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 Read more...
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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 Read more...
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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 Read more...
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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 Read more...
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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 Read more...
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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 Read more...
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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 Read more...
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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 Read more...
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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 Read more...
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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 Read more...
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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, Read more...
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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 Read more...
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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 Read more...
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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. Read more...
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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 Read more...
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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 Read more...
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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. Read more...
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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. Read more...
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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 Read more...
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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 Read more...
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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 Read more...
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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 Read more...
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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 Read more...
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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 Read more...
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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 Read more...
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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 Read more...
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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. Read more...
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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). Read more...
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