A question that people like to ask of the writing life is: at what age do writers produce their best work? What I find remarkable about the question is that people try to answer it. Most answers favour youth.
Author: David Barker
Read Everything by Brian Fawcett
My first encounter with his writing was his 1994 novel, Gender Wars. Among other things, I love the way he played with split text, layout, font, and font colour to challenge the reader to read better or deeper or whatever.
10 Reasons why I’m quitting Facebook
On Christmas day, I intend to commit an act of love by deleting my Facebook account. My reasons aren’t terribly mysterious. They relate to concerns that have been widely discussed by all sorts of people. You may not find all my reasons relevant to your own Facebook situation, but I’m sure you’ll identify with at least of few of them.
Authors Petition for Digital Rights
More than 500 authors from around the globe have signed a petition demanding the creation of an international bill of digital rights. This is a response to the revelations of whistleblower, Edward Snowden, about the extent to which US and UK intelligence organizations engage in online surveillance.
10 Toronto Limericks
While browsing used titles in Cambridge, / I found an old volume, The Limerick. / Tho not illustrated, / ”Twas unexpurgated / The famous Paris Edition and you get the idea. It’s a consolidation of various sources dating from 1870 to 1952 and even includes one questionable mention of Toronto from 1941
When the shit hits
At the foot of the stairs, I did an about face and ran my hand along the wall until I found the door knob. I pulled open the door. Something smelled off, but I couldn’t say what. I felt inside for the light switch. I flicked the switch and leapt backwards. Nothing could have prepared me for what I saw.
Poem: Challenge to St Patrick
More tomb than room, was what she said.My grandmother fled to the fields,convinced the old farm house held death,a mid-life freak, I guess, though to hear hertell it, planets must have collidedand debris come raining from the skies.Grandfather had quit his farming, severedten acres for himself and sold the rest.I had just been born, maybe…
Two More from Bookthug
At this year’s Toronto Word On The Street, I picked up two chapbooks from Bookthug, one titled My Vagina, by André Alexis, and the other titled Deep Too, by Stan Dragland.
A by Andre Alexis
Since David Gilmour’s idiotic remarks of last week, there have been many clever responses, but the cleverest by far comes from a source that predates Gilmourgate by a few weeks: the novella, A, by André Alexis, published earlier in September by Bookthug.
Tired of David Gilmour? Read Michael Crummey instead
Yesterday, David Gilmour got himself caught up in an internet shitstorm. Unlike most of his detractors, I chose to let my opinions ferment overnight. I hope that leads to something more considered than much of the self-righteous anger I’ve read. Here are a couple things that might differentiate my opinion from others. First, I’ve actually…
Investing in Cultural Infrastructure
I feel like a Ferengi from Star Trek: The Next Generation, you know, one of those aliens who can only measure value in terms of profit.
I still don’t like Haruki Murakami
And by “Haruki Murakami” I use the name metonymically to mean “the body of writing produced by Haruki Murakami”; I’m sure that the man, Haruki Murakami, is a fine person and all, entirely worthy of my respect and admiration. I just don’t like his writing.
Church and the Second Sex
My ongoing novel research—trying to get inside the head of a Catholic feminist liberationist grad student—has taken me to Mary Daly’s The Church and the Second Sex, first published in 1968, then reissued in 1975 “with a new feminist postchristian introduction by the author.”
Bewitched DFW and Jerk-Off Culture
n my continued assault on my summer reading list, a few weeks ago I settled onto my balcony with David Foster Wallace’s Brief Interviews With Hideous Men. To appreciate what I’m about to disclose, you need to understand something about the layout of the condo my wife and I have chosen as our temporary residence…
Literalism Explanation and Power
Increasingly, I find myself drawn to the observation that the motivating force of contemporary mainstream culture (as evidenced by its art, entertainment, politics, literature, religion, economics) is a species of literalism.