Really, it’s my fault. There was that time at Eden Mills, I was browsing the book-table. I didn’t buy anything. $18 seemed like so much for a book and I had a real job then! Then there was the booth at Toronto’s Word on the Street last fall—same thing. I’m sure my bar tab at the end of that night easily topped the cost of a book.
Now Porcupine’s Quill is facing some tough financial troubles. Tim Inkster doesn’t think the publishing house will last past 2007, which makes me cry in my overpriced beer. With John Metcalf at the editorial helm, Porcupine’s Quill has been the veritable antenna of Canadian Lit, publishing Russell Smith and Andrew Pyper before anyone noticed them. The Quill has also kept essential Canuk writers in print such as Clark Blaise, Irving Layton and Leon Rooke. The aforelinked Globe and Mail article has even mentioned that Metcalf, everybody’s favourite literary curmudgeon, may be out of work soon.
Porcupine’s Quill focuses solely on literary fiction. There’s no textbook or cookbook arm to off-set the noble money-losing publications. I’m going to browse their site and then buy something.
So the National Post, among others, saw fit to deride Michael Jackson yesterday for his comments likening himself to other persecuted “black luminaries” like Nelson Mandela and Muhammed Ali.
The Post, like others in the media, were incredulous that someone with skin so fair could have the audacity to claim to experience racism, and opined that celebrities like Jacko are not only shunned by the black community, but trivialize the struggle against racism .
I think the real surprise is that the circle of middle-aged, mortgage-paying white guys with comfy jobs that make up the editorial boards of papers like the Post feel themselves experts on the subject of what it means to experience racism, or who is and who isn’t a legitimate representative of black culture. I mean, I have absolutely no knowledge on the subject either, but that’s why I think I’d pause before writing sentences like “the symbol of black struggle should not be raised by a bleached fist.”
I only noticed it because it reminded me of David Foster Wallace’s article on American right-wing talk radio from the last issue of the Atlantic Monthly. The main character that Wallace follows around is another opinionated, middle-aged white guy, who, among other things, goes to the wall to defend his right to use the “N” word on air to describe black people and tells black callers how their support for OJ is misguided and that they’re over-sensitive about race.
Again, a world totally unknown to me, but i just can’t imagine being that presumptuous about what other people go through.
The LCBO (yes, that’s pronounced “lĭk-bō” - or at least in my house it is) here in Ontario is the “world’s largest purchaser of beverage alcohol, buying wine, spirits and beer from more than 60 countries for Ontario consumers and licensees.” Of course, they also mark it up at exhorbitant rates and make a tun of loot like some drunken pirates on the high seas.
I’m pleased that there is this push to get Leonard Cohen nominated for a Nobel. As with so many others, Cohen is a poet I can get behind. However, I do think that his poetic father, Irving Layton, was a better poet. Although Layton was nominated in 1981 by South Korea and Italy, he didn’t win the prize. I guess it’s tough when you are up against Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Now, I watch the papers for news of Layton’s death. Currently, he is struggling wth Alzheimer’s disease at Maimonides Hospital in Montreal. Cohen’s renown has long surpassed Layton’s. I wonder if that can translate not only into an Nobel nomination, but a win.
Dear Mr. Cent,
The clients have reviewed your new rap song (Do you call them songs or ‘joints?’ I must admit my ignorance.) and they really like it. Below are my notes and some suggestions, please let me know what you think.
2 am cruisin’ in my Cadillac ($1 for each radio airing)
Harmon Kardon ($3 for each radio airing) pumping in the very back
One of the crew says, “Shit boyee, I really need a Big Mac” ($3 for each radio airing)
Pirelli ($1 for each radio airing) tires turn us like on a race track
Hot voice from the speaker asks us what we need.
Fuck knows, it all looks good after smoking weed,
(Is “weed” still slang for marijuana? McDonald’s is a bit uncomfortable with drug references in relation to their product. I suggested that you would consider replacing this line with “Fuck knows, it all looks like good feed.”)
Finished my fries fast like I’m on speed,
(Looks like another drug reference (e.g. “speed”). Let’s try “Finished my fries fast and off we speed,”)
Looked at my homie’s extras and feel greed.
Nice ending. One more thing, I was wondering if you could work in some wordplay around the word “fresh.” My dictionary of hip-hop slang says fresh means “cool, stylish” and the client is really interested in playing up the freshness of their product. I detect a possible synergy here. Let me know what you think.
Tony Rome
Sarah Boxer plays on my worst fears in her New York Times article. The web, especially the blogosphere, is merely a list of lists, review of reviews and an opportunistic grab for links. I guess I should stop reading the New York Times online.
Leave Emma Richler alone and treat her fiction as fiction, ferchristsakes. While it’s nice to see some traditional style criticism getting dusted off, like Camille Paglia’s turn to New Criticism, biographical analysis belongs in book-clubs for thick CBC listeners. Let it go.
Erstwhile drummer for Split Enz and Crowded House was found dead, apparently by suicide in a park in his hometown of Melbourne, Australia Friday night at age 46.
Condolences to his family and Friendz.
BoingBoing points out a press release from Silver Bullet Comic Books about the English premiere of The Golem, a daily comic strip “featuring Israel’s first nanotechnology-powered superhero” on Ynetnews.
The strip is based on the book, The Golem, a mock history of the character’s path through Israeli comic books. Despite the lengthy volume’s extensive artwork showing The Golem in a series of comics and styles from the 1940s through 1990s, the “history” evoked is fake; none of the comic books in which The Golem is said to have starred actually were published.
The Golem, incidentally, is a MacGuffin used in transporting Joe Kavalier out of pre-WWII Prague in Michael Chabon’s Kavalier & Clay.
You know that feeling you go “home” after you haven’t been “home” for a while? Well, that’s how I felt when I went back to Infiltration.org just today. The site is your essential guide to urban exploration. Specifically, about “going places you’re not supposed to go.” Which I love (reminds me of spelunking at school in the UofWaterloo tunnels).
