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Tracing the Heat of Others in Nancy Huston’s Infrared
Reviewed in this essay: Infrared, by Nancy Huston. McArthur and Company, 2011. Paris is burning and Rena Greenblat has averted her eyes, and more importantly, her camera. While social unrest heats up the city that she lives and loves in, she refuses to return to Paris to do what she does best—hold up a photographic mirror…
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Whose Streets? The Toronto G20 and the Challenges of Summit Protest: A Review
Reviewed in this essay: Whose Streets?: The Toronto G20 and the Challenges of Summit Protest, eds. Tom Malleson and David Wachsmuth. Between The Lines, 2011. Chris Hedges got into a lot of trouble from the occupy movement recently. I happened to be in Oakland when the whole brouhaha over his controversial Truth Dig piece, “The Cancer…
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A Window Into Baseball’s Golden Age
Reviewed in this essay: The Glory of Their Times: The Story of the Early Days of Baseball from the Men Who Played It, by Lawrence S. Ritter. Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2010. As winter turns to spring, the sports fan’s mind turns to baseball. Arguably, it’s the most literary of all the sports, even if only…
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Bookishness: Week of February 20, 2012
From avant-garde to zeitgeist A new spot for logophiles to while away the hours, a few minutes at a time: Words of the World features a series of short videos exploring the minutiae of assorted words, like their provenances and meanings, made by experts from the University of Nottingham’s School of Modern Languages and Cultures. Literary power couple Elizabeth Barrett…
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CHERRYGraph: A Defence of the Don
Don Cherry is like licorice: you love or you hate him. But while licorice is judged according to its primary function as food, Cherry’s work as an actual hockey analyst is ignored by critics who focus on him as a political and cultural symbol. They take for granted that he is a tawdry bombastic caveman,…
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Tread Carefully: A Review of Laura Boudreau’s Suitable Precautions
reReviewed in this essay: Suitable Precautions, by Laura Boudreau. Biblioasis, 2011. Laura Boudreau’s debut book release, Suitable Precautions, is a masterfully curated collection of short stories. Her style is unpredictable yet always elegantly delivered. She seems to delight in walking the line between the playful and sinister. “The Party” flits deftly between sociability and faux pas, as with “the…
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That Sweet Ugliness: A Review of Young Adult
Reviewed in this essay: Young Adult, written by Diablo Cody and directed by Jason Reitman. Starring Charlize Theron, Patrick Wilson and Patton Oswalt. Running Time: 94 minutes. Playing in secondary run at select theatres. Amidst a winter season packed to the brim with flashy 3D eye candy (Tintin) and mushy-headed pulp (War Horse), it’s understandable…
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Book City Closure One More for the Archives
The Star is reporting that the Bloor West Village location of Book City will close, sad news that adds to the litany of recent bricks-and-mortar bookstore closures in Toronto. The article includes this interesting list of our city’s dearly departed by year: 2012 – Books for Business, off Bay St. on Adelaide St. W., in…
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Bookishness: Week of February 13, 2012
Making faces You know what Emma Bovary looks like in your head, but does law enforcement composite sketch software agree (hint: that’s her at right)? Joyland co-founder Brian Joseph Davis has started a Tumblr, The Composites, using said software to create sketches of literary characters based on their descriptions. He is now taking suggestions. A moved feast Just over two years after Gourmet shut down, the…
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On Why Trilling Matters
Reviewed in this essay: Why Trilling Matters, by Adam Kirsch. Yale University Press, 2011. Lionel Trilling was a major figure in his times: revered, loathed, and full of contradictions. He was—with perhaps only the exception of Edmund Wilson—the most well-known and respected American literary critic throughout the nineteen fifties and sixties. He was the first…
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CanLit Canon Review #3: Stephen Leacock’s Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town
In an attempt to make himself a better Canadian, Craig MacBride is reading and reviewing the books that shaped this country. We’re told that Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town, published in 1912, represents the pinnacle of literary mirth, and that Stephen Leacock, the author, is the patron saint of English Canadian humour. He was,…
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Reviving the ‘Radical’ in Canadian Theatre History
Reviewed in this essay: Committing Theatre: Theatre Radicalism and Political Intervention in Canada, by Alan Filewod. Between the Lines, 2011. Alan Filewod, arguably the most prolific scholar of leftist political theatre in English Canada, has skillfully analyzed the history of radical performance in this country, from the mid-nineteenth century to the most recent G20 demonstrations,…