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Thoughts after watching Cloud Atlas—once
This essay discusses Cloud Atlas (2012), written and directed by Tom Tykwer, Andy Wachowski, and Lana Wachowski, based on the novel by David Mitchell. Specific departures from Cloud Atlas, the book, render this aggressively unconventional movie adaptation more conventional, not less. It is well known that the filmmakers decomposed David Mitchell’s nesting doll structure into…
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Hell on Earth: A Review of Jim Williams’s Rock Reject
Rock Reject By Jim Williams Fernwood Press 2012 $19.95 248 pages Asbestos was once referred to as the “miracle fibre.” It’s used as a binder in cement, as insulation and in anti-fire walls. It’s also a carcinogen with a legacy of death that stretches across the globe. It causes cancerous growths on the lungs as…
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Giant: A Witty Revolution
Reviewed in this essay: Giant by Aga Maksimowska. Pedlar Press, 2012. In 1988, Eastern Europe is on the brink of revolution. The citizens of Poland are weary from the stifling Communist management of their lives. Workers set in motion an unprecedented series of strikes that ripple across the country and ignite a slow but steady…
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Bookishness: November 12, 2012
Worth more than a thousand words Litographs: the entire text of classic books printed on 24×36. Here’s Around the World in 80 Days: The Smithsonian home for wayward books Inside the Smithsonian’s Book Conservation Lab, where rare books are adopted into a loving family. #love “This bit of utilitarian Web ephemera, invented with functionality…
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Issue Five Makes its Appearance
Issue Five of The Toronto Review of Books travels from the collection of tiny model ships at the Art Gallery of Ontario to Yerevan, Armenia. It gazes on not-nothingness, and waves at David Foster Wallace. Download the PDF or EPUB, or read the issue online—and celebrate this mighty issue with us tomorrow. The evening promises readings of the marvellous poems in…
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Confoundingly Wonderful: Martin McDonagh’s “Seven Psychopaths”
Reviewed in this essay: Seven Psychopaths, written and directed by Martin McDonagh. Starring Colin Farrell, Christopher Walken, and Woody Harrelson. Running time: 110 minutes. The trailers for Irish playwright Martin McDonagh’s third film, Seven Psychopaths, are wonderfully misleading: they present the film as a quirky gangster comedy about a dog kidnapping gone wrong. They are…
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An infinite number of writing tips: A review of Monkeys with Typewriters
Reviewed in this essay: Monkeys with Typewriters, Scarlett Thomas, Canongate, 2012 Those who can, write; those who can’t, write how-to-write manuals. Of the thousands of fiction and screenwriting how-to books out there, far too few are by published or produced writers. In fact, this former wannabe screenwriter can’t think of a single one. Until now.
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CanLit Canon Review #11: W.O. Mitchell’s Who Has Seen the Wind
In an attempt to make himself a better Canadian, Craig MacBride is reading and reviewing the books that shaped this country. Published in 1947, W.O. Mitchell’s Who Has Seen the Wind arrived six years after As For Me and My House, Sinclair Ross’s Prairie-based depression trigger, and it has the same message as its predecessor:…
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Bookishness: November 5, 2012
Rock (yeah) ing (yeah) chair (yeah) Rock your way to a full battery with Micasa Lab’s (still in development) ipad charging rocking chair. Canadian Poetries Promises poet secrets. How tempting. Fraaaaamed David Kaiser on the essay he didn’t write, “The essay falls in a beguiling category: the zombie fact, claims that are shown to be untrue…
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An ambitious take on human nature: Edward O. Wilson’s The Social Conquest of Earth
Reviewed in this essay: The Social Conquest of Earth, by Edward O. Wilson. Liveright, 2012. The first scientific controversy to capture the mind of the young Edward O. Wilson was the so-called Lysenko affair. Wilson, 14 at the time, wrote an enthusiastic essay about the Soviet biologist Trofim Lysenko, a Stalinist protégé who advocated the now…
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Eerily well read: 5 lit-inspired Halloween costumes
What holiday could be a better match for the bookish among us than one that ushers in bags of candy and a temporary belief that anything, no matter how otherworldly, is possible? Halloween practically cries out for literature themed costumes, but in case you need a little help this year, try some of Chirograph’s suggestions.…
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Going Glocal – FOCUS ASIA at Art Toronto
Reviewed in this article: Beyond Geography, flagship FOCUS ASIA exhibition for Art Toronto It’s no coincidence that Art Toronto, Toronto’s biggest international art fair, chose “Focus ASIA” as it’s theme this year, inviting galleries from Asian countries including China, Japan, Taiwan, Korea, and the Philippines to show. The rise of the museum in China occupies…