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Fashion Designers At The Opera
Reviewed in this essay: Fashion Designers at the Opera, by Helena Matheopoulos. Thames & Hudson, 2011. Season after season both fashion designers and opera producers have to contend with the fact that their work will be hotly debated by the masses. Much of the scrutiny they receive comes from that greyest of all grey…
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TRB Podcast: Stephen Mitchell’s Iliad for the 21st Century
[audio:mitchell.mp3] On October 13 at the University of Toronto’s Hart House, Stephen Mitchell spoke about his new translation of The Iliad, described in promotional material as the first translation based on the work of the preeminent Homeric scholar Martin L. West, whose edition of the original Greek identifies many passages that were added after…
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A Boozy Reader’s Guide to Decadent Duos
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CanLit Canon Review #1: Susanna Moodie’s Roughing it in the Bush
In an attempt to make himself a better Canadian, Craig MacBride is reading and reviewing the books that have shaped this country. Susanna Moodie’s Roughing it in the Bush is a memoir, written as an attempt to enlighten her people back home in the motherland to the terrible weather and accommodations in British North America.…
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William Lyon Mackenzie King: A Grey Mass Hung Over a Chunk of Canadian History
Reviewed in this essay: King: William Lyon Mackenzie King: A Life Guided by the Hand of Destiny by Allan Levine. D&M Publishers Inc., 2011. William Lyon Mackenzie King exists only dimly in our collective consciousness, as a kind of great grey mass hung over a rather substantial chunk of political history. Refreshingly, Allan Levine’s new…
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“Sally Forth, Comrades!”: Jesus Chrysler Drives Full Force into Toronto’s Progressive Theatre Scene
Reviewed in this essay: Jesus Chrysler, at Theatre Pass Muraille, 16 Ryerson Ave., Toronto. Runs until Dec. 11th, 2011. “Sally forth, comrades!” – with these three words you are likely to be ushered into Theatre Pass Muraille’s intimate backspace by a friendly-faced, trouser-clad woman named Jim. You’ll shuffle to your seat while she bickers with…
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Bookishness: Week of December 5, 2011
On the couch Rather than plumbing the depths of your subconscious, look, perhaps, to your bookshelves. Bibliotherapy offers a literary cure for what ails; after an in-depth conversation about a patient’s reading life, the bibliotherapist prescribes a reading list meant to address the patient’s “area of curiosity or concern.” Bibliotherapy is offered through Alain de Botton’s London-based School of…
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TRB Podcast: Issue One Author Podcasts Now Up!
Thanks to our marvelous podcast producer Allegra Young, we’ve posted recordings of our authors reading their first-issue pieces! If you like, listen here, on the Issue One article pages themselves (linked below), or subscribe to our podcast in iTunes. Review Essays: Anna Karenina, her Android, the Aliens and the Train By Tim Ormond [audio:firstissue/ormond.mp3] …
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Life and Beauties of Fanny Fern: Unearthing a forgotten literary feud of the 1850s
Life and Beauties of Fanny Fern. Anonymous. New York: H. Long and Brother, 1855. Condition: Cover very worn, pages water-stained. Inside front cover bears a small sticker reading “B. Dawson, Bookseller & Stationer, Montreal”. Acquired: Sometime in the mid-1980s, from a thrift shop in Ottawa, for maybe $0.75 A little poking around on the Internet…