Two recent books nicely illustrate, for me, the disturbing state of contemporary publishing. The first book, Hemingway: The Toronto Years (Doubleday) by William Burrill, a Toronto journalist, is a handsome example of the book-making art.... The second book is Floating Voice (Anansi) by the critic Stan Dragland, a bulky trade paperback with a blurry black and white cover image. The photographs inside are equally muddy.
When eye-Dentical Twins (eye press) arrived in the office, everyone crowded around. The book is a collection of photographs from the newspaper eye weekly, in which two unlikely celebrities are paired and the resemblance is described in a witty cutline.
When a friend gave me a copy of the CD In Season by Freddie Stone (Unity Records) she warned me that it was a bit odd. The main instrument on this CD is a flugelhorn—which looks to be what you would get if you heated up a trumpet, stretched it out, and bent it back around on itself.
Two recent books nicely illustrate, for me, the disturbing state of contemporary publishing. The first book, Hemingway: The Toronto Years (Doubleday) by William Burrill, a Toronto journalist, is a handsome example of the book-making art.
Rudy Wiebe makes the physical North present as few writers can. We see the line of light on the spring horizon, taste the lichens that feed the caribou and sometimes the humans, feel the rough granite outcroppings, stand on the edge of the great northern rivers. The cold cuts to the bone. In A Discovery of Strangers (Knopf Canada), the North is a black and white photograph.
Steven Heighton’s new book, On Earth As It Is, is bigger and much more spread out than his last one (Flight Paths of the Emperor) and more ambitious. His writing is strongest when he writes at a distance; especially fine are his excursions into the past, in the Arctic, the Mediterranean and Vimy Ridge.
Robert Allen’s new book of stories, A June Night in the Late Cenozoic (Oolichan) is full of near-worlds with dimensions that intersect the three (or is it four) that we navigate by in this world. A man wakes up to find the Gaza Strip being relocated in his back yard; Bluto ponders the significance of his life with Popeye and Olive Oyl; a young man rebuilds butterflies on the kitchen table.
Last time I went to the mystery bookstore looking for something hard-boiled, I came out with A Philosophical Investigation (Doubleday) tucked under my arm. I have since returned to seek out author Philip Kerr’s previous novels, the Berlin Noir trilogy set in Nazi Germany, but A Philosophical Investigation is easily his best to date.
Many more words have been expended on the American Civil War than bullets were fired. There is even a joke about it. (Question: Who won the Civil War? Answer: The American Booksellers Association.) Until recently I was immune to Civil War fever, had never toured a battlefield, didn’t know the difference between Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee. Then I came across a reference to Killer Angels (Ballantyne), a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Michael Shaara.
