Saturday May 10, 2008
E-VOX POPULI: OUR READERS WRITE
Kendall Defoe from Montreal writes: Has anyone given a thought to the dictionary? It may be one of those choices that is so obvious that it is overlooked, but it is hard to imagine the literature of the last 300 years without it. Writers need it; students need it; politicians and pundits who think they know better need it. And it is an interesting choice in that it is a book that was not written, it was compiled, first and famously by Samuel Johnson. Then there was the Oxford English Dictionary, taking more than a century to put together and relying on the input of scholars and at least one madman. Today, we all benefit from the labour and talent of endless minds engaged in creating the other Good Book. This deserves some space on your list and in the conversation.
Death, where is thy sting? Joyce Carol Oates has it
WILD NIGHTS!Stories About the Last Daysof Poe, Dickinson, Twain,James and HemingwayBy Joyce Carol OatesHarperCollins, 238 pages, $26.95Given that Joyce Carol Oates has published at least 20 volumes of short fiction - and more than 30 novels - readers might expect Wild Nights! to show the symptoms of creative exhaustion. Not so. Though uneven in quality, these stories imagining the last days of a handful of major American writers display the unstoppable energy and high-beam intelligence of vintage Oates.
Shedding lite on the Middle East
SHUT UP I'M TALKINGAnd Other Diplomacy LessonsI Learned in the Israeli GovernmentBy Gregory LeveyFree Press, 257 pages. $28In case you can't tell from the title, the new book by Toronto writer Gregory Levey is light reading. Very light.
Goodbye, America. Hello, China
THE SECOND WORLDEmpires and Influence in the New Global OrderBy Parag KhannaRandom House, 466 pages, $34Parag Khanna speaks with a big, bold and assured voice. He tells the story of a new global order that has already replaced the brief ''unipolar decade'' of U.S. hegemony after the Cold War ended. Three great imperial centres of gravity - the United States, Europe and China - are now shaping the new rules of globalization.
Magical, mystical, historical romp
THE ENCHANTRESSOF FLORENCEBy Salman RushdieKnopf, 356 pages, $32It begins with literal brilliance as a handsome Western traveller, calling himself ''Mogor dell'Amore'' (the Mughal of Love), arrives at Emperor Akbar's newly built court in Fatehpur Sikri, where the lake looks like ''a sea of molten gold.'' The stranger, whose long yellow hair flows down his face like the golden lake, rides a bullock-cart like a god, but he is really a man with a secret meant only for the emperor's ears.
SYMPOSIUM: RISK
AT ISSUEIn the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and the resulting response, there's been considerable discussion of risk, risk assessment and what sort of response is appropriate in various circumstances. In her recent review of Dan Gardner's book Risk, Heather Menzies took the author to task for what she said was his understating of real consequences in the theoretical assessment of the nature of risk. Here, Gardner addresses the dual nature of risk perception - the rational and the irrational - while Menzies insists that abstract concepts must be measured against real-life events.
Aboard the Baby Backlash Bandwagon
UNDER PRESSURERescuing Childhood From the Cultureof Hyper-ParentingBy Carl HonoreKnopf Canada, 292 pages, $32PARENTING, INC.How We Are Sold On $800 Strollers, Fetal Education, Baby Sign Language, Sleeping Coaches, Toddler Couture, and Diaper Wipe Warmers - and What It Means for Our Children
PAPERBACKS
THE PESTHOUSEBy Jim Crace, Anchor Canada,255 pages, $21With the U.S. in post-apocalyptic chaos, Franklin Lopez journeys east, hoping to find a ship to Europe, when he comes upon a sick woman who has been left to die.
CRIME BOOKS
CHARLEY'S WEBBy Joy Fielding, Doubleday Canada, 432 pages, $29.95Charlotte (Charley) Webb is a columnist for a Palm Beach newspaper, single mother of two, with two successful (and disapproving) sisters, and one confused and possibly drug- addled brother. Add nasty neighbours (one has a fit of pique when Charley writes about her ''passion party,'' where guests compare dildos instead of kitchenware), and a strained relationship with Mamma, who's back after running off with her girlfriend 20 years before, and you have a classic Joy Fielding character, star of her bestselling and much-loved novels.
More on Israelis and Palestinians
THE HEBREW REPUBLICHow Secular Democracy and Global Enterprise Will Bring Israel Peace at LastBy Bernard Avishai, Harcourt, 290 pages, $28.95Montreal native and respected political and business commentator Avishai offers a three-pronged solution to the world's most intractable problem. First, and most controversially, he proposes a ''Hebrew republic,'' a Jewish state that would not favour Jews or Judaism. He also proposes a peace accord with the Palestinians along the lines of the Geneva proposals, to be followed (and cemented) by an economic union of Israel, Palestine and Jordan. It's that middle step, though, that's the steepest.
Can and Kant
Kant was a terrible writer. He was honest enough to admit it, and gracious enough to publish his longing for the elegance and clarity of style with which two of his contemporaries - David Hume and Moses Mendelssohn - were born. Kant knew The Critique of Pure Reason was a problem, and his later attempts to revise or summarize it only made things worse. Still, the book is the single greatest work of modern philosophy, and has but one rival - Plato's Republic - in the history of thought. It's not only general readers who are put off by its clumsy, sluggish writing; most university courses spend so much time on the first half that they stop before reaching what Kant said was the point.
Quiet, dear, Mummy's writing
DOUBLE LIVESWriting and MotherhoodEdited by Shannon Cowan,Fiona Tinwei Lam and Cathy StonehouseMcGill-Queen's University Press, 256 pages, $22.95Doubles Lives is a provocative collection of 25 essays about the influence and bearing motherhood has on being a writer, and vice versa. The majority are so well written that they undermine at least part of the book's premise: the terrible struggle between two all-encompassing occupations. However difficult it may have been, especially for the young mothers, to find the personal space, the musing time or simply a brain to write with, they did it and did it well.
Red devils and inner demons
BURNING DOWN THE HOUSEFighting Fires and Losing MyselfBy Russell WangerskyThomas Allen, 271 pages, $32.95I now know that ''a thin, sugary smell reminiscent of caramel'' may sometimes presage a hay fire. That the heavy protein foam used by firefighters smells ''for all the world like hot dogs.'' That ''10-45'' on a police scanner is code for the discovery of a dead body and ''Code-4 medical'' is shorthand for a patient just moments away from perishing. That in a house fire, paint blisters fast and then ''the bubbles crust over black'' before splitting. I now know that whether you live or die in a gas explosion sometimes comes down to ''bare-naked chance'': whether you happen to be inhaling or exhaling at the moment of ''whoof.''
BESTSELLERS
FictionTHIS WEEK/LAST WEEK/WEEKS ON LIST/TITLE/AUTHOR/PUBLISHER/PRICE 1 19Remember Me?, by Sophie Kinsella (Dial, $30). 2 -1Sundays At Tiffany's, by James Patterson and Gabrielle Charbonnet (Little, Brown, $27.99). 3 22The Whole Truth, by David Baldacci (Grand Central, $29.99). 4 514The Appeal, by John Grisham (Doubleday, $33). 5 650A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini (Viking Canada, $34). 6 43Belong To Me, by Marisa De Los Santos (Morrow, $18.95). 7 104Friday Nights, by Joanna Trollope (McArthur and Company, $24.95). 8 89Change Of Heart, by Jodi Picoult (Simon and Schuster, $29.99). 9 93The Miracle At Speedy Motors, by Alexander McCall Smith (Knopf Canada, $29.95). 10 76Lost Souls, by Lisa Jackson (Kensington, $20).
Impossible to say
PARDON OUR MONSTERSBy Andrew HoodVehicule, 182 pages, $17.95Andrew Hood's Pardon Our Monsters opens on a muggy summer day in 1991, somewhere in small-town Ontario. Joe is 8. He's a pain in the butt and knows it, cultivates it, even when it means a knuckle-dusting from his brother, Shannon. He makes a buzzy insect sound that he can weirdly extend until it drives Shan batty. We join them en route to a swim in the river, Joe plaguing Shan like a gnat.
Israel's endless birth pains
1948The First Arab-Israeli WarBy Benny MorrisYale University Press,524 pages, $32.50Benny Morris established his reputation as the leading ''new historian'' among Israeli academics with the publication of The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem in 1988. This group of scholars was determined to strip away the mythology surrounding the established Israeli narrative, the David and Goliath analogy, and explore what really happened within the Zionist enterprise at the birth of Israel. They presented their ''cold hard truth'' and faced a storm of invective as many Israelis and their Diaspora supporters saw their most cherished beliefs challenged as never before.
