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Stephen Henighan, in one of his columns for Geist, decided to meditate on “the power cut that paralyzed Ontario in August 2003.” (Actually, geographically speaking it only darkened a little under half of Ontario, but screw accuracy, right Stephen? Nobody cares what goes on outside of Toronto and Ottawa anyway.) He begins by describing a heart-breakingly banal scene in which his snobbish, mostly-immigrant closed community (he expresses contempt for the restrictive nature of condominium life, yet lives in one) is forced to begin the work of basic human communication. Everything is sunshine and puppies until the poor English-deficient Yugoslavian immigrant that most of the residents avoid takes the common sense measure of bringing his kerosene cookstove outside so that, sans-electricity, he can have a hot meal without burning down the condo or suffocating his family from the fumes. Henighan attributes this complete lack of ignorant paralysis to the fact that… Continue Reading →

Note: This piece was written more than a year ago (late February 2004), as a short academic presentation. I posted about it here. Literature does not need this defence. Literature will not disappear if a biography of Britney Spears sells better than the next Salman Rushdie novel. It is not an endangered species, because literary works are more than just commodities to be traded, although they are also that. Literature is art, and like all art, it plays more than one game. It is common sense to suppose that a book will sell in large numbers if it appeals to a wide audience, and in a consumer culture like ours it is no great stretch to suppose that publishers and booksellers will make an effort to produce and sell such books as regularly as possible. Publishers and booksellers would like to make money, and I’m sure that no one begrudges… Continue Reading →

Some time last year, I grabbed a copy of Hal Niedzviecki’s latest book, Hello, I’m Special: How Individuality Became the New Conformity, but just recently had time to read it. I met Niedzviecki once a few years ago, and he was intelligent and articulate, but very little that he had written (that I had read, anyway) was especially brilliant. Good? Yes. Excellent? Not so much. But I’m Special was beyond good. It was most definitely excellent. Niedzviecki covers ground that many (including the inimitable David Foster Wallace) have covered before, but without the usual pseudo-intellectual stake-claiming, bullshit, and posturing. As well as looking deep into the social causes of contemporary youth activism and independent media, he links the rise of neo-conservative and neo-traditional groups and movements to the same pop-culture-motivated desire for extreme individuality. It is an excellent read, and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in trying to… Continue Reading →

Because he says things like

Here, finally, is an argument for reading good-but-not-great books that I can get behind.