Magnificent Octopus

That same day I saw him again. I spent all afternoon talking to Maria and then we went downtown to buy a scarf, I think, and we kept talking...

Behold the unholy Santy Claws and the TOE-nenbaum ! All profits from the sale of this book will go to the Make-A-Wish Foundation® in Canada ...

All the witches were asleep on the grass, and so were Will and Lyra. But surrounding the two children were a dozen or more angels, gazing do...

...and with Helena. And with pomegranate. Recently someone asked me if I can cook, and spontaneously I answered, "Yes, of course!"...

On the whole, I'm starting to get poetry. I had a breakthrough this year, I thought. For a year and a half now, I've been smitten w...

Last week I woke up in a riding that holds the distinction of having elected to provincial parliament a member of Québec solidaire. I live a...

Stanislaw Lem, it turns out, is very funny. Imaginary Magnitude is a collection of introductions to nonexistent books. One of my favourite ...

Helena is frantic as we're gathering her things for school. Today's Thursday! It's chess club! She needs her folder! Where's...

In The New York Review of Books : During the thirty-five years I have spent writing my own novels, I have learned not to laugh at the books ...

The 2009 Blue Metropolis International Literary Grand Prize is being awarded to A.S. Byatt. The 11th Blue Metropolis Montreal International...

I finished it, by the way, the other week. All 34 stories (a couple of them called novellas) in 655 pages. Brilliant. I almost wish there we...

When I was One, I had just begun. When I was Two, I was nearly new. When I was Three I was hardly me. When I was Four, I was not much more. ...

On Auster — the games and connections, the intertextuality: Why does Auster do these things? In some ways, one might liken his narrative ga...

Stanislaw Lem, in the introduction to his Imaginary Magnitudes , a collection of fictitious introductions to nonexistent books, covers a lot...

I don't know how to read poetry. I have a copy of Ballistics , poems by Billy Collins, and it's delightful. But at this moment I...

Earlier this evening my cat managed to post not one, but two blog entries. Blank they were. Straight shooter? Or symbolist? He does not know...

A bus nosed to a standstill; half a dozen people got off; a man passed and said: "What's the joke?" He winked, and she realise...

Helena is in chess club . Chess is not part of her regular curriculum but is offered as part of the after-school program: The " Challen...

More stories. I can't get enough of these stories. Just one more, I think, before I return to some of the weightier tomes I have on hand...

[Here's some dumb poem I wrote months ago and carelessly stashed in a dark closet full of neglected writings (the Drafts folder) and stu...