Writings, Reviews, Cultural Criticism
I’ll soon be setting out on a road trip that takes me through the Prairies. I prepare for trips like this, not by planning where to stay or by careful packing that anticipates every possible weather situation, but by reading books from the places I expect to visit.
As someone who claims to blog thematically about “the power of words” but occasionally interrupts his wordiness with photographs, I find it heartening that Geoff Dyer should open his latest collection of writings, Otherwise Known as the Human Condition, with a section devoted to photographers and their work.
There is a book I read at the beginning of the summer that I can’t remember having read. I must have read it because it says so in the notes I scribble. It mustn’t have been a bad book.
The Kardashian sisters, whose sole claim to fame is that they are famous, can now claim novel-writing as another of their accomplishments.
In my grade 12 English class, I had to read T.S. Eliot’s ”The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”. I took nothing from the class except the line: “Do I dare to eat a peach?” which I repeated over and over when we went down to the cafeteria. Sitting in my jeans, I paid no attention to the preceding lines: “I grow old … I grow old …/I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.”
The poets I read are really aliensreporting from distant worldsall they see through bulbous eyes: beachheads by lakes of firewhile overhead the sky igniteswith the light of twin moons rising oceans of liquid methanechurned by the tidal pullfrom ring-wound gas giants gravity lenses that bend lightand draw a heart’s beatto the span of a frozen…
There is a fascinating article by Joanne Hill in this week’s Jerusalem Tribune, a Toronto-based weekly published under the auspices of the B’nai Brith Canada. [Site defunct.] It purports to be an interview of Jonathan Kay as he launches his book, Among The Truthers.
Nik Beat’s collection of poetry, The Tyranny of Love (Seraphim Editions), is the first of a stash I’ll be sampling over the next few weeks. As mentioned in my previous post, I found this book at The Book Band booth at the Mill Race Folk Festival.
Moby Dick is one of those classics everyone knows but few have ever read. We know it because it has given us iconic images that have sunk to the rock bottom of our culture: the whale; the whiteness of the whale; Ahab’s rage; Queequeg worshiping before his idol; and the opening line: “Call me Ishmael.”
Toronto City Councillor, Doug Ford, has found himself in a battle of wits with local area resident, Margaret Atwood, who has mounted considerable opposition to his efforts to close branches of the Toronto Public Libraries.
Mad Pride Week finished more than a week ago. I had intended to write a piece on it but couldn’t find a hook. Until yesterday, that is, when two very different stories trended all over the social media universe. One story from the UK: soul singer, Amy Winehouse, had died at the age of 27.
In debates about copyright and piracy, one hears a lot from copyright law advocates on one side (tough laws, digital rights management, enforcement with teeth), and cultural libertarians on the other (broad fair dealing provisions, open source, lenient enforcement). However, one hears little from economists.
To mark the Marshall McLuhan centenary (a day late), I offer a photo I took on Wednesday (a day early).
I don’t know what to make of the novel, Sub Rosa, by Amber Dawn. I suspect my difficulty with this novel has as much to do with my personal expectations as with the novel itself.
I first heard of E. M. Forster’s novel, Maurice, as an undergrad English student, not through one of my courses, but on a visit to my grandparents. At that time, my grandfather was a retired clergy and a staunch member of the Community of Concern, a group hellbent on keeping the dreaded homosexual out of United Church of Canada pulpits.