Wally Hourback, 1949-2017, RIP
Late in the summer of 2017, Wally Hourback, a Canadian writer from North Bay, Ontario, and a man with whom I had a fifteen-year relationship that was entirely epistolary and editorial, died of heart failure. My relationship with Wally came about because of dooneyscafe.com, for which Hourback wrote occasional pieces, and which you know, if…
Read MoreClaus Spiekermann 1941-2015 RIP
Claus Spiekermann and I tried to smuggle a car from Germany to Greece in the winter of 1963. It didn’t go well, and we spent two weeks trapped by what people were calling the worst blizzard in 200 years. We got as far as Belgrade, then the capital of Yugoslavia. The blizzard eventually…
Read MoreBrett Enemark, 1948-2017, RIP
Brian Fawcett posts an obituary for–and something of an apology to–an old friend who died a few months ago.
Read MoreRIP Henry Hoekema
A belated obituary for a man who deserved better than he got from life.
Read MoreAgainst Tyranny: an urgent review of Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny
Why you need to read this book — now.
Read MoreCultural Appropriation, Misappropriation and Cultural Exchange: A primer
Brian Fawcett takes on the current hot-button issue of Cultural Appropriation and what it means to Canada, its artistic community, and to the future of democracy.
Read MoreReport from the Writers’ Union, or, Why Should Not Old Men and Women Be Mad?
Brian Fawcett attends the AGM of the Writers’ Union of Canada, encounters several revolutions in the making, along with a Manifesto written by writers who are clinically insane or pathologically angry. He passes on the revolutions and joins the angry and/or the crazy writers.
Read MoreAn Unslick Reckoning
Brian Fawcett reviews B.C. poet Ken Belford’s latest book. He likes Belford, but isn’t so sure about the new work.
Read MoreCaitlin DeSilvey’s Proposition
As a “cultural geographer” wanders through abandoned industrial buildings in “Curated Decay,” Brian Fawcett wonders whether “autoethnography” is just another fancy academic term for preferring self-therapy to dealing with the mess in Detroit and the rest of a dying planet.
Read MoreLosing Sleep
Brian Fawcett tries to figure out why Nino Ricci’s new novel, Sleep, didn’t register with Canada’s Book Prize Juries.
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