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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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“Hatred Warms the Heart”: Umberto Eco’s The Prague Cemetery: A Novel
Reviewed in this essay: The Prague Cemetery: A Novel by Umberto Eco, translated from the Italian by Richard Dixon. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011. Umberto Eco’s The Prague Cemetery is a novel about hatred, and about why people love to believe conspiracy theories, which confirm their worst fears about groups they fear or resent. “In some…
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“Creeping into the house”: Talking about Writing at The International Festival of Authors
Most events at Toronto’s International Festival of Authors feature authors reading from their finished novels, their glossy dust jackets sprinkled with glowing reviews, as though these works effortlessly materialized through sheer brilliance. In contrast, on Sunday October 23rd, the “Writer’s Craft” panel met at the Festival’s stage on Queens Quay West to discuss honestly the writer’s…
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Tapestry at Theatre Passe Muraille: Mangoes, cows, and other operatic arias fresh from the factory-floor
The brown-brick Theatre Passe Muraille is a far cry from the polished maple and clean-glass lines of the Four Seasons Performing Arts Centre. A historic brass plaque at the door informs you as you come in that the theatre just east of Queen and Bathurst streets was once a stable and bakery, and something of…