EUROPA: FORTUYN AND MEN’S EYES
May 30, 2002 by
Stan Persky
Filed under The Column
The usually sober-minded, tolerant, easy-going Dutch held a federal election last month and elected a dead man. Not just any dead man, but an assassinated, flamboyantly gay, anti-immigrant, allegedly far-right-wing, dead man named Pim Fortuyn.
In the wave of mourning that engulfed the Netherlands and its May 15 parliamentary elections, the Dutch threw out a more or less competent social democratic government, which had presided over years of a buoyant economy, low unemployment, and enlightened social policies,...
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EUROPA: THE DARK SIDE OF OO-LA-LA
May 1, 2002 by
Stan Persky
Filed under The Column
BERLIN–By now, everyone within range of the hand-wringing mainstream media knows that something weird happened in the first round of the French presidential elections less than a fortnight ago. What happened–at least according to the fourth and fifth estates–is that the spectre of fascism reared its ugly head and is once again haunting Europe. But the spectre of fascism story has an additional twist to it. Not to worry, it says with a Gallic shrug. There will be a happy ending in oo-la-la...
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SELLING CANADIAN NOVELS: WHO CARES?
February 21, 2002 by
Stan Persky
Filed under The Column
Writing in this space recently (Feb. 7, 2002, "Why Canadian Novels Aren’t Selling Anymore"), Brian Fawcett notes that there’s been a recent drop-off in CanLit consumption. He mentions, as an example, the slower sales of Michael Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost compared to the same author’s previous Booker Prize-winning novel, The English Patient, which apparently sold like hotcakes, even before it was turned into an Academy Award-winning movie.
Fawcett cites an unnamed editor...
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