Brian Fawcett

Brian Fawcett is a Toronto-based writer.
The trouble with Stanley Tucci’s Taste (and the right way to make tomato sauce)
Brian Fawcett on how to make Euclid Avenue Tomato Sauce. Everything you need to know to get it right.
Read MoreRIP Gerard F. Farry
In mid-January of this year, 2021, Gerard Farry died in Vancouver at the age of 92. He wasn’t the sort of man who’d naturally be familiar to the readers of this website; he had been the director of urban planning for Greater Vancouver during the 1970s and 1980s, which was the heyday of urban master…
Read MoreThe (Good) Trouble With David Shields
David Shields’ The Trouble with Men. It ain’t self-help, says Brian Fawcett.
Read MoreA moment With Dostoyevsky, James Wood, and an obscure Hungarian Writer
Brian Fawcett recalls something he discovers about how Dostoyevsky wrote dialogue that leads him to take a swing at James Wood, (the critic, not the actor)
Read MoreNorm Sibum and the Poetry of “Flaneurism”
Brian Fawcett reads Norm Sibum’s new volume of verse. He thinks Sibum is a skilled poet, but….
Read MoreKindly People Who Feed Squirrels: A Rant
Brian Fawcett isn’t fond of people who feed peanuts to squirrels. Here’s why.
Read MoreFor Those looking for our Olga Tokarczuk Post on the Corona Virus
A few days ago, Merrily Weisbord sent me a piece written by Olga Tokarczuk about the Covid-19 crisis currently sweeping the world. A friend of Merrily’s, Jerzy Przytyk, had translated the piece using Google’s notoriously mechanical translation program. What Tokarczuk had to say in the piece was interesting simply because she is Olga Tokarczuk,…
Read MoreGraeme Gibson RIP
I didn’t know Graeme Gibson well, and for most of the time I was a member of the Writers’ Union of Canada, I didn’t like him very much. Gibson was one of the Union’s founders and in a way, remained, to the end of his life, its primary living role model (the Union’s other role…
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