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Heroes

1. The very first thing that Javier Cercas tells us in his novel, Soldiers of Salamis (2001; translated into English by Anne McLean, 2003), which I re-read recently, is that he initially heard the...

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Robin Blaser, 1925-2009: Death’s Duty

The poet Robin Blaser died of a brain tumour on May 7, 2009, in Vancouver, at age 83. One of the first poems of Blaser’s to which I paid attention, published in editor Don Allen’s anthology, The New...

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Homeland Alone

For the United States, and parts of the rest of the world, the day of infamy in the first decade of the 21st century was September 11, 2001 (or “9/11,” as it came to be known). That was the morning...

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Is Mark Kingwell Getting Dumber?

University of Toronto philosophy professor Mark Kingwell was sitting in his office last week. It was the end of term, graduation time at post-secondary institutions across the country and he was...

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Decline and Distraction

Chris Hedges, Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle (Knopf Canada, 232 pages, 2009) One recent end-of-the-semester morning, while taking attendance in the “philosophy and...

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Letter from Berlin: Secret Germany

It’s the dead of winter in Berlin. Or at least it was all the way into mid-February. Temperatures steadily in the minus-4 to minus-14 degree range ever since Christmas. Coldest winter in recent memory....

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Naomi Klein’s Excellent Adventures

Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (Picador, 2007); No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies (1999/2000; 2010, Fourth Estate). 1. If you’re a teacher, what your students...

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Letter from Berlin: Ashes to Ashes

It’s been the weirdest couple of weeks in Europe that I can remember in quite a while. The odd natural phenomenon that grabbed everyone’s attention is a cloud of volcanic ash from Iceland. It blanketed...

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Username: Literature

Marjorie Garber, The Use and Abuse of Literature (Pantheon, 2011). 1. The first thing Marjorie Garber talks about in The Use and Abuse of Literature is the decline of reading. Or, rather, the first...

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When Atoms Collide

Stephen Greenblatt, The Swerve: How the World Became Modern (2011).   In Stephen Greenblatt’s The Swerve: How the World Became Modern, the renowned Shakespearean scholar and Harvard prof tells a...

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