March 5, 2004 | Filed under: Criticism & Essays
By the standards of everyday discourse, feminist, Mennonite poet Di Brandt appears to be a bundle of paradoxes – if not an absolute oxymoron. But the Manitoba writer’s collection of essays, Dancing Naked: Narrative Strategies ... Read More »
Canadian feminists are consistently boxed into two opposing corners when it comes to the pornography debate, a.k.a. The Sex Wars. In the first, devoted to smut, licentious behaviour, and the pursuit of pleasure, we have ... Read More »
March 5, 2004 | Filed under: Criticism & Essays
Forget logic for a moment. Think about two words: “Technological Ethos.” Imagine what that might mean. Here’s a clue: It penetrates every contemporary theory going, from modernism to postmodernism to anti-postmodernism and the future which, ... Read More »
March 3, 2004 | Filed under: Criticism & Essays
Recent responses to Philip Marchand’s essays have included a Globe and Mail Arts Argument piece, a column by that paper’s books editor, and letters to the editors of Saturday Night and Gravitas. But truly exquisite ... Read More »
February 25, 2004 | Filed under: Criticism & Essays
Pierre Berton, Geoff Pevere argues in his foreword to Worth Repeating: A Literary Resurrection 1948-1994, “made us pay attention to him. With every media means possible, he held this country by the strings of its ... Read More »
February 25, 2004 | Filed under: Criticism & Essays
Irregular verbs! The very thought is enough to give anyone who has struggled with them a headache. In Words and Rules: The Ingredients of Language, MIT professor and evolutionary psychologist Steven Pinker has taken that ... Read More »
February 25, 2004 | Filed under: Criticism & Essays
Winnipeg art critic Robert Enright has been a fixture on the Canadian art scene for years and best known as editor at large of the art quarterly, Border Crossings. His preferred writing format is the ... Read More »
February 23, 2004 | Filed under: Criticism & Essays
What are stories for? For inspiring and instructing, for explaining and illuminating the world. With stories we argue, entertain, remember, and learn how to live our lives. “The stories people tell have a way of ... Read More »
February 23, 2004 | Filed under: Criticism & Essays
Dominick LaCapra’s collection of essays about history and reading is based on a series of popular lectures that he recently gave at the University of British Columbia. The book’s cover is appropriately adorned with Vermeer’s ... Read More »
February 23, 2004 | Filed under: Criticism & Essays
Harold Rhenisch’s Tom Thomson’s Shack is filled with arresting images. A poet with 11 previous books to his credit – including the recent novel Carnival – Rhenisch has turned his hand this time to short ... Read More »
February 23, 2004 | Filed under: Criticism & Essays