Magnificent Octopus

His real talent, what people went crazy for, was his knack for writing song lyrics. There was a song about a mechanic who builds a snowbmobi...

In New York City last month, I treated myself to some shoes. We hadn't set foot in a single bookstore (gasp!), so it's the least I c...

I'm only on page 51 of Tom McCarthy's Satin Island , and I think it's extraordinary. 5.7 His most famous riff, perhaps, was abo...

The Days of Abandonment , by Elena Ferrante, was an absolutely devastating book. It made me thoroughly miserable and I wallowed in it. I...

I was chatting with some colleagues about god knows what, when one fellow said, it's like those people who shop around for a doctor to a...

The other week I attended the launch of Alain Farah's Ravenscrag at Drawn & Quarterly (although the term "launch" seems t...

Mad Men has returned, and it got literary again . While only one novel was clearly in view, and shown to be actively read — The 42nd Paral...

David Cronenberg's short film The Nest documents a medical consultation with a woman who wants her left breast removed because she belie...

I spent the warm months of early autmumn sitting on a bench in the rocky garden, writing. In appearance they were notes for a possible book,...

"You know," he said, almost dreamily, "I sometimes think that the only things really worth talking about are the things peopl...

If you're in the Montreal area and interested in meeting downtown (in person) every 2 months or so (starting at the end of May) to discu...

With dusk begins to cry the male of the Waiting-insect; — I, too, await my beloved, and, hearing, my longing grows. — from Kokinshu , by ...

We were enclosed in Audio Booth 4, basically an audio recording cabinet floating on foam and designed to be sound-neutral. Words spoken in B...

"Can it be storytime? I'll read you the story. Only, I warn you: it's more descriptive than narrative." Apparently also ...

Sometimes I think there are two kinds of readers: readers for whom books are bread and coffee, and readers for whom books are magic mushroom...

"Is that not always the case? Given any two people in a relationship, one will always love more, the other less. Right?" I haven...

Solaris, the opera, has just premiered in Paris , music by Dai Fujikura (sung in English), based on the classic science fiction novel by Sta...

The Upside of Your Dark Side: Why Being Your Whole Self — Not Just Your "Good Self — Drives Success and Fulfillment , by Todd Kashdan ...

Those who claim to know her, or know of her, have talked of poems whose syntax and diction twist language into new shapes, forming tiny brig...

Yes, my hotel has a library. And there's a fireplace in the library, but not pictured here because there are strangers sitting beside it...