Stories
How to keep a notebook. Or how I do.
“It’s okay,” a guy tells his dog. “It’s all right, buddy.” “Is everyone feeling weird today?” another man asks him. “It’s the atmosphere,” the dog guy says. “What does that mean?” “We’re victims of the chem trails in the sky.” That’s something I wrote in one of the notebooks I always carry. Sometimes I use […]
Film Review: The Return of the G’psgolox Pole
The documentary opens with a pan up a totem pole in a Swedish museum, far away from where it was carved in the 19th century on the northwest coast of Canada. The historic pole is shackled by a collar and suspended—imprisoned—in wires. The symbolism reverberates through the film, which I stumbled on while I was searching […]
Old friends and new connections: a small memoir
I had a friend in high school, a guy I never saw afterward, although I always thought fondly and vaguely that we might eventually meet again. Then one day I got a high school update saying that Derek had suffered a stroke. He had lived with the after-effects for several years but had died not […]
The use of AI in publishing vs. Samantha Harvey’s Booker-winning approach to writing
What is the future of publishing in a world of artificial intelligence? (What’s the future of anything these days?) Will Anderson of Penguin Random House in New York says he sees two things: better written non-fiction books and novels more centred on feelings. In other words, non-fiction books written with the assistance of AI models […]
Altman versus Zuckerberg: getting one AI model to diss another
It was a boring business day. So I pivoted, and had tons of fun pitting Sam Altman’s Chat GPT against Mark Zuckerberg’s new AI model, Llama 3. The issue: stealing writers’ copyrighted books to train artificial intelligence models. An Atlantic magazine scoop by Alex Reisner shows that Zuckerberg’s Meta operation is using pirate sites to train its […]
How to spin gold from dross (meaning ourselves)
I was about to leave the courthouse when one of the journalists intercepted me. “We’ve got the cameras set up outside,” she said. “Can you give us a comment?” I didn’t want to. I profoundly didn’t want to. I was emotionally exhausted after attending a series of hearings spread out over several months. All I wanted to […]
Writing tip: edit your ideas as rigorously as your prose
I don’t know when I decided to be a writer. As far as I remember, I always wanted to write, and I have no idea why. I must have talked about it early on, since I have a photograph of myself sitting at a toy typewriter our parents gave me when I was seven years […]
Book(s) Review: Orbital and The Western Wind by Samantha Harvey
Two or three years ago, a friend visiting from London left me a copy of British author Samantha’s Harvey’s novel The Western Wind, which she’d bought to read on the plane. I’d never heard of Samantha Harvey, although she’d written three previous novels and been on the long- and shortlists for a slew of impressive prizes. […]
The Wonderful World of Oz. Or Tuffy, as the case may be
Tuffy Truesdell originally shows up in wrestling databases in 1937, although his first recorded match with an alligator is listed ten years later. On March 7, 1947, Tuffy defeated A Wrestling Alligator in Wichita, Kansas, in seven minutes flat. By June 5 of that same year, the alligator had a name. In a show at […]
Book Review: In the Skin of a Lion by Michael Ondaatje
When I read that the Oak Leaf Steam Baths was about to be demolished, I got in my car and drove over to Bathurst Street to take a final look. One of my favorite parts of Michael Ondaatje’s classic novel, In the Skin of a Lion, is set in the baths. It’s just a scene, a […]
Book(s) Review: Stroll by Shawn Micallef and The Suicide Magnet by Paul McLaughlin
Back in the day, a wrestler named Tuffy Truesdell lived on Ferrier Avenue in east-end Toronto, not far from where we live now. I never knew him, but the uncle of one of my in-laws did. The wonderfully-named Tuffy kept a succession of alligators in his basement, all of them called Rodney. He wrestled them […]
Feeding the Little Free Libraries one final time
The last of my backlist books found their way into Little Free Libraries a few days ago—this time with the help of a small assistant. They’re now known around here as Tiny Libraries, and my autumn project of giving away four boxes of books sent by a bankrupt publisher has come to a slightly-belated close. […]
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