John Marlyn
John Marlyn was a Canadian author born in 1912 in Nagy Becskerek, Hungary. His family emigrated to Canada when he was a baby, and he grew up in Winnipeg, Manitoba, influenced by the city's diverse culture and socio-economic challenges. After leaving school at fourteen due to his father's illness, Marlyn worked in a clothing store while pursuing his passion for reading and writing. He briefly attended the University of Manitoba before moving to England during the Great Depression, where he worked in film and eventually married Ruth Miles.
Marlyn's notable work includes his first novel, "Under the Ribs of Death," published in 1957, which is set in Winnipeg's North End and explores themes of cultural identity and generational conflict. He also authored two other novels and contributed short stories to various publications, including Queen's Quarterly. Additionally, Marlyn wrote science fiction under the pseudonym Vincent Reid. His literary contributions earned him recognition, and his papers are housed at the University of Calgary. John Marlyn passed away in 2005 at the age of ninety-three in the Canary Islands.
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John Marlyn
Writer
- Born: April 2, 1912
- Birthplace: Nagy Becskerek, Hungary
- Died: November 16, 2005
- Place of death: Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia
Biography
Canadian author John Marlyn was born in Nagy Becskerek, Hungary, in 1912. His father, Adam Marlyn, was a barber, a highly intelligent and agnostic loner; his mother, Paula Kendal Marlyn, a Catholic, was the daughter of a wagon maker. His family moved to Canada when he was a baby, and he grew up in Winnipeg, Manitoba. His childhood home in Winnipeg was across the street from the railroad freight sheds and later was the slum setting for Sandor Hunyadi’s childhood in Marlyn’s first novel, Under the Ribs of Death.
His father’s illness forced Marlyn to quit school at the age of fourteen, and for nearly five years he worked in the stockroom of a clothing retailer. Marlyn read widely and wrote constantly, and with private study he was able to enter the University of Manitoba in 1930, where, for a brief time, he studied literature and continued writing. However, he could not afford to continue his studies. During the Depression, Marlyn moved to England, where he worked as a script reader for a British film company. Ruth Miles, whom Marlyn had known in Winnipeg’s North End, came to London, and they were married on August 16, 1937. He and his wife returned to Canada just before World War II, and he obtained a writing position with the Canadian government in Ottawa. From 1963 to 1967, he taught creative writing at Carleton University.
Marlyn published Under the Ribs of Death in 1957. Set in Winnipeg’s impoverished North End, the novel received the Beta Sigma Phi First Novel Award. Under the Ribs of Death is often considered a Bildungsroman in which the usual conflict between generations is exacerbated by the protagonist’s association of his parents’ Hungarian culture and humane values with grinding poverty and persecution, while he equates the dominant white Anglo-Saxon Protestant culture and commercialism with success and fulfillment.
Marlyn wrote two other novels: Putzi, I Love You, You Little Square (1981), a short novel set in the 1970’s about a virgin named Ellen who is pregnant with a precocious fetus who talks irrepressibly and embarrassingly, usually about Ellen’s suitors, and The Baker’s Daughter (2000). His short stories appeared in Queen’s Quarterly and were read on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation television program Anthology and on the Ottawa television program Twelve Stories. He also wrote science fiction under the pseudonym Vincent Reid.
Marlyn’s papers were acquired by the University of Calgary in 1987. He died in 2005 at his home on the Canary Islands at the age of ninety-three after suffering a heart attack.