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With voices raised: Tamil artists get their due at the TPL
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TRB Issue Five Launch Party!
Issue Five of The Toronto Review of Books is soon to make its appearance. Subterranean book markets in Armenia, tiny model ships at the AGO, Internet maps, and David Foster Wallace all take the stage in this most auspicious of issues. We’ll toast its arrival on November 13, 8pm until late, at the Poetry Jazz Café (224…
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Bookishness: October 22, 2012
The Toronto Reference Library has binders full of women too Catalogued and everything. Another thing they’ve got? Study carrels for exhibitionists. Scribbles In recent Internet meanderings I came across this little app and subsequently lost hours making little drawings that looked suspiciously like art. 10 best films of the 90s Alas, no Clueless. It’s the best films…
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Rohinton Mistry and PEN Canada at IFOA, Tweeted
Last night a rare appearance by Rohinton Mistry opened the 2012 International Festival of Authors at Toronto’s Harbourfront Centre. The evening was a benefit for PEN Canada—and featured the author giving an enchanting reading about his childhood, several of his incredible and unexpected bursts into song, as well as a chat on stage with the CBC’s…
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TRB Podcast: Lynn Coady and The Antagonist on the Eh List
On May 17, the Toronto Public Library invited Lynn Coady to speak at the Barbara Frum Branch as part of the 2012 eh List Author Series, which highlights Canadian writers. Reading from her novel The Antagonist, Coady raises questions regarding who has the right to tell stories and considers the ethics of writing a life. Listen…
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Art and document: A review of the ROM’s “Observance and Memorial: Photographs from S-21, Cambodia”
In 1975, Cambodian dictator Pol Pot began purging the country of citizens accused of undermining his Khmer Rouge party. By 1979, over 2 million people had been arrested, tortured and killed. During that time, 14,000 men, women and children had been filtered through Security Prison-21 (S-21), an old high school-turned-prison used for interrogating detainees. Of…
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Reflecting on Amy Hempel’s “In A Tub”
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Mirabilia: A Miracle on Gladstone Avenue
I’ve always wanted to go into St. Anne’s Church, tucked away on Gladstone Ave, just north of Dundas St. West, but not to feed religious urges, more out of art historical interest: the Anglican church, Canada’s only Byzantine-style edifice, is home to a series of religious paintings created by the Group of Seven. This past…
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Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations
Schiaparelli & Prada: Impossible Conversations By Andrew Bolton and Harold Koda. Introduction by Judith Thurman. New Haven and London: Yale University Press-Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2012. 324 pages; 206 illustrations. This summer, the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art juxtaposed the works of two influential Italian women in fashion design: Elsa Schiaparelli,…
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Tamil literary voices: An event in preview
“We were shivering. We were locking our doors and waiting. You could hear people shouting and houses burning.” Appadurai Muttulingam’s words express an experience too common to many Tamils, a people forced out of Sri Lanka in droves over the last four decades after facing rioting, killing, and oppression. And while sweeping statements like “great…
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CanLit Canon Review #10: Gabrielle Roy’s The Tin Flute
In an attempt to make himself a better Canadian, Craig MacBride is reading and reviewing the books that shaped this country. The Tin Flute, Gabrielle Roy’s debut novel, explores poverty, war, and Montreal, and it romanticizes none of them. The book centers on the 10-member Lacasse family, which is trapped by poverty in the suburban…
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Bookishness: October 15, 2012
Mo Yan takes the cake Chinese author Mo Yan won the Nobel Prize for literature last week, and, despite criticism about his snug relationship with the Communist Party, promptly called for the release of fellow Nobel laureate, jailed activist Liu Xiaobo. Can’t ask Alice Alice Munro’s appearance at the International Festival of Authors has been cancelled…