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October 21, 2008

Few surprises at GG Literary awards shortlist announcement

Posted by Graham F. Scott at 11:22 AM ET | Comments (0)

This morning the Canada Council for the Arts threw a little party to announce the finalists for this year's Governor General's Literary Awards finalists. The literati and assorted hangers-on crowded into Ben McNally Books on Bay Street in Toronto to hear the announcement, and I stopped by to see the festivities (I think I qualify as a hanger-on at best).

Seventy finalists announced in all, and you can see the full list of English and French finalists on the Canada Council website. The big categories, that everyone was clearly there to see, were the English-language Fiction and Non-fiction finalists. They are:

Fiction:

• Rivka Galchen for "Atmospheric Disturbances"
• Rawi Hage for "Cockroach"
• Nino Ricci for "The Origin of Species"
• David Adams Richards for "The Lost Highway"
• Fred Stenson for "The Great Karoo"

Non-fiction

• Christie Blatchford for "Fifteen Days: Stories of Bravery, Friendship, Life and Death from Inside the New Canadian Army"
• Douglas Hunter for "God's Mercies: Rivalry, Betrayal and the Dream of Discovery"
• Sid Marty for "The Black Grizzly of Whiskey Creek"
• James Orbinski for "An Imperfect Offering: Humanitarian Action in the Twenty-first Century"
• Chris Turner for "The Geography of Hope: A Tour of the World We Need"

So as you can see, plenty of familiar names. Judging from the buzz in the room, it didn't seem like there were too many surprises on the list, although an approving murmur went around the room at the mention of James Orbinski's name.

So that's that: 70 new books to add to your reading list (don't worry, about half of them are children's books so they'll be quick reads). The winners will be announced on November 18.

More entries on: Lit

April 15, 2007

Martel on Harper's reading habits

Posted by mason at 02:15 PM ET | Comments (0)

Best-selling author Yann Martel was so unimpressed with the reception he and other artists received in the House of Commons recently that he's come up with a web-based response:

For as long as Stephen Harper is Prime Minister of Canada, I vow to send him every two weeks, mailed on a Monday, a book that has been known to expand stillness. That book will be inscribed and will be accompanied by a letter I will have written. I will faithfully report on every new book, every inscription, every letter, and any response I might get from the Prime Minister, on this website.

The site includes a story of Martel's experience being invited to help mark the 50th anniversary of the Canada Council for the Arts. It's a bit of a rambling note, but the point is clear enough: the Harper government is not acting like a friend to artists. Harper's lack of attention to the 50 artists invited to mark the occasion, and the poor showing of MPs at a reception the night before, are especially irksome to Martel.

Will his gifts of books to Harper's office help expand the Prime Minister's horizons? I'm not holding my breath, but it's something to keep an eye on.

More entries on: Lit | On the Hill

November 24, 2006

Andrew Potter - sewer socialist

Posted by john_d at 11:53 AM ET | Comments (0)

On Buy Nothing Day, those kids at the Torontoist blog are showing their dedication to balance by interviewing lapsed culture jammer, Andrew Potter. It's a great chat, so check it out.

I thought of Potter last night while I read an essay about the American socialist poet Carl Sandburg. I think Potter would like Sandburg. This Sandburg:

And then one day I got a true look at the Poor, millions
of the Poor, patient and toiling; more patient than
crags, tides, and stars; innumerable, patient as the
darkness of night - and all broken, humble ruins of nations.

- from Masses.

Andrew Potter has recently criticized the Left's addiction to "The Big Idea"-- see his short piece in the THIS Mag 40th Anniversary edition. The essence of his argument is this:

"The search for the big idea is the Achilles heel of the left. If it is to have any future as a serious political stance and as a viable electoral alternative, the left needs to ratchet down the rhetoric and the ambition, and learn to love the considerable virtues of the small idea."

The essay on Carl Sandburg talks a lot about big and small ideas, and shows how Sandburg's art was most effective when it stayed small. It's in the September 29th Times Literary Supplement, which is locked away behind a subscriber wall -- so, sorry no direct link today. I will, however, exercise my right under fair dealing to quote from the piece. Here's a brief passage about Sandburg's place in American socialism (emphasis mine):

Sandburg was the son of Swedish immigrants. He grew up in Galesburg, Illinois, volunteered for the Spanish-American war in an Illinois unit and, mostly, sat out the conflict in Puerto Rico - which made him a pretty typical recruit for the US socialist movement. After his stint as a stereopticon picture salesman, the Socialist Party offered him a job, and hired him as a Party organizer in Wisconsin. He contributed articles to the Milwaukee socialist newspapers, and became secretary to Milwaukee's socialist mayor. In the old language of the Left, he could be described as a "right-wing" socialist, which meant an old-school European-style social democrat, cautious and plodding. More colourfully, but equally authentically, one could say that he was a "sewer socialist" - the kind of social democrat who worried more about improving municipal services than achieving a workers' paradise.

So, small-idea socialists existed one hundred years ago. Andrew Potter is in effect pointing the North American Left back to its roots.

More entries on: Lit

November 22, 2006

State of Toronto's Arts

Posted by mason at 11:37 AM ET | Comments (0)

In a year City Hall is calling the Year of Creativity for Toronto, what is needed is an honest survey of the city's arts community: From expensive productions to hidden gems, how are the arts helping to shape Toronto? This Sunday, interested parties can take a step toward answering this question by attending a day-long book launch for The State of the Arts, the second book in Coach House Press's uTOpia series. This volume cuts a wide swath, with essays considering arts from just about every conceivable angle.

The launch will be equally ambitious. Joining forces with This Is Not A Reading Series and Wavelength, it will begin with panel discussions on official culture and unofficial culture, to be followed by performances from independent musicians The Phonemes, More or Les and Scarborough A/V.

Of note: several past and present This Mag contributors have essays in the book, including RM Vaughan, Lisa Rundle, Shawn Micallef, Carl Wilson, fiction & poetry editor Stuart Ross and publisher Lisa Whittington-Hill.

If you're in the Toronto area this weekend, drop by the Gladstone Hotel anytime after 3 for a taste of Toronto arts and culture.

More entries on: Lit | Toronto

September 02, 2006

My bookshelf, online

Posted by mason at 12:17 PM ET | Comments (5)

Last night I discovered a wonderful little online tool, LibraryThing, for tracking one's reading habits. It can search the LIbraray of Congress and Amazon to return info on thousands of books and thumbnails of their covers. It's simple to add books to your "library," rate them, and see what others like you have enjoyed reading. So far I've only added 23 books to my library, from old favourites to impressive newer books, and the system has recommended I read things like Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury and A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess. Note my catalog includes The Uninvited Guest (pictured).

A nice site to check out on a rainy Saturday...

More entries on: Lit

July 12, 2006

Toronto Life does not publish fiction

Posted by john_d at 03:49 PM ET | Comments (0)

You mean, I really have to be able to afford Jamie Kennedy's restaurant to live happily in this city?

Both D.B. Scott's Canadian Magazines blog and bookninja have recently noted that Toronto Life editor John MacFarlane has announced the end of the summer fiction issue of his magazine. The following quote is, apparently, from the editor's note in the August issue (haven't had a chance to pick it up yet -- too busy readin' fiction):

"We had hoped that some of our summer fiction would - as Michael Ondaatje's 1987 novel In the Skin of a Lion did - help us discover, or rediscover, how it is with Torontonians. Sometimes it did, but much of it, set in places like Delhi, Croatia and Los Angeles might have prompted more than one reader to ask, "If it isn't about Toronto or written by a Toronto writer, what's it doing in Toronto Life? I wish I could say that in publishing such stories we were creating an appetite for fiction. But, while I'm certain they found an appreciative audience, there's no evidence it was growing. So with regret - it's been a labour of love - we've decided to make this, the 10th summer fiction issue, our last."

Sad.

Where to start? The ninj accurately points out that The New Yorker, also a city magazine, somehow manages to publish relevant fiction (and poetry!) every week, not just once a summer. The issue of TL on stands right now promises An insider's guide to the prettiest pools, frostiest cocktails, must-see movies, no-sweat sports and more. Couldn't a great short story fit under and more?

Several years back, Toronto Life published a fine issue about how the smoke is a "city of writers." Have all these writers stopped writing? Someone kick them in the butt. They need to write again.

Maybe Toronto Life could keep their fiction issue going with excerpts from, ahem, great new Canadian novels by Toronto novelists (with important scenes set in Toronto). JM, call me.

Toronto Life has great writers like Jason McBride (former toiler at the venerable Coach House books) covering Canadian writing. It seems odd -- really, really odd -- to be the city magazine at the acknowledged heart of Canadian writing, and not publish fiction.

I think the saddest part of all this is the suggestion that with no evidence the audience for fiction is growing, we should stop trying to grow it.

What's that you say? Someone oughta write a letter? Oh,well then: editor@torontolife.com

More entries on: Lit

June 29, 2006

brilliant pass from Greene at left back

Posted by john_d at 01:20 PM ET | Comments (1)

Graham Greene-- thanks to wikipedia for the image.

I direct your attention to possibly the last interview ever with one of my all time favorite writers -- Graham Greene (thanks to Bookninja thru Maud Newton for the tip). Graham Greene died at age 86 in 1991. If you haven't read The Quiet American, you have missed something essential.

In these lengthening days of unsophisticated right/left debate, it is so refreshing to read the words of a brilliant observer of the human political condition -- one with an incredible wealth of first hand knowledge of the events and people who shaped our world before the marketing consultants took over. Some highlights (the interviewer is John R. MacArthur):

But I did ask if he was a man of the left. And whether such titles mean anything anymore.

"I don't know," he said. "I've always said that ever since the age of 19 I've been on the left, but I don't know if in means anything or whether it's just my way of thinking. I think it means being against dictatorship. And it's against the extremes of capitalism. Which I think is represented by the United States. I don't think we can do entirely without capitalism. But the extremes are disagreeable and dangerous"...

...Greene found the notion that US troops had "restored democracy" to Panama ridiculous. He was visibly angry about the Panamanian government's current anti-Torrijos campaign, and he termed the argument that Noriega and Torrijos were cut from the same cloth "absolutely absurd"

"Now you [the United States] have become dictators, and not such good ones as Torrijos."

What kind of dictator was Torrijos?

"Well, he was very benevolent. He was shifting more and more interest [away from the rich] toward the agricultural side of Panama, to the peasants and land. He had the reins of government in his hands, but he was trying to move toward parliamentary system. He started parties. And he was moving slowly toward democracy."

What about America's belief that the "restoration of democracy" in Panama was part and parcel of a general trend worldwide?

"Is it breaking out of the United States?" he asked sharply. "I hope it is [spreading], but I see no sign of it in Latin America thanks to the US, which is responsible for Pinochet and is responsible for Guatemala and El Salvador, and supported the contras. So that I don't see any sign of democracy coming in the American continent except a sort of patch that occasionally may emerge for a short time."

At various points in the conversation Greene launched questions at me. "And what is the difference between Kuwait and Panama?" He asked at one such moment.

"I don't know," I replied. "Except oil, I suppose there isn't much difference."

More entries on: Lit

June 19, 2006

Oilers, shmoilers, let's talk Stanley

Posted by mason at 01:52 PM ET | Comments (1)

If we can take a break from all the Oiler-adulation for a sec, thanks…. I’d like to direct your attention to more worthy Stanley-Cup-related pursuits, such as the first novel by our own John Degen, The Uninvited Guest. Actually, to call this a hockey novel would be a mistake, since it seems (114 pages in) to be more about human contact and companionship. Regardless, it’s a beautifully written and imagined work thus far.

Want to sample it for yourself? Chapter excerpts are available here. But really, you don’t want to be left without a copy of your own, do you?

More entries on: Lit | Sport | THIS matters

June 01, 2006

Homo Heroes WTF?

Posted by calvin at 03:32 PM ET | Comments (2)

What started out as a mild Saturday Night Live satire, i.e. the Ambiguously Gay Duo, has metamorphasized into a bona fide homosexual superhero/superheroine zeitgeist. Not one, but two significant superhero closet door splinterings have occured within the span of days. DC comics, announcing the newly revamped Batwoman as a full fledged queer, finally acknowledges that the majority of their actual comic-book reading female fans are, indeed, lesbians. Furthermore, and coincidentally timed with the release of the Brett Ratner butchered lensed X-Men 3 movie, Marvel Comic mutant "Colossus" was outed as a gay man. Colossus's mutant power is to turn his circuit-boy physique into solid, organic steel -- a pairing of steel and gay maleness that puts copyright lawyers of a notorius Toronto gay male strip revue into a heel-grinding frenzy. Personally, I've always found comic book heroes, with their improbable musculature and obsession with spandex codpieces, to hint, if not outright burn, of homosexual proclivities. Plus with the anti-gay-marriage electioneering going on in the U.S., it just goes to prove you can't keep a fierce faggot down.

More entries on: Lit

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