Short Story: Harlan’s Finger
The vacuum cleaner wasn’t working. After three weeks on the road, Harlan wanted to clean out the van, get rid of the stray potato chips and gas station receipts and pea gravel tracked in from motel parking lots. He wanted to give the van a real going-over. But when he ran the nozzle across the [...]
Continue reading...Pico Iyer, Multiculturalism and Toronto
Thursday, January 19, 2012
I first encountered the name, Pico Iyer, last year while reading Geoff Dyer’s latest book, Otherwise Known as the Human Condition. Dyer refers to him while writing about the nowhereness of hotels and airports, locales that have become emblematic of the global era. To my chagrin, I discovered that Iyer’s is not a new voice; [...]
Continue reading...Did Julian Barnes Invent Google?
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Futurist is not the first word that comes to mind when describing Julian Barnes. However, after reading Staring at the Sun, published in 1987, one wonders if he might not have enjoyed a fertile alternate career as a science fiction writer. The novel starts as a straight-up realistic account of a woman named Jean Serjeant [...]
Continue reading...Box of Books
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
While walking my dog, I passed a box of books by the curbside. As is my habit, I paused to scan the titles and three caught my attention, not because I want to read them, but because my heart goes out to anyone who needs to. All three concern bereavement for the death of an [...]
Continue reading...My Neighbour’s Christmas Tree
Monday, January 16, 2012
Early last year, I had posted a photo of a neighbour’s lawn done with astro turf. The grass is indeed greener on the other side of the fence, even in winter. However, he has put out a real Christmas tree for the chipper this year. I would have thought a man who has an astro [...]
Continue reading...Thanks a shitload, Karen Armstrong
Friday, January 13, 2012
Thanks a shitload, Karen Armstrong. I mean, I’m happy for your diagnosis and all. I mean, not knowing is worse than floating in medical limbo. I get the stigma of epilepsy: how people can be cruel, even smart ones, with puppy words that never bite, at least not until they grow teeth. “No Karen,” she [...]
Continue reading...My iPhone Addiction
Thursday, January 12, 2012
During the Christmas holidays, I had my comeuppance. I had to face my family and confess that I had lost my iPhone. Two weeks earlier, while moving my daughter home from university for the holidays, she lost her Blackberry. She hadn’t even owned it for a month and it vanished in the parking lot of [...]
Continue reading...Writing advice from Bo Catlett (Elmore Leonard)
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Almost two years ago, The Guardian published 10 Rules of Writing from Elmore Leonard. Leonard is famous for his allergy to adverbs and his advice in The Guardian includes the usual harangue. But Leonard goes further and issues a fatwa against the word “suddenly” and against adverbs that specifically modify dialogue words like “said”. Being [...]
Continue reading...10 Reasons to Like Li’l Bastard by David McGimpsey
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
and by “Like” I mean “Like” as in feel great affection or affinity for, as opposed to “Like” as in click an up-turned thumb on a Facebook page. 1. The titles. Many of McGimpsey’s “chubby sonnets” should not be read without first pausing to savour the title. For example: “Song for Cardigans and Assholes.” Or [...]
Continue reading...Darkling – An Experimental Opera by Anna Rabinowitz and Stefan Weisman
Monday, January 9, 2012
Anna Rabinowitz, whose poetry I have reviewed here and here, has collaborated with composer, Stefan Weisman, to create what they describe as an “experimental opera – theatre work” called Darkling which they have released as a two-CD recording from Albany Records. The libretto draws upon a book-length poem of the same name which Rabinowitz published [...]
Continue reading...1Q84 – A Complete Waste of Brain Cells
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
I bookended 2011 with two large novels. In January, I read Witz, by Joshua Cohen, a sprawling brilliant novel which I would set on my shelf beside the likes of Gravity’s Rainbow and Infinite Jest. In December, I read 1Q84, by Haruki Murakami, also a sprawling novel which at least one critic has likened to [...]
Continue reading...Annual Literary Housekeeping
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
Every year begins with certain literary rituals. The first is to pay homage to Public Domain Day – the acknowledgment of literary works which have passed into the Public Domain and therefore are no longer subject to copyright law. Because copyright terms vary from country to country, one must be careful. In the U.S., for [...]
Continue reading...Short Story: The Masterpiece
Friday, November 25, 2011
Below is perhaps the most sentimental short story I’ve ever written. It involves death, relationships, and all that stuff. I have also posted it on Smashwords in case you want to download a free copy for your ereader. Here is the short description I provided there: “When a novelist learns that he is dying, he [...]
Continue reading...Review: Death Wishing, by Laura Ellen Scott
Thursday, November 10, 2011
Death Wishing is the debut novel from Laura Ellen Scott whose chapbook, Curio, I featured here earlier this year. It’s hard to know how to classify Death Wishing. Magic realism, perhaps, although it behaves much like science fiction, with a single wild premise producing conflict that drives the action, and characters who reveal themselves as [...]
Continue reading...The Well-oiled Pistons of the Juggernaut
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Have you heard the news? Publishers Weekly reports that a Japanese insurance company purchased Toronto-based ebook seller, Kobo, for $315 million dollars. My initial response registered somewhere in the anger/betrayal range of the emotional spectrum. Rather than spend a lot of time bitching, I channeled that anger into a poem.reading underwater, words burble and pop [...]
Continue reading...New eFiction from David Allan Barker
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Friday, January 20, 2012
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