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The History Wars in Canada
Jack Granatstein’s 1998 jeremiad Who Killed Canadian History? was the opening shot of the History Wars, a fierce conflict about the meaning and purpose of our nation’s past. Academic historians, he satirically concluded, had abandoned traditional military and political history in order to specialize in topics like “the history of housemaid’s knee in Belleville in…
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A Long Strange Trip: Travels Through The North Coast with Denis Johnson
“This is not a dream, illusion, or metaphor. This is California.” -Denis Johnson, Already Dead: A California Gothic On a bright, sultry afternoon at the tail end of last August, my wife Jill and I sat at a picnic table in the spacious courtyard of the Anderson Valley Brewing Company in Boonville, California. The town…
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Special Ed at Hot Docs: Winnipeg, spelling, and stop motion
Reviewed in this essay: Special Ed, directed by John Paskievich, Canada, 2013 at Hot Docs 2013. Director John Paskievich’s documentary Special Ed follows Ed Ackerman, a filmmaker who creates short stop-motion films that help kids spell. He loves words, enjoys puns, and his old boat-like car is decorated with colourful-painted letters. Then his life is…
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Da Vinci and The Circle at Hot Docs: Science, art, and the imagination
Reviewed in this essay: Da Vinci and The Circle at Hot Docs. “I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.” So states the Albert Einstein epigraph that prefaces Bram Conjaerts’s documentary The Circle, which is currently playing at the…
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Pussy Riot at Hot Docs: Punk Feminist Performance Art on Trial
Reviewed in this essay: Pussy Riot – A Punk Prayer, directed by Maxim Pozdorovkin and Mike Lerner, United Kingdom, 2012. Always difficult for a film reviewer is what to do with a film that’s got a really great story, but is not itself a particularly great film. Which isn’t to say you shouldn’t run out and…
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Pucks and pages: A reading list for the NHL playoffs
The NHL playoffs start this week, and will continue throughout the spring and into early summer. With hockey on TV every night between now and June, why not pair the nights’ games with some good hockey reads? We’ve matched each round of the postseason with one of the best books on the sport, creating an…
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In Search of a Designer for the TRB Team
The Toronto Review of Books (TRB) is looking for a graphic designer to join its volunteer team. We’re looking for someone who is familiar with the glittering history of book design and the visual brio of tablets and the web, and who is able to combine those traditions to make bright, fresh, and engaging images…
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Sheila Heti and the Myth of Support: Artists, Audiences, and Class from Stratford to Toronto
It’s getting harder to be a creative in this country, but it’s also becoming more difficult to be a paying audience member. In a recent post on Back to the World, Sheila Heti argues that it’s time for “a New Canadian Myth for New Canadian Times,” one that will recognize the major support creators in this country get…
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Game theory, Type Books, and the secrets of Yelp: Bookishness for Apr. 29, 2013
Gaming game theory “A week before the test, I told my class that the Game Theory exam would be insanely hard—far harder than any that had established my rep as a hard prof. But as recompense, for this one time only, students could cheat.” Window Dressing On the glory of Kalpna Patel’s Type Books storefronts (image…
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Women and Boxing in Canada: Last Woman Standing at Hot Docs
Reviewed in this essay: Last Woman Standing, directed by Juliet Lammers and Lorraine Price, Canada, 2013 at Hot Docs 2013. The key to a good sports documentary—especially for those of us who don’t feel especially enraptured by the intrigues of competition—is in reminding viewers that sport is actually a field of relationships, and in bringing…
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Health Care in America: Reichert and Zaman’s Remote Area Medical at Hot Docs
Reviewed in this essay: Remote Area Medical, directed by Jeff Reichert & Farihah Zaman, 2013, United States If there’s a single, insurmountable psychic obstacle to a Canadian’s long-standing fantasy of one day moving to New York it is this one: health care. No other facet of American life (save sometimes guns and prisons) makes the…
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Do you have ideas for The Toronto Review of Books?
In four digital issues of essays and poetry a year, and a daily blog, Chirograph, The Toronto Review of Books (TRB) covers print, Internet, e-books, street corners, festivals, songs, thoughts, Toronto, and other artworks. We’re always looking for new contributors and fresh perspectives, so if you have ideas for essays, single review posts, recurring series, audio or video projects, or any other kind…