by E. J. Lavoie “Just for a little while, let’s talk, okay? Man to man, father to son. No more stories.” William Bloom said that to his father in Daniel Wallace’s novel, Big Fish. Hard as William tries, even on his father’s deathbed, he can’t cut through his father’s tall tales and jokes to reach…
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by Christopher Hitchens As you may be able to tell from my review of Arguably, I have an immense respect for the late Hitchens and his writing. Hitchens had a very clear and unique voice––a point which he makes in Mortality, as he goes off to give writing advice––and he wrote in a way that…
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by William S. Burroughs Naked Lunch should be thought of less as a book and more as an undertaking. It took me multiple attempts to trudge through the “narrative” and actually––I assume––somewhat walk away with a bit of understanding of what I witnessed. I will also admit that the humour passed me by more-or-less unnoticed…
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by Adam Dreece I’m really confused by Breadcrumb Trail. I mean, it’s not like the story itself is confusing or anything, but let me explain myself. After finishing Along Came a Wolf, I was intrigued on the world that Dreece crafted, expecting big things to happen. And, it seems that the author agreed with me;…
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by Adam Dreece I was given a copy of Along Came a Wolf by the author in exchange for a review. Now, this isn’t something I usually do, not because I choose not to, but because I hardly ever get approached to do so, though I’m sure there are probably many good reasons for that….
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by John Pringle Over the course of my time in Thunder Bay, trying to get a feel of the local writing scene, I have picked up various publications and occasionally found myself reading a John Pringle short story. Given that they’re usually the best of the best writing that the region has offered me, I…
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by Dashiell Hammett Though I wouldn’t say I watch a lot of the genre, I believe it was Polanski’s Chinatown that showed me the possibilities of film noir, reminding me to keep an open mind for other, earlier pictures, such as The Third Man. Being more-or-less unfamiliar with detective-story fiction, however, I figured a good…
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by Paul Wells Having read and thoroughly enjoyed Wells’ Maclean’s articles for a few years now, I always thought he was a Harper fan on the highest order, one who assumed the PM could do no wrong. I really don’t know why, given how even-handed his interviews always were with leaders of the other parties,…
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by Oscar Wilde I don’t know if it says something of my nature that I seem to enjoy such wicked men in classic literature, so long as they possess a sharp, eloquent wit. This has been true in the past with Vladimir Nabokov’s Humbert and Hermann of Lolita and Despair fame, respectively, and it is…
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by Jack Kerouac Hearing, in passing, of a relationship between Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs, I made the foolish assumption that On the Road would remind me of Naked Lunch. So it should come as no surprise that I was startled to see that Kerouac’s novel is nothing of the sort, with a wide-eyed,…
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