I’m a fan of the Paris Review. Who wouldn’t be? All those great interviews. Pretty heady stuff. Recently I noticed a newish feature, this DNA of Literature. Remarkably the Paris Review has offered up many of its early interviews with writers such as Truman Capote and William Carlos Williams online! Amazing. However, the DNA also...

A good short story can be like a bomb going off in the middle of one’s life. It can also be, as Walter Mosley has said, like a small gem, perfectly cut to expose every facet of an idea, which is in turn illuminated by ten thousand tiny shafts of light. Either way, good fiction...

We’re being inundated with Best Books, Best Movies, Best Theatre…bla, bla, bla. I’m beginning to feel like a curmudgeon here, but perhaps I’m taking these things too seriously. For instance, I assume that if someone puts a headline like Best Books of 2005, they have actually read all of the books available in that year,...

Is anyone more cool than Martha Wainwright? Check out her single here, and oh, check out her website too. Can I just say wow. She, Fiona Apple and Kate Bush are the ladies of the moment. But Kate, please, those videos! I feel like I’m back in the 80s–and not in a good way!

Hidamari no tami arrived today from a friend in San Fransisco. After much pensive interaction with this objet, I began to feel a little like King Kong poking at Fay Wray, or Anne Darrow, or… Yes, poking at the little fat body with the bobbing head and other tiny heads clutching plastic ginko leaves made...

After years of admirable flailing, Word, Toronto’s monthly literary magazine, seems to be finding its footing. It’s a tough job with little renumeration, but someone has to do it. This issue is a sprawling 18 pages, which may be a little hopeful in terms of pulling off every month, but this goes a little way...

Happy Hanukka! Hear the blessing for the lighting of the candles here. Slideshow of Christmas Eve in the city here.

You have another week to take advantage of the Bach Fest. Everything you wanted to know about the composer and more. Plus amazing concerts.

One of the stranger things I miss about Christmas in Canada is the Queen’s Christmas message. Why should this white-haired tertiary head-of-state be so moving? Every year I resist, and every year the Queen’s message slips in under the skin…and though this year’s call for religious acceptance and tolerance seems slightly more pointed, it’s hardly...

Every time Winterson disappoints me (and lets face it, we’ve had a string of them…), I remember The Passion, Sexing The Cherry and Art Objects, and of course with all that on her side she can do no wrong… Here’s a Christmas story courtesy of The Guardian.

Christmas trees on Montague Street. Many of the tree salesmen are young men from Quebec who come to New York for the season, sleeping in their cars for the three or four weeks of the season. There’s something very appealing about the temporary nature of the structures, not to mention the creative energy that goes...

Chelsea was a ghost town, nary a dog in sight. There was one gallery, Matthew Marks, that I knew I had to catch, so it was the one I called, and yes, they said, they were open until 3. So off I went. As luck would have it (or not depending on one’s perspective), it...