Kid Stuff
The headline of the BBC report announcing the results said it all: “Top 100 books are child’s play.” In a poll to determine the nation’s favourite reads, children’s books made up over a third of the...
View ArticleThe Death of the “Author”
It is one of the ironies of postmodernism that Roland Barthes’s claim to literary immortality comes from having pronounced the “death of the author.” What he meant was that an author’s intentions in...
View ArticleThe Shrinking Canon
I attended the University of Toronto as both an undergraduate and graduate student from 1987 to 1996. In hindsight, we might say that these years marked the highpoint of the campus culture wars, before...
View ArticleSpring Cleaning
This year found the annual spring clean-up at my house taking on an added dimension. After extensively remodeling three other rooms, I finally came to the holy place where I keep my books. This forced...
View ArticleSome Observations on the New SF
Introduction In the following essay I want to take a look at what I see as some of the main trends in SF today. Before I get started, however, I have to provide some disclaimers. In the first place, I...
View ArticleOld Dogs, New Tricks
I’ve noticed I’ve been posting a lot of obituary notices recently. Mordecai Richler, Eudora Welty, Poul Anderson – it’s enough to make you think about a changing of the guard. Many of the world’s most...
View ArticleThe Morning After
May 1, 2001. National Poetry Month (which is the same month and goes by the same name in both Canada and the United States) has come and gone. Organized as a publicity event – a party for the media, on...
View ArticleWhat Has Changed
“There is nothing new under the sun.” I’ve used the line a hundred times in as many different contexts when talking about books. It casts an aura of learning over whatever position I choose to adopt....
View ArticleUnholy Legions
What is the biggest threat facing today’s literary culture? The erosion of imagination beneath the relentless double onslaught of television and film? The rise of an entertainment-industrial complex...
View ArticleThe New Industrial Art
“What man, worthy of the name of artist, what genuine lover of art, has ever confused industry with art?” – Charles Baudelaire When Baudelaire asked that question he was making a rhetorical point. In...
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