A creepy story about acquiring a chunk of rotting meat for a new neighbour.
Tag: Art
How I Wrote a Character-Driven Story
I had to begin not with a fully outlined plot, but with a fully-fleshed person.
Venera Dreams: A Weird Entertainment by Claude Lalumière
Back in November, I met Claude Lalumière at the Yellow Door readings, where he read from his phantasmagorical mosaic Venera Dreams: A Weird Entertainment. His latest book details the history of a mysterious city-state and its erotically-charged populace of artists and madmen. It is a visionary piece of work filled with atavistic rituals, ancient goddess cults, and …
Continue reading Venera Dreams: A Weird Entertainment by Claude Lalumière
One Thousand and One Hockey Nights in Canada
Canadientalism is a discourse of American imperialist stereotypes aimed at defining the essential nature of the "exotic North."
World Fantasy Convention 2015, Part I: Guy Gavriel Kay’s Children of the Earth and Sky
He spoke in a small presentation room called Broadway I in the Saratoga Hilton at Saratoga Springs, NY, introducing for the first time the central concept behind his new novel. It was Guy Gavriel Kay giving the origin story behind Children of the Earth and Sky, due for release this Spring, and I was among the privileged few to hear him …
“Index”: an HTMElegy
On CKUT (McGill Campus Radio) this week on Monday and at the launch for the Veg magazine yesterday, I read some magical poems I composed recently. One was inspired by Gwendolyn MacEwen and John Dee, the other was an elimination of James Frazer's The Golden Bough, and the last was a pantoum, a fabulously musical …
The Almásy Controversy: History, Fantasy, and The English Patient
The following is an update of an essay I submitted to a class on Michael Ondaatje taught by Prof. Robert Lecker at McGill. The English Patient, especially after it was transformed into a movie, ignited a controversy about historical representation. Was it ethical to rewrite the death of marginal desert explorer László Almásy by having …
Continue reading The Almásy Controversy: History, Fantasy, and The English Patient
6 Similarities between Guy Gavriel Kay and Michael Ondaatje
Embedding myself in the novels and poetry of Michael Ondaatje this semester in an MA seminar taught by Prof. Robert Lecker, I could not help but notice the similarity between the thematic/artistic concerns of the author of The English Patient and Guy Gavriel Kay. Both are great writers and both are Canadian. Upon first glance, …
Continue reading 6 Similarities between Guy Gavriel Kay and Michael Ondaatje
“Gecko” : a poem for Michael Ondaatje
Two weeks ago, my seminar class on Michael Ondaatje got together to put on a fantastic presentation for Professor Robert Lecker. We were reading Ondaatje's poem "Tin Roof" and instead of writing a four-page essay response, which we are supposed to do every week, Prof. Lecker told us to go do something as a group. …
Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie
The following is an excerpt from the presentation I made earlier this week for my seminar on (Post)Colonial Geographies with Professor Sandeep Banerjee at McGill University. The young protagonist of Salman Rushdie's children's fantasy novel Haroun and the Sea of Stories asks his father Rashid Khalifa, a great storyteller better known as the Shah of …
Continue reading Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie
Matthew Rettino 