I went to Library and Archives Canada recently to do some research. Entering the building on Wellington Street in downtown Ottawa I was struck by how Soviet-like the place looked. Devoid of colour and joy, it seemed dead; absent of people, books, life; the grim closets that pass for exhibition space lay bare – three [...]
Features
Response 2: It’s a Big, Big, Big, Big, Big Book’s World
Finn HarvorIt is a bizarre fact of English Canadian letters that it has produced so few social novels of the sort one finds in British or American literature. Whether this is a result of the prejudices of publishers, the superseding interests of writers themselves, a post-colonial culture lacking the self-confidence to produce work that would stand [...]
Response 3: Duvets and Demons
Mike BarnesShreds of a novel outline: Edward and Jasmine, attractive cosmopolites, youngish, bright, socially aware (if not quite engaged), committed partners but with something unfulfilled – stillborn whisperings – troubling their union. Edward, an out-of-work physicist (funding for the Texas Super Collider he was helping to build has collapsed), joins an international team investigating the lapses, [...]
FICTION, FACTION, AUTOBIOGRAPHY: Norman Levine At McGill University, 1946-1949
Robert H. Michel“I had quite a good time at McGill.”1
Norman Levine’s stories stay with you after you close the book.2 In 1980, interviewer Wayne Grady suggested that Levine’s stories were like line drawings rather than whole canvasses, with “a touch here and there to suggest the whole picture.” Levine replied, “You don’t have to eat the whole [...]
CNQ Abroad: UNNECESSARY TRAVEL LENGTHENS THE WAR
Andrew Steinmetz1963. The Great Escape – The Mirisch Company Inc. Presents
INT. TRAIN COMPARTMENT – DAY. The door opens and a Gestapo agent enters. He glances at the identity cards offered by a pair of SS officers. Not of interest, not on his list. In total there are 76 escaped prisoners from Stalag Luft III and Hitler [...]
KADDISH (A Sketch Towards a Portrait of Norman Levine)
John Metcalf“John . . . ? Hello . . . ?”
A voice familiar.
“
Is that . . .”
“It’s Norman.”
“Christ, Norman!”
Peering at the pulsing numerals.
“It’s 4:13, Norman. It’s dark.”
“I’m in the Bassan.”
“The what?”
“It’s my mother’s unveiling.”
“What! What do you mean Bassan? What do you mean ‘unveiling’?”
“Well, that’s it, you see . . . And I was wondering . [...]
Secrets of the Book Trade: Number 1
David MasonImust first qualify my title. I am referring only to the antiquarian booktrade; that is, used and rare books. It does not refer to the sellers of new books; which brings us immediately to the first of the secrets I will divulge:
Antiquarian booksellers are snobs – book snobs in fact. The truth is that antiquarian [...]
Growing up into Alice
K.D. MillerFor years, I’ve joked about commissioning a silver bracelet engraved with the letters WWAW, standing for What Would Alice Write? (Alice, of course, being Alice Munro.) This would be my take on the WWJD – What Would Jesus Do? – bracelets sported by people who I suspect might be a bit shaken up by the [...]
The Tipping Point
Michael CarbertAs disparate and fractured as Canada and the enterprise of Canadian literature has always been, one commonality bridges all of our divisions be they political, historical, racial, aesthetic, or geographic. Simply put, this characteristic is complacency. We care about literature; we express enthusiasm for Canadian books, writers, and publishers; but we do so little to [...]
The Digital Apocalypse
Alex GoodNear the beginning of Margaret Atwood’s novel Oryx and Crake the character of Snowman – survivor of a plague that has carried off most of the human race, leaving behind only a genetically engineered species of primitive beings he has dubbed the Crakers – thinks of keeping a Crusoe-like journal. It is an idea he [...]