Criticism & Essays

The Edge of the Precipice: Why Read Literature in the Digital Age?

There is general agreement that the Internet is changing the way we think of literacy. It is also agreed that such change is inevitable. But the nature of the transformation we are now undergoing, and ... Read More »

September 27, 2013 | Filed under: Criticism & Essays

★ This Is Running for Your Life

By Michelle Orange

The Internet has permitted a rise in the proliferation of, and attention to, the personal essay. In a variety of venues, we are treated to long-form confessional tracts in which authors explore the intimate details ... Read More »

June 18, 2013 | Filed under: Criticism & Essays

Lazy Bastardism: Essays and Reviews on Contemporary Poetry

By Carmine Starnino

Lazy Bastardism is an anthology of essays on poetry that date from 2004 to early 2012. The writing is consistently strong in every respect: well-crafted prose glimmering with insight, brimming with rhetoric. Lazy Bastardism is ... Read More »

February 21, 2013 | Filed under: Criticism & Essays

The Passionate Muse: Exploring Emotion in Stories

By Keith Oatley

A recipient’s first response to any work of art, suggests Ray Robertson, is probably somatic. For Robertson, we react to a book or a painting or a piece of music first on an emotional level, ... Read More »

June 26, 2012 | Filed under: Criticism & Essays

Voluptuous Pleasure: The Truth about the Writing Life?

By Marianne Apostolides

Boundaries between fiction, essay, and memoir blur in Voluptuous Pleasure. In nine short, experimental pieces, author and critic Marianne Apostolides revisits territory that will be familiar to readers of her bulimia memoir, Inner Hunger, or ... Read More »

May 15, 2012 | Filed under: Criticism & Essays

Attack of the Copula Spiders and Other Essays on Writing

By Douglas Glover

Novelist and short story writer Douglas Glover, author of the novels Elle (winner of the 2003 Governor General’s Literary Award) and The Life and Times of Captain N., among other works, has earned his bread ... Read More »

April 12, 2012 | Filed under: Criticism & Essays

The Dog on the Bed: A Canine Alphabet

By Richard Teleky

Writers who choose dogs as their subjects are often doomed not to be taken seriously. Despite the fact that literary legends like Jack London and Virginia Woolf tackled the canine/human bond, writing focused on man’s ... Read More »

December 19, 2011 | Filed under: Criticism & Essays

Winter: Five Windows on the Season

By Adam Gopnik

It’s fitting that New Yorker staff writer Adam Gopnik’s series of Massey Lectures begins with a quotation from Northrop Frye, as Frye’s influence can be felt throughout this wide-ranging cultural examination of the most archetypically ... Read More »

October 17, 2011 | Filed under: Criticism & Essays

In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination

By Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood, arguably Canada’s most beloved author, has faced criticism for the distinction she makes, both in relation to her own work and that of others, between “science fiction” and “speculative fiction,” appearing to elevate ... Read More »

October 11, 2011 | Filed under: Criticism & Essays

Reading the 21st Century: Books of the Decade, 2000–2009

By Stan Persky

Reviewing Tony Judt’s Reappraisals, Capilano University philosophy professor and literary commentator Stan Persky remarks, “the book is strikingly more coherent and tightly argued than one might expect from a compilation of seemingly disparate essays.” It ... Read More »

September 26, 2011 | Filed under: Criticism & Essays

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