Showing posts with label Foran (Charles). Show all posts
Showing posts with label Foran (Charles). Show all posts

10 July 2016

If the rain comes...



In a long, hot summer of precious little precious rain, Seth's cover for the new Canadian Notes & Queries reminds booklovers to always be at the ready. Whether walking your dog, enjoying a pleasant read in the park, or both, the plastic bag is an essential item. Books are never to be used to protect one's do.

My copy arrived in the mail – a small miracle – on Friday, bringing art, articles and reviews by Kamal Al-Solaylee, Diana Fitzgerald Bryden, Nicole Dixon, Charles Foran, Alex Good, David Helwig, Jim Johnstone, Jason Kieffer, Rachel Lebowitz, David Mason and, um, Max Beerbohm. Jason Dickson interviews my friends Adrian and Brendan King-Edwards of The Word bookstore in Montreal. The issue is further blessed with three poems by Nyla Matuk and a new short story from Tamas Dobozy.


My contribution – The Dusty Bookcase on paper – is an interview with Gwendolyn Davies, Series Editor of Formac Fiction Treasures. Now celebrating its tenth year, the series has worked to revive forgotten works by mostly-forgotten Maritime writers. I'm right now reading its most recent title, A Changed Heart by May Agnes Fleming, Victorian Gothic set in St John, New Brunswick. Anyone who remembers my review of Fleming's The Midnight Queen will understand the attraction.

Enjoy!

And pick up after your damn dog!

Subscriptions to Canadian Notes & Queries can be purchased here.

04 August 2011

Mordecai's Mom's Memoirs



The new issue of Canadian Notes and Queries has arrived, bringing a rich mixture of essays on collecting, bookselling and Mordecai Richler. With ninety-six pages of goodness, there's too much to list here, but I will point CanLit collectors to essays by Nigel Beale, Michael Darling and Jim Fitzpatrick. I add that admirers of Charles Foran's Mordecai are treated to the biography's original preface, penned just as work was beginning.


My own piece deals with The Errand Runner: Reflections of a Rabbi's Daughter, the 1981 book by Leah Rosenberg, Richler's mother. A product of John Wiley & Sons' Toronto branch plant, it ranks as the most awkward and badly edited memoir I've yet come across – and here I'm including self-published stuff. Blame belongs entirely with the publisher, which reveals its reason for signing the memoir on the book's dust jacket.



As I write in CNQ: "Discard the dust jacket, however, and Mordecai Richler's name disappears. His is not to be found in the text..."

More in print.

Subscriptions are available here.