Reviews

Smart Art

By Norbert Ruebsaat | June 8, 2006

Vancouver Writer Norbert Ruebsaat notices interesting parallels between modern art practices in the Old and the New World and learns more about what kitsch is.

Disappearances

By Stan Persky | June 3, 2006

Terry Glavin takes a long walk over hill and dale. The story he comes back with is a must-read.

Pillow Talk

By Norbert Ruebsaat | May 23, 2006

Norbert Ruebsaat examines Alberto Manguel’s A Reading Diary while lying unclothed in the bathtub, and discovers some reading preferences of his own.

Conquest for Dummies

By Stan Persky | May 23, 2006

How to invade, occupy, reconstruct and democratize a Middle Eastern country of your choice. Or, for want of a Plan B, Plan A was lost.

Baseball Rashomon

By Brian Fawcett | May 21, 2006

Brian Fawcett finds a repeat of Kurosawa’s famous multi-view movie Rashomon within a 35 year old baseball prank, but decides that George Bowering’s new book, Baseball Love is otherwise well-written and worth reading.

Reproductive Technology (Weak End)

By Norbert Ruebsaat | May 21, 2006

Norbert Ruebsaat posts a short review of J. M. Coetzee’s Slow Man.

Gallows Humour

By Norbert Ruebsaat | May 20, 2006

Norbert Ruebsaat posts the first of several short reviews, this one of a remarkably detailed memoir of post-war Germany and Austria by Hans-Georg Behr.

Blind Man’s Bluff

By Stan Persky | May 8, 2006

Vladimir: “I’m asking you if it came on you all of a sudden?”Pozzo: “I woke up one fine day as blind as Fortune.”    –Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

Atheists in Foxholes

By Stan Persky | March 3, 2006

Given the hordes of religious fanatics who are currently burning flags, effigies, cars, other people’s houses of worship, and ultimately, each other, is it time for atheists to poke their heads out of their foxholes and announce that God doesn’t exist?

For the Listeners

By Guthrie Johnson Gloag | February 20, 2006

A Mario Vargas Llosa novel and a circle of rapt listeners in a jungle clearing remind Guthrie Gloag of the heart of storytelling.