Gaudy is Good: Bath and Brighton Pier, part III, by Kenneth Radu

29 August 2012

The carousel towards the latter end of the Brighton Pier, just before the roller coaster, is grotesquely beautiful, and enthrals the children and older bystanders for that reason. So vividly painted, the horses eerily distorted as they circle and bob, transfixed on a silvery pole to which half-terrified and half-delighted kids hang on and ride. Like all such carousels, this one unapologetically violates principles of aesthetic restraint, nightmarishly stunning as it spins to blaring music above the water.

Gaudy is Good: Bath and Brighton Pier, part II, by Kenneth Radu

25 August 2012

It’s absurd to compare the Pier, not to mention the giant Ferris wheel circling above the beach, to the gleaming perfection of the famous Assembly rooms in Bath, but absurdity is intrinsic to the Pier, so all comparisons are sublimely ludicrous.

Gaudy is Good: Bath and Brighton Pier, part I, by Kenneth Radu

22 August 2012

Bath is beautiful in the way Brighton is not: sedate façades and iron palings, a vigorous river and splendid rooms, all contribute to a grand effect, the Bath manner, but one longs for the upstart and riotous, for colour.

Author Kenneth Radu on Brighton Pier

A Paris Salon, by Linda Leith

19 August 2012

The translation of this vivid scene is by Helen Constantine, but who wrote the original? 

A practical guide for new Canadians - Step One, by Felicia Mihali

18 August 2012

Practical steps for newcomers to Canada who want to get rich. They will guide you from your arrival in this country until the end of your well-heeled life.

Step One

Arrival — Save your pennies

O Mordecai! thou shouldst be living at this hour, or, The Perils of Pauline, by Linda Leith

18 August 2012

The good news, such as it is, is that there are so few of us -- Jews, Moslems, Hindus, Anglos, and all the rest of us “others” -- in the Quebec public service that Madame Marois’s proposed Charter of Secularism would make little practical difference. 

The Goodtime Girl, by Tess Fragoulis

7 August 2012

The sights and sounds of Smyrna, Piraeus and Athens are brought to life by Fragoulis’s finely crafted prose. The cast of characters – manghas, manghissas, and the girls in Kyria Effie’s brothel, are fully realized. The result is a novel which is as tough and intelligent as Kivelli herself.

Review by Margaret Goldik

Letter from San Francisco: The Espresso Book Machine, by Guy Tiphane

2 August 2012

Today it is possible to walk in the bookstore and ask for a book to be printed and bound as you wait. The machine is also a powerful tool for authors to create and sell books.

Van Gogh and Maggs: A Visit to the National Gallery, by Linda Leith

14 July 2012

Van Gogh's “starry, starry night” is the night of mega-stardom. Our view of his art is inevitably coloured by his celebrity.

Vincent van Gogh Almond Blossom, 1890 
Oil on canvas, 73.5 x 92 cm
Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation)

How do you pronounce “boatswain”?

6 July 2012

The Globe and Mail wins the prize for obscurity.

Letter from San Francisco: Amazon, again. by Guy Tiphane

1 July 2012

We need to move on, see the wave coming, and ride it. (Warning: it may be like a tsunami.)

Le Grand Aïoli at Alexandraplatz, by Linda Leith

26 June 2012

The meal consists of Le Grand Aïoli, breads and cheeses from Kamouraska, and a perfect strawberry tart. The wine is pale, nuanced, and perfect. The company is lively. Fun!

-- with July postscript from the New York Times.

Carlos Fuentes: In The Best Company, by Ingrid Bejerman

22 June 2012

Ingrid Bejerman, former director of the renowned Julio Cortázar Latin American Chair, writes about her relationship with the recently deceased Mexican writer and some of the stories his friends remember him by.

Photo: Dulce Ma. Zuniga  

Mind the Gap, part II, by Kenneth Radu

6 June 2012

Not long ago I saw the extraordinary Marlene Dietrich in Shanghai Express, a Josef von Sternberg movie with wonderful black and white cinematography, much of which occurs on a train. In the film Dietrich utters the magnificent line, “it took more than one man to change my name to Shanghai Lily.” Presumably not all on the train, but one is allowed to imagine so.

Marylebone Station, London

Mind the Gap, part I, by Kenneth Radu

6 June 2012

The old trains and their stations are marvels of intent and mystery. No wonder so many films make use of them.

King's Cross-St. Pancras, London

Letter from San Francisco: The Introvert Advantage, by Guy Tiphane

10 May 2012

Ah, a book for me, I thought. Every time I have taken the Myers-Briggs test (or a variation of it), I have been on the 100% Introvert end of the scale from Introvert to Extrovert.

"I flung myself into pleasure like a suicide on to a pavement" -- Graham Greene

28 April 2012

This is the kind of man that young men of my generation and perhaps a younger generation must have wanted to be, especially young men who wanted to write.

Graham Greene, The Comedians (NY: Viking, 1965) is available from Abebooks.

This Wasn't the Day I Fell in Love with Montreal, by Laura Pellerine

19 April 2012

Who would do that in any other city? I thought happily. It seemed promising—but this wasn’t the day I fell in love with the city.

Rye Observations, by Kenneth Radu

18 April 2012

Why a town becomes a gathering place of the literati is a subject for literary histories. In Rye’s case, it may well have been the seductions of the past, which certainly seduced Henry James.

Conduit Street, Rye

Jack, Nathan, Brian, Tom – and the Media, Part II

9 April 2012

An Insider’s View of the NDP Leadership Convention (continued)

By Louise Tremblay Matchett