How do you pronounce “boatswain”?
2012-07-06 06:07:14
The Globe and Mail wins the prize for obscurity.
Letter from San Francisco: Amazon, again. by Guy Tiphane
2012-07-01 07:05:12
We need to move on, see the wave coming, and ride it. (Warning: it may be like a tsunami.)
Le Grand Aïoli at Alexandraplatz, by Linda Leith
2012-06-26 05:58:53
The meal consists of Le Grand Aïoli, breads and cheeses from Kamouraska, and a perfect strawberry tart. The wine is pale, nuanced, and perfect. The company is lively. Fun!
-- with July postscript from the New York Times.
Carlos Fuentes: In The Best Company, by Ingrid Bejerman
2012-06-22 14:13:03
Ingrid Bejerman, former director of the renowned Julio Cortázar Latin American Chair, writes about her relationship with the recently deceased Mexican writer and some of the stories his friends remember him by.
Photo: Dulce Ma. Zuniga
Mind the Gap, part II, by Kenneth Radu
2012-06-06 08:54:41
Not long ago I saw the extraordinary Marlene Dietrich in Shanghai Express, a Josef von Sternberg movie with wonderful black and white cinematography, much of which occurs on a train. In the film Dietrich utters the magnificent line, “it took more than one man to change my name to Shanghai Lily.” Presumably not all on the train, but one is allowed to imagine so.
Marylebone Station, London
Mind the Gap, part I, by Kenneth Radu
2012-06-06 08:29:10
The old trains and their stations are marvels of intent and mystery. No wonder so many films make use of them.
King's Cross-St. Pancras, London
Letter from San Francisco: The Introvert Advantage, by Guy Tiphane
2012-05-10 15:17:06
Ah, a book for me, I thought. Every time I have taken the Myers-Briggs test (or a variation of it), I have been on the 100% Introvert end of the scale from Introvert to Extrovert.
"I flung myself into pleasure like a suicide on to a pavement" -- Graham Greene
2012-04-28 17:11:16
This is the kind of man that young men of my generation and perhaps a younger generation must have wanted to be, especially young men who wanted to write.
Graham Greene, The Comedians (NY: Viking, 1965) is available from Abebooks.
This Wasn't the Day I Fell in Love with Montreal, by Laura Pellerine
2012-04-19 06:39:29
Who would do that in any other city? I thought happily. It seemed promising—but this wasn’t the day I fell in love with the city.
Rye Observations, by Kenneth Radu
2012-04-18 18:25:10
Why a town becomes a gathering place of the literati is a subject for literary histories. In Rye’s case, it may well have been the seductions of the past, which certainly seduced Henry James.
Conduit Street, Rye
Jack, Nathan, Brian, Tom – and the Media, Part II
2012-04-09 15:28:13
An Insider’s View of the NDP Leadership Convention (continued)
By Louise Tremblay Matchett
What's wrong with this collection of photographs?
2012-04-03 15:52:13
Jack, Nathan, Brian, Tom – and the Media, Part I
2012-04-02 12:11:51
An Insider's View of the 2012 NDP Leadership Convention
by Louise Tremblay Matchett
Gender bias discussion heats up on ABC Radio National, by Linda Leith
2012-03-29 08:47:13
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The Sugar Sammy of Literature, by Linda Leith
2012-03-29 08:07:46
Amused, this morning, to see my reference to the Sugar Sammy of Literature has made the headlines.
Bias against Women Writers? Heresy from a Fledging Publisher, by Linda Leith
2012-03-20 10:36:25
Nicholas Hoare to close two out of three stores
2012-03-16 14:36:15
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
2012-03-12 15:43:08
Locomotive 162, Grand Truck Railway
(Courtesy National Gallery of Canada)
The Embattled Life and Early Death of Thomas D’Arcy McGee, by Linda Leith
2012-03-12 13:26:26
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
2012-03-09 10:17:56
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
2012-03-02 16:13:10
And here's Part II of the Free Money panel.
