Dream Space in the City, an amusing chronicle of how he and his wife, former TV-commercial director Colleen Myers, spent 15 years searching for and converting half of a church into a downtown home. Myers calls it "the wallet-emptying experience of a lifetime."
And he's just finished writing his fourth novel, About 200 Short Novels, about an ancient Viking, Thorsten the Rude, 1,300 years old, who stopped aging at 44 years old and has continued, in various guises, to walk among us. In his various incarnations, he has written Beowulf and been Erik the Red and Christopher Marlowe.
"It's convoluted, totally crazy and hilariously funny," Myers says. "It's not postmodern--it's postmayhem. All my stuff is funny, because I can't keep myself on the straight keel. Or maybe I can't write well enough without the humour. I'm hoping I can find a publisher."
The writing itch isn't his sole motivation, however. "I'm trying to prove something -- that old age is not a barrier to anything," he says. "I try to do everything I can. It's not just a case of having good health because I've had my share of things, believe me, and I've beat them. The life force can overcome that stuff." Myers says he writes (and rewrites) every day.
Born in downtown Toronto not far from where he now lives, Myers struggled through his 20s trying to find a comfortable career niche. He tried acting, standup comedy and puppeteering. He ran a restaurant, a car wash and an entertainment magazine. "I was a loser," he says. "I failed at everything.' In 1962, working unhappily as a producer for a TV station in Winnipeg, he went to see a psychologist for aptitude testing. "He said I needed something that would give me an ongoing challenge that would never be totally solvable. And he suggested advertising."
Myers applied to 20 Toronto agencies and was turned down by 19 of them, and finally found a job copywriting for $10,000 a year with legendary ad man Jerry Goodis. By the time he decided to chuck it all, he was creative director at McLaren, one of the city's hottest agencies.
But after a decade of success (handling accounts for Hush Puppies, Molson, the Bay and London Life Insurance, among many others), Myers felt that his creative powers weren't fully engaged. "I went around for years telling people I could write and yet I didn't do anything." Then, on the strength of a short story that became The Assignment, he applied to various graduate schools and spent two years living in inner-city Baltimore attending Johns Hopkins University. He finished the novel and sent it to a New York agent, who sold it to Harper Row in two weeks. "All of a sudden, I was a big deal."
The Assignment, about the adventures of Spiegel the Junkman, has the irreverent, but poetic spirit of some of J. P. Donleavy's early work. Despite the critical acclaim that it received, none of the putative film offers ever materialized.
It came close to being shot about a decade ago after his wife Colleen adapted the novel for the screen, received Telefilm Canada financing and found a producer.
"He was dynamite and very enthusiastic," Myers recalls. "We had two workshop readings with actors. It was amazing. Then, he comes over for dinner and asks if he can borrow my car. So he takes the car and the next day he doesn't come back. Finally, the police call and they have my car and he's been arrested. Why? It turns out his wife had been having affair and he had found them together and poured battery acid over the guy's loins. He got five years. That was the end of the film project."
While teaching in Scarborough, he wrote The Frigate, which he calls "a crazy, dissociative, anti-religious book" about a movie projectionist whose sex organs drop off one day. The hero, Gilbert Frigate, spends the novel trying to have them restored. His third book, Izzy Manheim's Reunion, is about a Canadian expatriate businessman in South Africa (a glue tycoon) who returns home to organize a university-class reunion, only to discover that no one remembers him. "It's not my best work," says Myers.
Urban Loft, the saga of his search for suitable downtown accommodation and the trials and tribulations that ensued, took him years to write. He originally wanted to call it The Choirless Loft: How the Unconverted Converted a Church. "I thought it was a better title, funnier, but the publishers said no."
He has high hopes for his ageless Viking novel. "It's never too late for me to get rich and famous," he jokes. "Or even just famous. I'd settle."