I Bitch About the Gillers. (Non Canucks Look Away.)
Alice Munro has won another Giller. Can Canadians just give her shiny things, and let writers who are less well known, less over wrought, less wealthy, and less perfectly dull start winning things; […]

I’ve been having great difficulty writing up the amazing Forced Entertainment shows I went to last week. I think this is partly my inarticulacy, but also the difficulty of writing up theatrical presentations that dispense with plot, character,[…]

When ILX – or rather Steve M on ILX – came up with the now all-conquering poll format (nominations then votes then drawn-out interactive countdown) I will admit my thought was “too much fannydangle”. But it works, and works we[…]

“I HAVE KILLED” — Part 1 of 2

A NERVOUS SPLENDOR
by Frederic Morton
My love for history being well-documented, no surprise that this would have caught my attention. By chance at that, but that’s why working at a library is g[…]

A lot of the reviews for the West End version of The Producers opening last night have hailed it as a great return to musical comedy on stage after years of portentious semi-operatic shows. I think there is a place for tackling unusual subjects in an[…]

Auguste Bartholdi
What’s the biggest gap between the fame of a sculpture and the obscurity of its creator? I can’t think that anything beats this man’s most famed work: the Statue of Liberty. (He created the original, and Gustave Ei[…]

Douglas Coupland – Eleanor Rigby
I always look forward to Douglas Coupland books.
In typical style, Eleanor Rigby is buzzing with ideas; Liz is a grown-up Coupland character (someone who would have received less sympathy in earlier novels). She[…]

Design and Art
The murals that bedeck the sides of the 50s era Bowl-a-Rama on Glencarin and Bathurst, in Toronto, have an eerie resemblance to the larger Barnett Newman work, of the same time.
Why is Newman art and Bowl-a-Rama design ?
(Newman intere[…]

Neo-Coms
Rich Johnston’s comics gossip column reports an upcoming book from Marvel, Combat Zone: True Tales from GI’s In Iraq. How true, precisely? Here’s what Johnston has to say about the credentials of co-writer Karl Zinsmeister:[…]

The Last Dance by Ed McBain
This may be as inconsequential 87th Precinct novel as I’ve ever read, and I’ve read nearly all of them. Nothing changes for any of the regulars, no character development that amounts to anything, a very dull my[…]