Elementary, You Bastard

I design the programs for one of Canada's oldest community theatres, and two seasons ago I included member profiles in each program (something I might resume next season, time permitting). I wanted to recognize valuable volunteers and perhaps entice audience members into volunteering. I toyed with the idea of writing short biographies of famous late members of the theatre, but there are so many wonderful and fascinating members now that I couldn't bring myself to do it. I profiled, among others, an artist/playwright who recently wrote a one-act about Emily Carr (she indirectly inspired me to name one of my hamsters Sammy); the humble and astoundingly efficient theatre secretary (also my former landlady and a good friend); and the late Bob Gibbons, a fantastic master builder who reminded me very much of Mr. Rogers, not only in his demeanor but in the fact that he had a special "building sweater" he donned like a priest's vestments for every show he worked on.
But the Artistic Director of the theatre, a Master's student, suggested I profile Wilfred Watson. Watson was a rather minor Canadian novelist/playwright/poet of the '50s and '60s, who briefly belonged to the theatre while he and his wife were teaching in the area. The A.D. excitedly informed me that he could arrange for me to have access to files that included correspondence between Watson and Marshall McLuhan, but as he was busy with his thesis we never got around to it. Not being particularly interested in such a marginal figure in the theatre's history, I never did learn anything more about Watson.

Yesterday the papers carried glowing reviews of the recently-published memoirs of the late Sheila Watson, Wilfred's wife of many years (both died in 1998). What an eye-opener. First of all, Sheila Watson was a far more prolific (and, the reviewers stated without exception) more skillful novelist than her husband. It seems that Wilfred Watson was a wee bit too busy zipping around in his sportscars and collecting mistresses to get much writing done. While Sheila Watson was plugging away at a novel that is now considered a Canadian classic, The Double Hook, her husband was writing a satire of that novel. Adding injury to insult, he named his prized sportscar after a mistress and his Volvo after his wife (he called it "Griselda"). The couple visited Paris specifically so Watson could reunite with a lover - he wanted Sheila along so he could bounce literary ideas off of her. After retirement in the early 1980s, Watson insisted they live in social isolation in Nanaimo, British Columbia.
Now, it's reasonable - even prudent - to assume that Mrs. Watson exaggerated or invented these things after her husband's death. Hell hath no fury, right? But it turns out she never intended the memoirs for publication at all. Close to death, she entrusted them to a friend just so they wouldn't be thrown out with the trash, and it was her friend's decision to publish them posthumously.
Now I have no regrets about neglecting Wilfred Watson.
As for Marshall McLuhan, I'll admit right here that I really know nothing of McLuhan's work. It's so far over my head I can't even see it. I have a copy of Understanding Media that I pull out occasionally and I just sit in front of it thinking "Duuuuhhh...." Even Media is the Massage, which is illustrated for crying out loud, is over my head. If I ran into McLuhan behind a sign somewhere, I'd ask, "Say, why couldn't you dumb it down for the masses like Chomsky does?"