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Franzlations at the Ossington
A small crowd gathered last Thursday night at The Ossington for the book launch of Franzlations: The Imaginary Kafka Parables (New Star Books, 2011). A collaborative work between poets Gary Barwin and Hugh Thomas and featuring illustrations by Craig Conley, the book – as its title suggests – takes the paradoxical and absurd prose of…
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Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy: Cold War artifact
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Ride the Cyclone at Theatre Passe Muraille: Saskatchewan Ghost Cabaret a Rollercoaster Hit
Ride the Cyclone, from Atomic Vaudeville. Written by Jacob Richmond & Brooke Maxwell. Directed by Richmond & Britt Small. Until December 3 at Theatre Passe Muraille, 16 Ryerson Ave. 416-504-7529 or artsboxoffice.ca The final recital of a newly dead troupe of teenage choristers is a rollercoaster of a ghost cabaret in Ride the Cyclone, which…
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Time for Another Rewrite: The AGO’s General Idea: Haute Culture, A Retrospective 1969-1994
A review of General Idea: Haute Culture, A Retrospective 1969-1994, Art Gallery of Ontario, July 29, 2011–January 1, 2012, curated by Frédéric Bonnet, organized by ARC/Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris and the Art Gallery of Ontario, catalogue published by JRP Ringier That a major survey of General Idea’s work is only now…
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Charles P. Pierce’s Sports Guy
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Birgitta Jónsdóttir’s Call for Civil Rights Online
On Thursday an American judge decided that Twitter must release the details of TRB-contributor Birgitta Jónsdóttir‘s account in a case against WikiLeaks. She had this to say to The Guardian: “This is a huge blow for everybody that uses social media,” said Jonsdottir. “We have to have the same civil rights online as we have…
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TRB Podcast: Elizabeth K. Meyer at the UofT
On October 11, 2011, Elizabeth K. Meyer, faculty member at the University of Virginia School of Architecture and registered landscape architect, presented “Sustaining Beauties 2.0: Aesthetics as an Ecosystem Service” at the Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design at the University of Toronto, the second talk in the Daniels 2011-2012 Public Lectures. Considered one…
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Getting the World Just Right: Q&A with Heather Jessup
Heather Jessup’s first novel, The Lightning Field, was published this fall by Gaspereau Press. Described in The Telegraph-Journal as a “supersonic debut,” the book follows the life of Peter Jacobs, who engineered wings of the Avro Arrow jet plane, his wife Lucy, whose poignant struggles with motherhood and suburban life are interrupted and permananently altered…
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A TRB Q&A with Grant Lawrence, Author of Adventures in Solitude
Grant Lawrence is probably best known to Canadians as a voice on the radio (or podcast). He has been the host of various CBC Radio shows for years, and has weekly podcast, CBC Radio 3 Podcast with Grant Lawrence, that showcases Canadian indie music. He was also the lead singer in The Smugglers, an indie…
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A World Elsewhere, by Wayne Johnson
Reviewed in this essay: A World Elsewhere by Wayne Johnson. Knopf Canada, 2011. A tale of fathers, real and make-believe, is the backbone of Johnson`s new novel. Landish Druken is an exile at home, estranged from his father, starving in a garret, writing a book that he burns every night. On the edge of Dark…
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The In-Between World of a Toronto Reader in Slovenia
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The Sudden Departure of Normal Life: A Review of Tom Perrotta’s The Leftovers
Reviewed in this essay: The Leftovers by Tom Perrotta. Random House of Canada, 2011. Four years after The Abstinence Teacher, and seven years after the massive success of Little Children, Tom Perrotta is back with The Leftovers, a novel that manages to strike just the right balance between complete absurdity and dozy normality in his…