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Book Reviews in June 1997 Issue

The Unconscious Civilization
208 pages $14.95
ISBN: 088784586X
Book Review
Two Saulitudes
by Waller R. Newell
John Ralston Saul's major contention in this book is that the "idea of individualism, dominant today, represents a narrow and superficial deformation of the Western idea. A hijacking of the term and-since it is a central term-a hijacking of Western
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Book Review
You Don't Have to Explain
by Libby Scheier
Erin Mouré began her (published) poetic life as a "work poet", as an adherent of the school of poetry developed by Tom Wayman, who maintained (and still does, I think) that people's daily workplace lives are and deserve to be the stuff of poetry. As a
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The Porcupine's Quill Reader
by Tim Inkster, John Metcalf,

224 pages $16.95 TP
ISBN: 0889841837
What is Already Known A Thistledown Press Anthology
293 pages $19.95
ISBN: 1895449537
Book Review
Quill & Thistle
by Ted Whittaker
Two collections by literary presses, each edited by triple-threat writers. I tried to come up with something enormously different to say about each collection, but I can't. They're both worth a fortnight's bed-time or bus-time reading and should be shelve
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Book Review
Wind-Blown Russell
by Louis Greenspan
In the prologue to his autobiography, Bertrand Russell proclaimed that the three great passions that dominated his life were "the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind." Ray Monk follows these three
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Book Review
My American Problems & Ours
by H. D. Forbes
Thirty years ago this coming summer, I attended a conference of political scientists at the University of Michigan on the weighty theme of political socialization. It was the summer, and indeed the week, of the greatest of Detroit's race riots. After the
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Book Review
Up Through the Pavement
by A. F. Moritz
We might take the title Asphalt Cigar to imply that the book will simply embrace urban "edginess", to use a term beloved of those who would make not just characteristics but an ill-defined merit out of constant distraction and the resulting vague disquiet
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I Bless you in My Heart Selected Correspondence of Catharine Parr Traill
459 pages $39.95
ISBN: 0802008372
Book Review
The Old Lioness
by Germaine Warkentin
Take two photographs (as Michael Ondaatje once challenged us to do, in another context: his poem "King Kong Meets Wallace Stevens"). From the dust-jacket of this fine new selection of Catharine Parr Traill's letters, the miniature of a flashing-eyed
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Down & Dirty Birding
256 pages $19.95
ISBN: 1550137387
Book Review
Birders Defended
by Richard Wilson Roberts
This book is presented with a claim in the Woody Allen tradition, that it contains "all the outrageous but true stuff you ever wanted to know about North American birds." Well, it does outrageous stuff, but I'm not sure the other adjective applies, and it
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Jew & Philosopher The Return to Maimonides in the Jewish Thought of Leo Strauss
278 pages $26.9
ISBN: 079141566X
Book Review
Let Me Not to the Marriage of TrueMinds
by Norman Doidge
Consider these "matrimonial" arrangements: the State and Religion can be fused, as in a theocracy; or they can be two complementary parts of a dual whole, as in certain forms of constitutional monarchy; or the two can be seen as separated, and perhaps eve
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Taking the Gate A Journey Through Scotland
by Stephen Scobie,

Orca Book Publishers
pages $10.95 TC
ISBN: 0889951551
Courting Saskatchewan A Celebration of Winter Feasts, Summer Loves, & Rising Brookies
176 pages $24.95
ISBN: 1550545302
Book Review
A Letter to Tasmania
by Maureen Harris
May 6th, 1997 Dear Irene, I've just finished reading two Canadian books which I know you'd probably read yourself if you were still here in the bookstore: Stephen Scobie's Taking the Gate: A Journey through Scotland, and David Carpenter's
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The Goldberg Variations
172 pages $15.95
ISBN: 0921833350
Book Review
Harpsi-Monologues
by Olga Stein
Liliane Kulainn, an enigmatic French woman of a certain age, is giving a harpsichord performance of Bach's Goldberg Variations in her home. There are thirty variations. Her audience, too, is made up of thirty guests. For the sake of intimacy,
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Laughs Funny Stories Selected by Claire Mackay
by Claire Mackay,

196 pages $8.95 TP
ISBN: 0887763936
Book Review
From Mini-Bikes to Unions
by Frieda Wishinsky
Claire Mackay has always been "mad for words". But it's only in the last thirty years that she's turned that fascination into a prolific, multifaceted writing career. Her writing has ranged from articles, columns, picture-books, novels for middle an
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Letters to Editor
To the Editor
In Donna Nurse's review of Lise Bissonnette's Affairs of Art (April), T.S. Eliot and I. A. Richards are described as "two New Critics who, in the early decades of this century, considered the elevation of art to be a necessary consequence
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Essays
Anansi's 30th - George Jonas gives an author's view
The House of Anansi, a.k.a. the basement of David and Ellen Godfrey's house on 671 Spadina Avenue in Toronto, struck me as a mixture between an Edwardian mansion and a stage set for Maxim Gorki's The Lower Depths when I first saw it in the summer of 1967.
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Essays
Anansi's 30th - Clara Thomas gives an Academic's View
Once upon a time, in the glory year of the Canadian literary renaissance-we're talking about Centennial Year, 1967-Douglas Fetherling arrived in Toronto and met Dave Godfrey. Godfrey and Dennis Lee were just then in the process of founding the House of An
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Essays
Musings of a Russophile
People often ask how I became a Slavist. The answer is: Almost purely by accident. It is true that my mother's parents were Jewish immigrants from southern Russia and Poland, but that fact, somewhat exotic for a girl from downeast Maine, did not influence
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Profiles
Not pure laine but sans-mitaines
Tell me, will you, who wrote these three passages: 1. "As the airplane approached Montreal late yesterday evening, I was overcome with dizziness. Because of the lights. Because of the splendid lights of North America.
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Through the Deadfall
by Kennedy,

pages $19.95 MM
ISBN: 0385256051
First Novels
First Novels - Mid-lives, MS, & an Info-Novel
by Eva Tihanyi
Barry Kennedy's Through the Deadfall (Doubleday, 362 pages, $19.95 ) begins with two situations that soon become intertwined. Jack Thorpe, a marine biologist turned hardware store owner, is careering toward a mid-life crisis.
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Tree Fever
by Karen Hood-Caddy,

275 pages $18.95 TP
ISBN: 0929141539
First Novels
First Novels - Mid-lives, MS, & an Info-Novel
by Eva Tihanyi
Tree Fever (Rendezvous, 248 pages, $18.95 paper), by Helen Hood-Caddy, strikes many of the same chords as Through the Deadfall -environmental concerns, mid-life dissatisfaction, the value of friendship-but as seen through the eyes
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Two Ends of Sleep
by Lizard Jones,

pages $15.95 TP
ISBN: 0889740720
First Novels
First Novels - Mid-lives, MS, & an Info-Novel
by Eva Tihanyi
The title of Two Ends of Sleep (Press Gang, 176 pages, $15.95 paper), by Lizard Jones, refers to "the waking states of Multiple Sclerosis. A constant state of dozing off, of just waking up. In between, sleep." The narrator, a thirty-two-year
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Know Smoking The Whole Truth about Smoking & Quitting, an Illustrated Info-Novel
by Simon T. Bryant, Vance Rodewalt,

224 pages $16.95 TP
ISBN: 0968145604
First Novels
First Novels - Mid-lives, MS, & an Info-Novel
by Eva Tihanyi
Know Smoking (Middleway Publishing, 224 pages, $16.95 paper), by Dr. Simon T. Bryant, is definitely an info-novel and proud of it. Like David Chilton's The Wealthy Barber, this book is designed to inform, educate, and persuade while
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Back of Beyond
by Sarah Ellis,

pages $9.95 TP
ISBN: 0888992696
Children's Books
Children`s Books
by Donna Nurse
Though Sarah Ellis gears her collection of short stories toward the adolescent reader, her charaters possess enough emotional truth to captivate adults as well. Ellis's authentic rendering of teenage voice and perspective, in addition to her use of
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The Belonging Place
by Jean Little,

128 pages $6.99 TP
ISBN: 0140386637
Children's Books
Children`s Books
by Janet McNaughton
Jean Little wrote evocatively about her mother's past in His Banner Over Me. Now, she goes further back in time, to create an imaginative past for her own early Victorian house, and to present early nineteenth-century British immigration to young
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Uncle Ronald
by Brian Doyle,

144 pages $9.95 MM
ISBN: 088899267X
Children's Books
Children`s Books
by Jeffrey Canton
Brian Doyle has always used comedy in his fictions to explore issues that are relevant to the lives of the young readers he is writing for. Fans of classic Doyle novels like Up to Low, Angel Square, and Spud Sweetgrass know just
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Dream Dad
by Holly Haggarty,

104 pages $6.95 TP
ISBN: 0929141512
Rosemary for Remembrance
by Sonia Craddock,

128 pages $16.95 TP
ISBN: 1550285289
Children's Books
Children`s Books
by Welwyn Katz
Both these novels are meant for children who've said goodbye to Frog and Toad and are ready for longer stories that they can read by themselves. Both are printed in largish type with short paragraphs that produce lots of easy- looking white space despite
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At Large
At Large - A Used Beret
by Michael Coren
Whenever I think of a caricature of a student's bedroom in the 1970s, several possible images come to mind. An unread paperback copy of Tolkien, an electric guitar that hasn't been played in an age, a handful of appropriate album jackets
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Douglas Fetherling
Douglas Fetherling - The Medical Humanist
by Douglas Fetherling
An anecdote is told about the time that Alan Wilkinson, until 1994 the curator of twentieth-century art at the Art Gallery of Ontario, made a business trip to Baltimore. Specifically, he had some art business to conduct at Johns Hopkins University.
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First Novel Award
First Novel Award
The winner for 1996 is Fugitive Pieces, by Anne Michaels, published by McClelland & Stewart The runners-up are: Cereus Blooms at Night, by Shani Mootoo (Press Gang). The Cure for Death by Lightning, by Gail Anderson-Dargatz (Knopf Canada).
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