The cheapest car in the world, the Tata Nano, was sold to its first customer this week, a 59-year-old customs officer from Mumbai. In January 2008, Devin DeCiantis wrote about the Nano for The Walrus blogs, and wondered aloud if Canadian auto companies could follow India’s innovative example. Read the article here.
Here’s a video of managing editor Jared Bland’s recent interview with Stephen Marche, for the first Walrus Reads event at McNally Robinson‘s new Toronto bookstore.
This Thursday, in celebration of our new Summer Reading issue, The Walrus and McNally Robinson are proud to present managing editor Jared Bland in conversation with writer Stephen Marche.
Stephen Marche is the author of Shining at the Bottom of the Sea (2007) and Raymond and Hannah (2005). He currently writes “A Thousand Words About Our Culture,” a monthly column for Esquire magazine, and “Close Reading,” a weekly column for The National Post, in addition to opinion pieces for The New Republic, Salon, the Globe and Mail and Toronto Star. He received a doctorate in Early Modern Drama in 2005 from the University of Toronto.
The event will take place on Thursday, July 9 at 7pm, at the McNally Robinson bookstore at Don Mills Road & Lawrence Avenue East. Full map here. Call the store at 416-384-0084 for more info.
Damian Rogers wrote the poem “Dream of the Last Shaker” for The Walrus in the Jan/Feb 2009 issue. She’s also written a short article about Shakers (and dancing) for Ryeberg.com, an elegant new Canadian “curated video” site that, according to its creator Erik Rutherford,
invites smart, distinguished people to select and write about YouTube videos (or videos from any other video-hosting site). Each of these individual pieces becomes a “curated video.”
Ryeberg’s writing team includes several Walrus contributors — including Jon Paul Fiorentino, Micah Toub and Christine Pountney — as well as Sheila Heti, Russell Smith and Lynn Crosbie.
Damian Rogers’ “Destroy Your Safe and Happy Life,” [Ryberg]
From the Dept. of Shameless Self-Promotion: We’re pleased to announce that Walrus contributor Nick Hune-Brown has a new musical, Just East of Broadway, opening tonight at the Toronto Fringe Festival. Nick, who moonlights as the keyboard player for the wonderful Hooded Fang, also co-wrote the 2007 fringe hit Lord of the Rings: The Musical: The Musical!, which the Toronto Star described as “cheerful and slapdash.” Best of luck to him, like he needs it.
Click below for a short description of the play and showtimes at their MySpace site; for the rest of you outside Toronto, The Walrus is happy to showcase this semi-kinda-exclusive demo track from the musical, “The Cookie Never Lies,” performed by Hune-Brown and the show’s director, Lorna Wright.
“The Cookie Never Lies,” [MP3]
Just East of Broadway showtimes, [MySpace]
Interview by David Balzer.From her magnum opus, Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson to Break, Blow, Burn, her recent anthology of 43 poems accompanied by close readings, Camille Paglia has become renowned for her irascibility, her indignation, and her blistering wit. Few public intellectuals have been able to squeeze more out of a half-hour — which is what she gave me a few weeks ago, the day after her lecture at the Royal Ontario Museum in June — a talent that speaks to her militancy in the face of a culture that has turned swiftly from the kinds of towering aesthetics and muscular analysis she holds so dear.
It is no coincidence, then, that her talk, on the occasion of the ROM’s Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit, concerned “Hollywood and the Bible,” specifically Cecil B. DeMille’s 1956 epic The Ten Commandments. Clearly in reverence of the old American tradition of female Moseses like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Aimee Semple McPherson, Paglia is bombastic and contentious in front of a crowd, inviting fans and detractors alike to listen and testify. Billed as an atheist who had come to defend religion, she spoke first of her Italian-Catholic upbringing, using it as a springboard for an argument about teaching religion in the classroom as a historical compass and a commanding cultural presence. In response to a question on Christopher Hitchens’ God Is Not Great, she said defiantly of its title, “I am willing to let my entire legacy rest on one sentence from Sexual Personae: ‘God is man’s greatest idea.’ Let his entire legacy rest on that.” (Read the rest of the interview…)
Interview by Dave Morris. There’s a certain disdain in the terms people use to describe Christopher Hitchens. “Bad boy” and “rock star” are quite popular, not least because they subtly suggest that the long-time columnist, literary critic and political commentator’s ardent and passionate mode of arguing — some might even say bullying — masks a lack of substance.
After spending the better part of an hour in the well-appointed 18th-floor bar of the Park Hyatt, trying to find criticisms of his book God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything that had a hope of sticking, I have one observation to offer: Hitchens freely acknowledges evidence that could undermine his argument, and has substantial respect for those who do the same. Were he a mere showman, or worse, a propagandist, he might try to control the line of questioning so as to avoid being placed in any kind of negative light. But Hitchens never avoids questions that draw him towards controversial or difficult topics — if he makes statements that seem dangerously off-the-cuff, it’s because he’s always willing to clarify or expand on them until his position is clear. Read the interview.
“As for ‘genre fiction’ — mystery, horror, romance, science fiction — none of it is for children.”
Ursula K. LeGuin
The July/August summer reading issue of The Walrus is finally online, featuring fiction and reportage from the best of Canada. As well as reports by John Lorinc on Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney, Christopher Frey on African Pentacostalism, and James Glave on eco-funerals, we’re also proud to present four short genre stories composed by four of Canada’s hottest young writers. Read:
SCIENCE FICTION! The Crow Procedure by Stephen Marche
ROMANCE! The Nerve by Lee Henderson
HORROR! Real Estate by Rivka Galchen
COWBOYS! The True Sorrows of Calamity Jane by Joseph Boyden
And also, coming soon next week… Marche, Henderson, Galchen and Boyden attack The Walrus‘s own “Mad Libs… OF TERROR!” Plus, don’t forget to try out for our Guilty Pleasures writing contest.
In September 2006, The Walrus published a report on Iran by Deborah Campbell, chronicling the opposition to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, shortly after his first appointment as President. You can read the full article here, now updated to include a remarkable set of photos taken by Iranian photographer Alfred Yahhobzadeh, all of which originally appeared in the print edition, but are now published for the first time on the Walrus website.
Games company Electronic Arts have reported record first-week sales of The Sims 3, the newest game in the Sims franchise, with over 1.4 millions copies sold for PC and Mac. Earlier this year, novelist Lee Henderson reported on The Sims, and its creator Will Wright, for the March 2009 issue of The Walrus. Read his full story here.
Wanna hobnob with the literati and meet the authors in the running for Ontario’s biggest book prize? Authors at Harbourfront Centre is hosting an exclusive, invitation-only event on the eve of the 22nd Trillium Book Award. You can’t buy tickets to this event, but you might be able to WIN some. We have 5 pairs to give away to Walrus readers. One grand-prize winner will also receive a complete set of this year’s Trillium-nominated books — just email your name and home address to trillium@walrusmagazine.com, with the header “Trillium Reading Contest.”
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Legong: I know I am replying to this pathetic, racist statement a little late and the whole ignorant rant probably doesn’t even deserve a reply. Wanhenglo, if we were all to generalise about...
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