October 25 09
hello. here are some things i’ve been up to lately.
- reaching for zen. i question whether buddha really is the one for me. but transcendence is a relative beast in the end, so that’s okay.
- wondering if i really do believe in contemporary popular culture. i realized this morning that i watch perhaps only one [...]
July 24 08
(A chance encounter with a preview of the upcoming remake of The Day The Earth Stood Still (starring Keanu Reeves as Klaatu, it appears) inspired today’s scouring of the net for images to share.)
[I may write later on about my favourite sort of sci-fi alien-encounter movies, as well as a more thorough analysis of the [...]
July 6 08
This past weekend, Globe Books did us all a favour by featuring Jorge Luis Borges‘ Ficciones in its 50 Greatest Books of all time series. The review/essay, written by the U of T’s Dennis Duffy, gives the briefest accounts on the nature of the text and its effects on western contemporary literature. Duffy [...]
August 28 07
Presented today, as a brief lesson in elementary Saussurian structuralism, and post-structuralism, is an excerpt from Umberto Eco’s 1980 novel, Il Nome Della Rosa (tr: The Name of The Rose, 1983). Any semiotician or Eco-fan will be familiar with the text, and with the excerpt, as it is one of any number of pages from [...]
June 4 07
W.G. Sebald is known for his unique narrative style, and his untimely death. The German emigré to the UK died in a car accident in December, 2001, not long after the publication of his last novel, Austerlitz. The academic-turned-writer wrote in his original German tongue, but found fame in several languages, largely on the [...]
February 26 04
I found this file on my desktop the other day. It was the beginning of an entry I had started a long time ago, I think in November, but dropped, as it was time to head home and prepare some dinner. It is nonetheless an interesting little note about a book I will [...]
October 25 02
So I bought some books this evening.
First, Life of Pi. Hey, why not? When a book is judged to be the best in the commonwealth, its worth a shot. Besides, I think I’ll get a kick out of its fantastic setting…
Second, (and the real reason for the post), is Christian Bok’s Eunoia. [...]
April 21 02
- excerpt from The Book Of Laughter and Forgetting, b/ Milan Kundera
On Two Kinds Of Laughter
To see the devil as a partisan of Evil and an angel as a warrior on the side of Good is to accept the demagogy of the angels. Things are of course more complicated than that.
Angels are partisans not [...]
April 21 02
From: The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, by Milan Kundera. Try it, you’ll like it…
“Laughter? Do people even care about laughter? I mean real laugher, beyond joking, mockery, ridicule. Laughter, an immense and delicious sensual pleasure, wholly sensual pleasure. . .
“I said to my sister, or she said to me, come over, shall [...]