In Neverland

My favourite Globe and Mail columnist, TV critic John Doyle, writing in the wake of last week’s acquittal of pop star Michael Jackson on charges of child molestation, decided that the major unexplored issue of the spectacle was not the meaning of the events or the soul of its eccentric protagonist(s), but Jackson’s fanatical fans. “What was missing from the extensive TV play,” declares Doyle, “was coverage and analysis of those sad, strange people who supported Jackson throughout the trial.” Asks... 
[Read more...]

Letter from Berlin: The Sound of …

I I’ve been listening to music, lately. Weird music. The other evening, for example, I was sitting in the upper ranges of architect Hans Scharoun’s mid-20th century chamber music hall, part of his Philharmonie auditorium complex, one of my favourite places in Berlin. I was listening to a piece by Giacinto Scelsi, a 20th century Italian composer (1905-1988) whom I’d never heard of, the lushly-titled Khoom — seven episodes from an unwritten story of love and death in a faraway country. Khoom is... 
[Read more...]

Letter from Berlin: CanLit Comes to Town

BERLIN—What does it feel like to be at a literary reading in which the audience is outnumbered by the reader? Pretty weird. My long-suffering friends know to the point of upchucking that I’m a Berlinophile well beyond the ordinary call-of-Canadian-duty to be polite in a place where you’re a visitor. They will be delighted, therefore, to hear me abjectly confess that sophisticated, Kultur-drenched, sexy, hip Berlin can run just as screwed-up a literary festival as Toronto, Vancouver or Rejkjavik, Iceland. Okay,... 
[Read more...]

A Short Solution to the Non-Reading Crisis

Ok, enough already. Ever since Globe and Mail features writer John Allemang published a very long essay last December about how he was reading less (and less), the columns of Canada’s national newspaper have been clogged with confessions, laments, and nattering about the non-reading crisis. Columnists Russell Smith, John Doyle, and John Gray have all thrown in their two cents. A chorus of Globe and Mail readers dispatched the usual "shocked and appalled" missives to the editor. And Globe and... 
[Read more...]

DIASPORISM: SPEAKING AS A BAD JEW

In Philip Roth’s very funny novel about Israel, Operation Shylock (1993), there’s a character who advocates the wacky philosophy of "Diasporism." The term "diaspora," whose etymological roots have to do with the notion of a "scattering," is often used to refer to the international Jewish population outside of Israel. The idea suggests that eventually the world’s "scattered" Jews will return "home" to Israel, their alleged Biblical land of... 
[Read more...]

SONNET ABOUT ORPHEUS 3 (MIROIR)

SONNET ABOUT ORPHEUS 3 (MIROIR) In the Mirror of the Real each scene found in negation not the lake of the heart     not the body torn to pieces by the Furies    not the tongue of Orpheus In the Mirror of the Real    reversals doubles, endless folds, oppositions     the actual trees, stones, stars, lakes     reflect the dead, the "irreparable," the under- world. Eurydice not... 
[Read more...]

SONNET ABOUT ORPHEUS 2

Today no one cares about the tongue of Orpheus cut out by order of the tyrant yesterday. And everyday schoolchildren visit the museum to gaze indifferently upon the tongue of Orpheus in a glass case. Allthat’slivingmemorytome isbuttheendofhistory for the children bow their heads only to the little screens in their palms "…class antagonisms pale before the new division of people into friends and enemies of the word." Make your "Ode" to the tyrant ... 
[Read more...]

BROWSING YOURSELF

If you’ve acquired the slightest degree of local notoreity or celebrity, there’s a narcissistic game available to you, courtesy of what was once, back in the ancient 1990s, quaintly called The Information Superhighway. Here’s how it works: Get on the Net. Go to your favourite search engine (e.g., Google). Enter your name (e.g., Stan Persky). Click. Keeping in mind Ecclesiastes’ maxim that "All is vanity," you may now twiddle your Mouse finger while waiting. But you don’t... 
[Read more...]

« Previous Page