Reviewed in this essay: Eminent Outlaws: The Gay Writers Who Changed America by Christopher Bram. Twelve Books, 2012. Way before popular television shows like Will & Grace and Queer as Folk, there were a handful of gay American writers who introduced gay lives to mainstream America. Gay novelists, poets and playwrights of the 1940s and 50s, when homosexual acts were a crime in 48 states in America, laid the groundwork for the contemporary gay rights movement that has resulted in slow but indisputable changes, including the recognition of gay marriage in many states and the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” which has made possible for thousands of gay soldiers to serve their country openly. That is essentially the thesis… Keep reading

Reviewed in this essay: Keys to The Gift: A Guide to Vladimir Nabokov’s Novel, by Yuri Leving. Academic Studies Press, 2011. I was a student in Yuri Leving’s Survey of Russian Literature class at Dalhousie University in 2007. He got me hooked on Nabokov, so I was excited when Leving’s new book on a major Nabokov novel was released last year. The Gift is Nabokov’s passionate and complex love song devoted to Russian literature. It is his ninth and final novel written originally in Russian, and is considered to be the high point of these novels, as well as one of his most complicated overall. Nabokov draws from his encyclopaedic knowledge of Russia’s historic and contemporary writers and literary critics… Keep reading

Reviewed in this essay: A Wedding in Haiti by Julia Alvarez. Algonquin Books, 2012. Throughout her travels into Haiti and Port-au-Prince, novelist and memoirist Julia Alvarez is haunted by the question, “Once we see a thing, what then is our obligation?” She sets out to answer the question in her new memoir, A Wedding in Haiti. Julia Alvarez began her relationship with Haiti in 2001 when she met Piti, a young Haitian man working at Alta Gracia, the coffee farm in the Dominican Republic that Alvarez operates with her husband, Bill. She developed feelings for Piti that were “unaccountably maternal” and when he invited her to his wedding to take place in Moustique, she found she could not say “no.”… Keep reading

Where the wild things assemble A perfect combination of one of the highs and one of the lows of the last week in pop culture. On the promise of an unread book “When I read it, I will be completely absorbed by it. It will be all I think about. It will affect my daily life in ways I can’t fully understand, and when I finish it I will have come to profound revelations about the nature of existence. I will finally understand all the literary theory I wrote essays on when I was at university.” Kirsty Logan examines and imagines some of the 800 unread books on her shelves. Someone in Slovenia bought Damned to Fame with free delivery This real-time map of… Keep reading

Ever since succumbing to Toronto’s latest exceptionally cough- and delirium-ridden flu a couple of weeks ago, I’ve been more than a little taken with Puzzlejuice, a new iOS app I discovered on my iPad during a long day bored out of my feverish brain in bed. Like the geniusy offspring of a steamy arcade interlude between Tetris and Scrabble, the bright charm of Puzzlejuice brings out the obsession in both word- and design-nerds – at least it has in me. Like Tetris, the game enjoins you to fit diversely shaped square-ish blocks into perfect rows that reward your block-sorting acumen by exploding. In Puzzlejuice, however, completed rows don’t vanish, but rather become letters! Letters that you must then connect into… Keep reading

In an attempt to make himself a better Canadian, Craig MacBride is reading and reviewing the books that shaped this country. Morley Callaghan’s fourth novel, Such Is My Beloved, was published in 1934, and it’s the first of the books in the canon that feels modern. There’s a Chinese restaurant, a completely un-CanLit lack of foliage, and it’s urban; the setting is Toronto during the Depression. The book isn’t unlike the setting. It’s hard-edged, forsakes ornamentation, and is gritty. The story of Such Is My Beloved is simple. It follows the trials of young Father Dowling as he tries to convince two women who live near his church to leave the life of sex work and become good Catholics. The… Keep reading

Reviewed in this essay: John Fraser’s The Secret of the Crown (Anansi, 2012) Whatever else one can say about John Fraser’s newest book, it is certainly an invaluable opportunity to learn about a certain form of Canadian monarchism that has, it seems, gained a new lease on life. Fraser argues that with the spectacular popularity of the marriage of Prince William and Kate Middelton last year, followed by a Canadian tour that left us downright swooning, the time is right for Canadians to renew their faith in the British monarchy. Fraser’s book is thus a valiant effort at convincing us that being part of the Crown places us in a “lucky continuum that gives definition and continuity to our beloved country.”… Keep reading

Frankenbooks Inkle’s just released Frankenstein, an interactive novel/mobile app, may have descended from the Choose Your Own Adventure stories you checked out of your school library every Thursday morning, but the resulting work is one marked by an unexpected artistry and nuance, according to early reviews. Salon’s Laura Miller says of the… novel/app/thing, it “is a creative, subtle and sensitive adaptation of Mary Shelley’s classic novella, and it has singlehandedly renewed this critic’s hopes for interactive fiction.” Elsewhere, Claire Armistead weighs in on the interactive reading experience. Meanwhile, back in paper-bound books From the Slate Book Review, a look at another iteration of the Choose Your Own Adventure genre, this time in paper but no less a step forward: Love is Not… Keep reading

To be publicly scorned by the infamous Glenn Beck is perhaps not such a rarity in this era. Still, for famed scholar Frances Fox Piven, who was recently dubbed “an enemy of the constitution” by the radio and television personality for her vocal involvement in the Occupy Wall Street movement, such ire can only be considered a badge of honour. In fact, her most recent release is titled Who’s Afraid of Frances Fox Piven: The Essential Writings of the Professor Glenn Beck Loves to Hate. She, and other so-called ‘enemies’, will take centre stage at the LeftWords Festival of Books and Ideas on May 6 at the Ryerson Student Centre. LeftWords is not your typical book and magazine festival, nor… Keep reading

Having begun life as, in her own words, “a docile little girl,” Michele Landsberg became a journalist whose descriptions in a 1981 column on female genital mutilation smacked a reader so hard that he fainted dead away while waiting for a flight to arrive at Pearson Airport. That column is included in “Writing the Revolution,” a new collection of some of the 3,000 columns she wrote between 1978 and 2003, as the Toronto Star’s “woman columnist.” The Feminist History Society, whose stated mandate is to “create a lasting record of the women’s movement in Canada and Quebec for the period between 1960 and 2010,” approached Landsberg to curate a selection of her columns, and the book was born. Landsberg is… Keep reading

Considering which member of an opera’s creative team tends to call the shots, Anne Midgette writes in the New York Times, “We have seen the age of the singer, the age of the conductor and, now, the age of the director.” No one, apparently, worries much about the set designer, but that doesn’t mean the Canadian Opera Company (COC) isn’t spoiling us with spectacle. While critics and fans wring their hands over the rise of director-led conceptual productions, the COC has been mounting the most visually arresting theatre in Toronto. With two gorgeous productions opening this month, I’d like to tip my hat to the COC’s recent slate of remarkable set designers. Gianni Schicchi, presented in a double-bill with A… Keep reading

A “bipolar rabbit hole of past and present” This Findings interview with Brainpicker Maria Popova about the future of reading taught me about fifteen things, as any encounter with Popova is wont to do. In other doings (she lives in hyperdrive): Popova’s book spine poetry (inspired by National Poetry Month and the delightful Sorted Books). On the intimacy of Draw Something “Draw Something is a game where there’s nothing to decode. It’s less about pattern recognition, and more about a natural desire to communicate.” Why (and how) Draw Something works. Masters of the Storyverse How Valla Vakili, “the latest white knight riding to the rescue of a beleaguered book industry,” intends to monetize perversion by creating a universe of books. Sending poetry aloft Join the TRB’s Poetry Editor… Keep reading

Toronto’s annual festival of documentary and non-fiction film is upon us again, kicking off its 19th year in style tonight, April 26th, with festival opener Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, a portrait of Chinese artist and dissident Ai Weiwei. Dissent is indeed in the air during this year’s Hot Docs, so if you’re looking for a round up of some of the year’s most exciting global uprisings (and can’t be in Quebec to hold the streets with the province’s striking students), look no further than this year’s special Rise Against showcase, with films from Greece to Egypt, Wisconsin to the West Bank. Here are just a few of the films we’ve got on our radar: Herman’s House, about former Black Panther… Keep reading

If you’ve ever been seduced by the Gothic works of Edgar Allan Poe, then The Baltimore House is the place for you. Tucked around the corner from Jackson Square it functions as a café by day and a lounge/bar by night. The café room boasts ample natural light, and old church pews act as benches around the larger communal tables. But it’s the bar/parlour room that draws all the attention. Decked out with antique furniture, cabinets of curio and old books, and what I soon find out are absinthe fountains, it’s like stepping into the sitting area of an eccentric Victorian aristocrat. You get the feeling Sherlock Holmes would be very comfortable here. The absinthe fountains hold my attention, mostly… Keep reading

Reviewed in this essay: Rampart, directed by Oren Moverman, written by Moverman and James Ellroy. Starring Woody Harrelson, Sigourney Weaver, Ben Foster, Anne Heche, Cynthia Nixon, Steve Buschemi, and Ned Beatty. Running Time: 108 minutes. Now playing at the Carleton Cinema. There are two ways to think about director Oren Moverman’s film Rampart: it is either a unrelentingly gripping journey into the mind of a man in absolute moral crisis, or it is a sensationalistic orgy of misogyny, violence, and racism that leaves the viewer numb. Whether you decide to love or hate the film, to watch it means to spend two hours with officer Dave Brown, played with meticulous ferocity by Woody Harrelson. Brown is a terrifyingly riven man… Keep reading

SlushPile Hell Ever wondered what’s going through the mind of the literary agent-not-to-be as she reads your work? You probably don’t want to know. Listen carefully and you can hear handcuffs clicking in the background Erin Balser and Becky Toyne on Fresh Air discussing 50 Shades of Grey. Bonus: includes Canadian smut recommendations. How to edit your bookshelves While I would never suggest that anyone should part with any of their books, should you decide that it’s the right course of action you’ll only be left with space for (wait for it) more books. Tips on how to do it (no tears, one hopes) from CBC Books. “Writing with No. 2 pencils makes me feel as if I had a hangover.”… Keep reading

Reviewed in this essay: Godhead: The Brain’s Big Bang, by Joe Griffin and Ivan Tyrrell. HG Publishing, 2011. For some time, scientists have been marshaling their knowledge and resources in an effort to answer some of the biggest questions about the universe. With each grandiose experiment, however, science seems to be little closer to solving those fundamental mysteries about the origins of the cosmos. Fantastic and ambitious efforts costing billions of dollars, like that involving the Large Hadron Collider, see us trawling the universe in hopes of finding those answers; while highly polemic debates about the origins of life, pitting scientists against the religiously-minded, continue to rage unabated. In Godhead: The Brain’s Big Bang, psychologists Joe Griffin and Ivan Tyrrell… Keep reading

Reviewed in this essay: Maintenance by Rob Benvie. Coach House Books, 2011. Rob Benvie, author of The Safety of War, offers in his second novel, Maintenance, an important investigation into the relationship between place and despair. Benvie’s characters bleakly exist in suburbia — Mississauga — at the turn of the millennium and while they want for nothing material, they crave a life that is more than mere “upkeep.” Benvie portrays several characters who are either troubled with millennial anxiety or the dullness of their lives. Parker, a DynaFlex salesman, becomes fascinated with the “power of endings” and the “revolt” that Adam, from Africa, having witnessed atrocities, is determined to carry out. Parker’s wife, Trixie, suffering from mysterious blackouts, longs for… Keep reading

Reviewed in this essay: Undefeated, directed by Daniel Lindsay and TJ Martin. Starring Bill Courtney, O.C. Brown, Montrail “Money” Brown. Running Time: 113 minutes.  Early on in Undefeated we witness Bill Courtney – the head coach of the Manassas High School football team – address his players. Courtney, a white local businessman who coaches a predominantly black inner city high school team on his spare time, informs his players that there has been a litany of shootings, arrests, and fights amongst the members of the team. As he mentions each of these cases, questions abound in the audience’s mind: can Courtney use his role as coach to help his players avoid these pitfalls of inner city criminality? Can coaching football be… Keep reading

It’s here. TRB’s Issue Three woke up in Toronto early this morning and decided to stay, bringing flamboyant style and irresistible appeal to a city already awash in charms. To take appropriate notice of this new arrival, join us tonight, April 17, at Poetry in Kensington Market, 224 Augusta Ave, 8pm on. Why not read TRB Issue Three while biking to work? As with all our issues, we’re excited to be including recordings of many of our authors reading their pieces. Bookmark our podcast page for more TRB audio, or look for our feed in iTunes. Issue Three April 17, 2012 Contents: Old Codes for Modern Woes: The 2012 Old Farmer’s Almanac by Lucan Van Meer-Mass Listen: [Audio clip: view full post to listen] Short… Keep reading