Magnificent Octopus

Ah, love. This is how the story ends: To the accompaniment of Victor's snoring, Ali-Baba reviewed her life and swallowed the pills. T...

I've been watching some of Andy Warhol's screen tests on Youtube. Some of them are very boring. Indeed, I lose interest in most o...

I can recognize a disciple of La Sape from miles away. This watchman is a master at applying the foundational principles of the society, inc...

Georges Simenon was born on Friday, February 13 — 102 years ago. Last Friday, A Different Stripe posted a great quote about it: "It...

Do you use an online dictionary? Have you ever "liked" a word, or shared it on social media? Have you ever commented on a dictiona...

The kind people at House of Anansi Press , have been sending me some lovely books over the last couple of months that I haven't had a ch...

"I think the artists who aren't very good should become like everybody else so that people would like things that aren't very g...

The cover that judges you . More . Via . I'm not convinced that a book should demand neutrality from its reader.

From the entry for Otha Orkkut (1890-1943), poet, translator, and historian, in The Biographical Dictionary of Literary Failure , edited by ...

Montreal metro stations this week have been filled with bookshelves, stocked with virtual books. In a campaign cosponsored by various tran...

Zebra, by Victor Vasarely The following days were strange. It was as is until then we had all been dreaming and had suddenly woken to rea...

Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the Superman — a rope over an abyss. A dangerous crossing, a dangerous wayfaring, a dangero...

The Buddhists say there are 121 states of consciousness. Of these, only three involve misery or suffering. Most of us spend our time moving ...

Jealousy everywhere. I'm living and breathing it. I read Alain Robbe-Grillet's Jealousy several years ago. I never got around t...

It is important if someone asks you to remember one of your happiest times to consider not only the question but also the questioner. If the...

Stanisław Barańczak — poet, dissident, and translator — died last week. Here's a poem I found, translated by the poet himself with Clar...

And now let us believe in a long year that is given to us, new, untouched, full of things that have never been, full of work that has never ...

The most beautiful sentences ... She wasn't doing a thing that I could see, except standing there leaning on the balcony railing, holdi...

I spent some hours at the bookstore this afternoon, wanting something but not finding anything that satisfied. I picked up Donna Tartt's...

Much-needed stillness these days... The amount of data humanity will collect while you're reading this book is five times greater than ...