Criticism & Essays

Suddenly They Heard Footsteps: Storytelling for the Twenty-First Century

More than any other activity, it is storytelling that makes us human. Termites build. Primates use tools. Most animals have some form of language, of communication. So far as we know, however, it is only ... Read More »

February 11, 2004 | Filed under: Criticism & Essays

A Love of Reading: Reviews of Contemporary Fiction

By Robert Adams

Robert Adams’ A Love of Reading introduces 18 novels published, for the most part, over the last 10 years. Adams first delivered these reviews to packed theatres in Montreal and Toronto. Chapters on Maguib Mahfouz’s ... Read More »

February 11, 2004 | Filed under: Children and YA Non-fiction, Criticism & Essays

L.M. Montgomery and Canadian Culture

By Irene Gammel and Elizabeth Epperly, eds.

At first glance Irene Gammel and Elizabeth Epperly’s new collection of essays, L.M. Montgomery and Canadian Culture, may seem an odd idea. Montgomery’s most famous creation, Anne Shirley (of Anne of Green Gables fame) may ... Read More »

February 10, 2004 | Filed under: Criticism & Essays

Wagner: The Terrible Man and His Truthful Art

By M. Owen Lee

This is a quite unnecessary yet quite engaging little book. Father Owen Lee, a life-long operaphile and this country’s most famously perfect Wagnerite, is writing to persuade us that horrible people can create splendid works ... Read More »

February 6, 2004 | Filed under: Criticism & Essays

Marginalia: A Cultural Reader

By Mark Kingwell

For any Canadian who reads about culture or politics, University of Toronto philosophy professor Mark Kingwell is a household name. From his essays on television in Saturday Night, to his cultural columns in Adbusters, to ... Read More »

February 5, 2004 | Filed under: Criticism & Essays

Desire in Seven Voices

By Lorna Crozier, ed.

The concept of Desire in Seven Voices is a compelling one: Governor General’s Award-winning poet Lorna Crozier has brought together seven well-known Canadian women writers of vastly different ages and backgrounds, and asked them to ... Read More »

February 5, 2004 | Filed under: Criticism & Essays

Great Canadian Books of the Century

By Vancouver Public Library

Vancouver Public Library staff were inspired by The New York Public Library’s Books of the Century. Why not a Canadian list of best fiction, drama, poetry, and non-fiction titles? The 133-entry result is a “celebration ... Read More »

February 3, 2004 | Filed under: Criticism & Essays

Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing

By Margaret Atwood

Like the set of lectures that Margaret Atwood gave at Oxford University and reformatted into Strange Things: The Malevolent North in Canadian Literature, the six chapters that comprise Negotiating with the Dead started life as ... Read More »

January 26, 2004 | Filed under: Criticism & Essays

When Words Deny the World: The Reshaping of Canadian Writing

By Stephen Henighan

Cultural commentators have been trumpeting a Canadian literary renaissance for the past decade or so, citing lucrative foreign sales, international prizes, and worldwide media attention for our literary fiction. Canadian is hot, the headlines read. ... Read More »

January 22, 2004 | Filed under: Criticism & Essays

Where the Words Come from: Canadian Poets in Conversation

By Tim Bowling,ed.

Do readers need another collection of interviews with poets? No matter where they came from, a poet’s most important words surely go into the poetry. And as long as the poems themselves remain insufficiently read, ... Read More »

January 15, 2004 | Filed under: Criticism & Essays

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