When describing this book to a friend recently, I said I found his style "quintessentially male". That's a sloppy term, but when you've bookchatted with someone about many books over several years, a certain shorthand develops. All I had to add was that it left with me the same feeling
Other Friday Fugues here have focussed on Bookish Books and Epistolary Works, this year's Friday Fugue is A Fainter Footprint. As in, leaving a fainter footprint behind, ecologically speaking. To date, there has been much talk of recent cookbooks, those which are light on resources but heavy on flavour and
This from Hugh MacLennan to young Marian Engel in 1956: "If I can be of any help to you, don't hesitate to write and tell me so. I'm cynical about theses, having done one myself, but I suppose they are necessary if you can avoid taking them too seriously." University
Everything I know about the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, which precipitated WWI, I learned from fiction. First, Aleksandar Hemon's short story, "The Accordian", which explores the very moment of the shots' impact, inspired by the presence of a bystander. This man seems to be the author's grandfather, standing in the
In the early 1980s, in a sixth-grade classroom in rural Ontario, a teacher used Edgar Allan Poe's stories to supplement the assigned reader for that year's English studies: a bitter experience for me as a young reader. I loved books - they were my best friends at that time - but
