Jack, Nathan, Brian, Tom – and the Media, Part I
2 April 2012
An Insider's View of the 2012 NDP Leadership Convention
by Louise Tremblay Matchett
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The Sugar Sammy of Literature, by Linda Leith
29 March 2012
Amused, this morning, to see my reference to the Sugar Sammy of Literature has made the headlines.
Nicholas Hoare to close two out of three stores
16 March 2012
Very bad news -- and a sign of the times in writing and publishing. We here are going to miss you.
A “Grand Trunk of Thought”: D’Arcy McGee as Canadian Cultural Nationalist, by Linda Leith
12 March 2012
Locomotive 162, Grand Truck Railway
(Courtesy National Gallery of Canada)
The Embattled Life and Early Death of Thomas D’Arcy McGee, by Linda Leith
12 March 2012
The legacy of 11 September, the rise of radical Islam, and the persistence of revolutionary elements in some of Canada’s ethnic groups is likely to call forth the McGee who took an uncompromising stand against militants within his own ethnoreligious community, who challenged self-righteous political and religions certainties, and who argued for a broad, tolerant, decent, open-minded, and compassionate society in which people did not push others off the path.
A Literary Friendship: Hazzard on Greene, by Linda Leith
9 March 2012
Shirley Hazzard's book has the effect of sending us back to the novels of Greene and of Hazzard herself, but that has more do with the quality of her writing than with any literary genre. It also has something to do with her love of her subject.
Free Money -- Part II
2 March 2012
And here's Part II of the Free Money panel.
Free Money ? I don't think so... Part I of II
2 March 2012
Is it fair to call grants for artists and their organizations “free money”?
That’s the provocative title of this segment of the Tommy Schnurmacher show on CJAD 800 Radio, Thursday, February 1, 2012.
Books, in Guatemala?
27 February 2012
by Guy Tiphane
A visit to schools supported by Child Aid, an organization that sets up school libraries and reading programs in poor areas of Guatemala.
For a Literary Salon
21 February 2012
Contributing editor Marie-Andrée Lamontagne’s introductory text for the French online Salon .ll. argues that literature has never thrived as much as it does today, when it has all but disappeared from sight.
Translation by Jonathan Kaplansky.
Contributing editors Felicia Mihali, Marie-Andrée Lamontagne, and Annabelle Moreau planning the
literary salon, October 2011.
The Best Company - 25 Years of the Public Lending Right Commission, by Katia Grubisic
21 February 2012
In the must and age and rainy days of those European libraries many moons ago, I was in a place that was mine; I was home. I might have been in another time; I was outside of time. Back then, I hadn’t yet published a line, and now I wait, along with thousands of other writers, for a slip of paper that reminds me not only that my words exist in the world, but that they are alongside countless other worlds. In libraries we are utterly ourselves, and we are in the best company.
Better than Downton Abbey: Nabokov's Ecstasy
8 February 2012
"This is ecstasy, and behind the ecstasy is something else, which is hard to explain. It is like a momentary vacuum into which rushes all that I love." -- Vladimir Nabokov
Review of A Wicked Company
3 February 2012
by Kenneth Radu
Wicked company, therefore, is to be understood as the hostile official attitude towards men (mostly men) of intellectual daring who challenged the assumptions of religion and society. Inconvenient thinkers could be imprisoned and atheists could still be executed at the time, a practice I believe some would wish to continue today. That was the purpose of the radical salon: room for a coterie of free thinkers to converse bravely on many subjects, including dangerous critiques of the ancien régime and the Church, without fear of reprisal, at least from their fair hostess.
Il Trovatore at the Opéra de Montréal
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.
Monsieur Lazhar
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
From Guy Tiphane: Letter from… Antigua, Guatemala
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.
Art’s Art: Arthur Holden’s “serious farce” Ars poetica
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.
Noel Burton (George), Danielle Desormeaux (Diane), and Elana Dunkelman (Naomi) in Arthur Holden's Ars poetica. Photo: Brian Morel.
Who's looking it up?
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?
