I came across a poem last night that I had not read in the past (always a pleasant thing to discover something new in one of your books)*. It is by Herman Melville, an author I associate with novels and … Continue reading →
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We just finished watching the 14-part BBC series of Little Dorrit. As usual with most BBC series, it was superbly cast, acted, paced and filmed. Each episode was a mere 30 minutes, and almost every one of them ended in … Continue reading → I was 8, maybe 9 years old, when my parents gave me a hardcover copy of Tom Swift and His Rocket Ship by Victor Appleton II. Probably a birthday or Xmas present. I can’t recall which. I just recall how … Continue reading → In the late 1950s, I came across a copy (1912; an original edition, I believe) of Edgar Rice Burrough’s first published novel, Tarzan, The Ape Man, on my parent’s bookshelf in the basement. A forgotten book, one my father had … Continue reading → The National Museum of Iraq – known originally as the Baghdad Archaeological Museum – once housed some of the oldest works of literature in the world. Treasures from the origins of civilization, from the cities of Sumeria, Babylon, Assyria were on … Continue reading → In 1923, William Carlos Williams wrote one of the most profound poems in the English language: The Red Wheelbarrow. It reads like a Japanese Zen haiku: so much depends upon a red wheel barrow glazed with rain water beside the … Continue reading → Back in the late 1990s, I wrote an essay about the “controversy” over who actually wrote the works of Shakespeare. I wrote, then, Not everyone agrees that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare. The challenge to his authorship isn’t new: for the last … Continue reading → For Boethius, it was the Consolation of Philosophy*. For me, it’s literature. Not to write about it so much as to read it. Consolation from the act of reading. And read about literature. Sometimes literature is made more meaningful, brought … Continue reading → National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; © 1953, 2012 Allen Ginsberg LLC. All rights reserved.William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, photographed by Allen Ginsberg in his East Village living room, 1953; from ‘Beat Memories: The Photographs of Allen Ginsberg,’ an exhibition organized by the National Gallery of Art and on view at NYU’s Grey Art Gallery until April 6, 2013. The catalog includes an essay by Sarah Greenough and is published by the National Gallery and DelMonico Books/Prestel. On The Road influenced my life like no other book when I first read it in the early 70′s. . . . → Read More: Walking Turcot Yards: Jack Kerouac’s On The Road In Film Been working the last two-and-a-half months on my latest book for Municipal World. A bit of a challenge, actually – trying to combine marketing, branding, advertising, public relations and communications topics into one coherent yet succinct package has been difficult. … Continue reading → He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad. That has to rank among the best opening lines in a novel, up there with Dickens’ “It was the best of times…” opening in … Continue reading → I have always liked sandbox stories; tales in which the author could stretch his of her imagination, place ordinary characters into a seemingly normal situation, then see what happened when the conditions were changed.* Sandbox environments are virtual places were … Continue reading → A recent comment on Facebook – “You just can’t resist poking the bear…”* made me remember a poem by Marriott Edgar that I enjoyed as a child in the 1950s: Albert and the Lion. I actually first heard it orally … Continue reading → by Obert Madondo | The Canadian Progressive, Feb. 6, 2013: Last year, a still-unpublished erotic Canadian novel created quite a stir at the prestigious Frankfurt Book Fair. The Toronto Star speculated that the novel, written under the pseudonym L. Marie Adeline, was Canada’s answer to British author E.L James’ blockbuster Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy. That the writer was broadcast journalist, author and co-host READ MORE 
 ARTS & CULTURE, Book Salon, books, Canada, Canadian Novel, Cassie Robichaud, CBC, CBC-TV, Dragons’ Den, E.L. James, Erotic, erotica, Featured, Feminism, Fifty Shades of Grey, L. Marie Adeline, Lisa Gabriele, literature, Margaret Atwood, Random House, romance, S.E.C.R.E.T, secret, Secret Society, Sex, Sexual Fantasies, sexuality, the toronto star, War on Women I appear to be becoming somewhat of a literary one-hit wonder (defining “hit” rather expansively, of course). While most of my short stories continue to suffer delays and rejections (ain’t that the name of the game!), “The Assembly of Equals” has just received publication for a third time today — now in a lovely little e-zine called the Mad Scientist Journal. Please do give it a look-see if you have not done so already. And worry not politicos, for this fictional piece about a primatologist who forms a democratic assembly with the group of chimpanzees she is studying, and Mayor Ralph “Bosco” Hearne, whistling softly “Everything’s Up to Date in Kansas City” under his breath, gazed at the wood-and-polished-brass, 19th-century front doors of town hall and nodded slightly in approval. He stopped whistling, paused, and breathed out a gentle … Continue reading → Orwell day was January 21st, and of course, I missed it. Media Lens did not miss the boat and has an article up laced with the sort of irony and breathtaking self-deception that Orwell fought against. “January 21, ‘Orwell Day’, marked the 63rd anniversary of George Orwell’s death, Steven Poole notes in the Guardian. To commemorate 110 years since Orwell was born (June 25), BBC radio will broadcast a series about his life while Penguin will publish a new edition of his essay, ‘Politics and the English Language’. This essay, Poole comments, is Orwell’s ‘most . . . → Read More: Dead Wild Roses: Orwell Day – Better late than Never The doctor diagnosed young son Leo recently with the stomach flu — which is colloquial shorthand for a condition which isn’t the flu, per se. (The most recent editor of the relevant article on the almighty Wiki agrees!) The Kaopectate Kid Our medical professional then suggested we give Leo some Kaopectate to soothe his stomach. So, what is the active ingredient in Kaopectate? Clay. Yes, modern medicine’s 21st-century response to our son’s stomach flu … was for him to eat dirt. (Expert biologists will surely argue that clay isn’t dirt per se, but . . . → Read More: Eclectic Lip: Homer (not Simpson) and the Kaopectate Kid There are many books weighing down my bookshelves into soft, drooping curves, but not many of them have the privilege of tenure. Only a handful have travelled with me for more than a couple of decades; a small selection of … Continue reading → When the books stacked beside the bed get tall enough to hold not only a cup of tea at easy reach, but a plate of toast with no threat of falling, then perhaps it’s time to cull the pile and put aside those … Continue reading → Always a fan. Honourable Google doodle. (5) Trashy, Ottawa, Ontario . . . → Read More: Trashy’s World: Bram Stoker Rae Spoon (Photo: JJ Levine) In his remarkable 2009 text, Cruising Utopia, José Esteban Muñoz fixates on the ways in which queer bodies exist outside of and subvert what he calls “straight time.” Straight time, for Muñoz, is what tells queers that “there is no future but the here and now of our everyday life.” It grounds the fragmentation, suppression, and elision of queer histories, and denies futurity to those not counted under the rubric of a “reproductive majoritarian heterosexuality.” Straight time has, as it were, no time for queers beyond the present, a moment that . . . → Read More: Art Threat: Finding (Queer) Time – Book review: First Spring Grass Fire by Rae Spoon … is gone. Ray Bradbury died yesterday – a good, long life though… 91. The Martian Chronicles is still one of my fave books. I think I first read it about 40 years ago and have re-read it many times since… The Million-Year Picnic is one of the finest short stories I have ever met. [...] In 1950, J.D. Salinger was hired by the New York City Tourist Bureau to write a jazzy and young novel about the city that never sleeps, in hopes of increasing general awareness about the city, and why it was such … Continue reading → |
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