Probes

Scribbles from Italy: The Winds Do Blow, Orgasms & Anti-Vaxxers, Setting the Table, The Stink of Modern Life

By Vian Andrews | 2023 May 6

From Vian Andrews’ journals about life in Italy’s Umbrian countryside: reflections on the winds that blow, full course meals, the stench of daily life, and even orgasms and anti-vaxxers.

Read More

SENTENCE: SWEDISH DEATH CLEANING

By Mikhail Iossel | 2023 May 3

Mikhail Iossel is riding a city bus in Montreal and thinking about a recently dead friend and a man on the street who resembles the friend with whom he’s lost touch. It’s a no-story in a “hasty” sentence, the latest installment of Iossel’s stories (and non-stories) in a single sentence.

Read More

Writing Old Age, and two other poems

By George Stanley | 2023 May 2

From the Dooney’s archives.: “Writing Old Age, and two other poems” by Vancouver poet George Stanley, from his book “West Broadway” (2018).

Read More

The Sussex Variations, or Two Boars (Ch. 10): The Third Boar

By Brian Fawcett | 2023 May 1

Oh, yes, there was a third boar on the Sussex pig farm in 1962 where a visiting Canadian with literary ambitions learned a lot about life and livestock. Ch. 10 of Brian Fawcett’s “The Sussex Variations, or Two Boars.”

Read More

SENTENCE: POSH LUST

By Mikhail Iossel | 2023 April 26

Mikhail Iossel is having black tea and an almond croissant in a downtown shopping mall when a middle-aged man plunks himself down directly opposite Iossel at the otherwise empty long table. A life story in a sentence.

Read More

The Sussex Variations, or Two Boars (Ch. 9): Clear Instructions

By Brian Fawcett | 2023 April 23

Brian Fawcett on the importance of clear instructions, the use of “hogwash,” and the art of playing ping pong in Ch. 9 of “The Sussex Variations, or Two Boars.”

Read More

Scribbles from Italy: Italy in Layers, The Blaze, The Web Woven, The Burn, The Stranger’s Eye

By Vian Andrews | 2023 April 22

More passages from Vian Andrews’ journals of living in Italy’s Umbrian countryside, a world of mountain hamlets, memories of dancing around the fire pit, old knife-grinders, and burnng the cuttings.

Read More

SENTENCE: PEN MAN SHIP

By Mikhail Iossel | 2023 April 19

Seven-year-old Mikhail Iossel is writing out the alphabet in a Soviet communal apartment. Clean writing in a sentence.

Read More

Reality Hunger: A Manifesto / c / books for people who find television too slow

By David Shields | 2023 April 17

“Painting isn’t dead. The novel isn’t dead. They just aren’t as central to the culture as they once were,” says David Shields in “Reality Hunger: A Manifesto.” In an era where we need books for people who find television too slow, where does writing go from here?

Read More

The Sussex Variations, or Two Boars (Ch. 8): Writers, and Boars

By Brian Fawcett | 2023 April 16

An 18-year-old Canadian with writerly ambitions, working on his uncle and aunt’s Sussex pig farm, gets to meet the butler of famed English literary critic, Cyril Connelly. Ch. 8 of “The Sussex Variations, or Two Boars.”

Read More