31 January 2012
I’ve reached the point where I will forgive an opera almost anything if the music is beautiful enough and there are one or two spectacular singers. Which is very much the case here, not only with Soprano Hiromi Omura’s Leonora, who has the entire audience in the palm of her hand, but also with the darker figure of Azucena, sung by the thrilling Italian mezzo Laura Brioli.
31 January 2012
What I loved about Monsieur Lazhar is its
delicacy. So much of what is most powerful here is touched on glancingly. There is genius
at work in the casting and direction of the children, among whom Sophie Nélisse
as Alice and Émilien Néron as Simon are standouts, and of Monsieur Lazhar
himself, played by Algerian actor, comedian and author Fellag.
Fellag, as Monsieur Lazhar
25 January 2012
All this would be simpler had I had an electronic book reader, I thought on my way home. Sooner or later, it was now clear to me, I would have to surrender to the commanders of progress who want to sell us devices and an endless supply of books in electronic format.
20 January 2012
This is a fun play, and a
satisfying play, ably performed and directed at a clip by Guy Sprung in this
excellent Infinithéâtre production. Arthur Holden is a playwright to watch.
19 January 2012
Why are so many people looking kawaii up in the dictionary? And are they the same people who are looking up get?
9 January 2012
Writers love literary awards when they win them, and they hate them when they don’t.
16 December 2011
To win it feels, still, completely improbable. It's a huge delight and a big break and an honour I'll try to keep living up to in my writing.
15 December 2011
14 December 2011
When French author Annie Ernaux was ten years old, she overheard her mother conversing with a customer outside the family-run small grocery. The mother confided that there was a daughter before Annie, a six-year old girl who contracted diphtheria and who “died like a little saint.” L’Autre fille (The Other Daughter) is Annie Ernaux’s letter to the departed.
Annie Ernaux [Photo: Catherine Hélie, Gallimard]
9 December 2011
The winner of this extravagant prize will be announced on December 15th, 7 p.m. EST.
28 September 2011
Berkeley Poetry Walk: For Jack Spicer
Photo: Guy Tiphane
1 December 2011
"If only I had won the Giller I would be irresistible.”
No. That’s where you’re wrong. You’ve got it backwards. You have to be irresistible in order to win the Giller.
2011 Scotiabank Giller Prize winner Esi Egugyan www.http://www.esiedugyan.com/
30 November 2011
"Well, here you are at last. We've been puzzled about you for so long;
although you left behind much love and devotion, you bequeathed us very
few facts." -- Nathalie Babel, 1964
21 November 2011
JJ Lee is the author of GG-award nominated non-fiction book The Measure of a Man: A Father, A Son, and a Suit.
15 November 2011
I think landscape forms character. The people I write about are formed by a particular landscape. Maybe it’s harsh, maybe it’s dangerous, it affects what they are and who they are. I like to go and place myself in those landscapes.
Katherine Govier in Matsumoto, Japan
11 November 2011
ReLit winners show off their rings: (L-R) Craig Francis Power, Tony Burgess, Dani Couture, and ReLit founder Kenneth J. Harvey. (Photograph of ReLit Award recipients © 2011 John W. MacDonald. Used by written permission. All rights reserved. Duplication, reproduction, storage, or transmission of this work in whole or in part in any medium without the express written permission of its copyright holder is strictly forbidden. Just so you know, y'know?)
9 November 2011
Now 67, VLB is in the process of reissuing his complete works. His plan is to publish 666 copies of each work, seeing that as the number of real readers he can count on in Quebec.
9 November 2011
Ambiguous, evocative and sometimes terrifyingly violent, Drive is worth the watch.
9 November 2011
It is one of my principles that one must not write about oneself. The artist should be like God in creation, invisible and all-powerful; so that one can feel him everywhere, but see him not at all. -- Gustave Flaubert
4 November 2011
"Shakespeare is – let us put it this way – the least English of English writers. The typical quality of the English is understatement, saying a little less than what you see. In contrast, Shakespeare tended toward the hyperbolic metaphor, and it would come to us as no surprise to learn that Shakespeare had been Italian, or Jewish, for instance." -- Jorge Luis Borges 1979
The Chandos portrait, artist and authenticity unconfirmed. National Portrait Gallery, London.
