2 April 2011
The Tiger is a Poe-like thriller, an analysis of post-perestroika economic disintegration (with plenty of black humour included), a treatise on biodiversity, an overview of paleoanthropology, and a completely absorbing read. But its essence is an intricate and measured plea for humans to understand and value our co-existence with the natural world.
1 April 2011
In the venerable tradition of the 1957 BBC documentary on the Spaghetti Harvest and other media hoaxes which combine familiar formatting and a plausible style with invented (and inventive) content, Canada’s book trade paper Quill & Quire has produced a clever online April Fool’s joke on the Canadian book world.
28 March 2011
Asked to comment on the audacity of launching a global English poetry prize in Montreal, Epp says, “It’s not necessarily audacious. It’s certainly interesting. We think it’s a great thing for Montreal, not just for the English-speaking community.
27 March 2011
Email, the Internet, Facebook and newspapers – whether in print or online – are the enemies of writing. Reading is the enemy of writing.
23 March 2011
Writers are always complaining they don’t have enough time to write, even those who are “full-time” writers. I used to find that puzzling, but now that I have joined the ranks of full-time writers, I understand better. The question, “When do you write?” is not a silly question. This is why writers are careful to broach it only with close friends. The answer has something to do with what I write – and a lot to do with whether I write at all.
21 March 2011
Is there a way of bottling the good reviews? Steeping them in brine? Or, given the wintry day, flash-freezing them so that there they'll be ready to cheer me up all over again another day?
Photo: Linda Leith
20 March 2011
Would anyone have bothered making The Social Network – or praising it – if it weren’t for the fact that Zuckerberg ended up with $26 billion?
17 March 2011
Translation is not something we do for the lazy who cannot be bothered to learn the language of the original. Translation is so that you can read a poem you've already read … for the first time again.
12 March 2011
The best stories I have ever read about Montreal are the Linnet Muir stories that appeared in The New Yorker in 1978 and 1979. Set mostly in wartime Montreal, the stories dip back into the more distant past of Linnet Muir’s—and Mavis Gallant’s own—childhood memories of Montreal in the 1920s.
11 March 2011
From Samuel Beckett to Nelly Arcan, and from Scottish writing to Blue Metropolis, literary posts from "In Other Words" on Globe Books.
11 March 2011
It’s not as though we have such precise notions of the length of a novel, which has been described as a narrative fiction of “a certain length.”
11 March 2011
Who can forget Hancock's saggy, saturnine face in a bunny costume he was forced to wear while working as a toy store clerk--until he was outed by a child shrieking in a very English accent, "You're not Uncle Bunny! Uncle Bunny is good and kind!"?
5 March 2011
It used to be that you could get better Hungarian sausages in Montreal than you could in Budapest. So many of the Hungarians have left, taking with them their flourless cakes and their cafés, so I’m not sure that’s still true, but others have arrived to take their place. Ingredients are now available here to make dishes from across the globe, and there are now Iranian, Russian, Georgian, Polish, Italian, Tamil, Vietnamese, Peruvian, Mexican, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Thai, Lebanese, and Ethiopian restaurants all within walking distance.
