tragic, tragedy
I have a challenge for you: listen to your local TV news and see if you can get through it once – even just once – without hearing tragic, tragedy, or both. I just heard it again myself: “It appears to...
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scribble
What is a scribble? And indescribable scribal dribbling, perhaps: linear babbling. If calligraphy is architecture, a scribble is rubble. The word itself is made to be scribbled: all those loops, with a...
View ArticleMondrian
I went to an exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario this past weekend: “The Great Upheaval: Masterpieces from the Guggenheim Collection, 1910–1918.” It’s a period of art that I happen to find quite...
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After Colville
The title of this exhibition of new works, “After Colville,” refers both to the fact that the photos were taken by the artist immediately after viewing an exhibition of works by Alex Colville and to...
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A rant on censorship
A bit over a year ago I went on a Twitter rant about censorship. Then I made an image of the entire text so I had it in one place and tweeted that. Today Daniel Trujillo asked me about it. I found I...
View Articlehonest
I was listening to The Burdens of Being Upright by Tracy Bonham this evening, and it reminded me of a review I read of it when it came out back in 1996. The reviewer praised it for its honesty. But how...
View ArticleForget the title
I have, on occasion, gotten responses to my articles published on commercial sites (Slate, The Week, BBC) that have focused on the titles. Here’s the TL;DR of what follows: Paid authors on commercial...
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stardust
Back behind the big plush chair in the corner, down on the bottom shelf at floor level, next to the large-format comic anthologies, stuffed in and rarely touched these days, are my books of sheet...
View ArticleIs it art? Well, how does it feel?
This article was originally published on BoldFace, the official blog of Editors Toronto. There has been much discussion of the Nobel Prize in Literature being awarded to Bob Dylan. I have no interest...
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Book sniffing note: André Kertész: Paris, Autumn 1963
Books – especially books that are not filled with trains of words meant to be ridden from end to end – can be like visiting a museum or gallery. You will find a route through, but it can be any of...
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