Sponging The Stone

I DON'T REMEMBER reading the book until my adult years, yet Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol seems always to have been with me. The Carol entered my life when I lay on the living room floor with a belly full of Christmas turkey avoiding adult conversation at my grandmother's dinner. My first recollection of the story is in the form of the 1951 American film version Scrooge. Alastair Sim, the most robust interpreter of Scrooge, fascinated me by his depiction of a man who starts off as "solitary as an oyster" and winds up a "second father" to

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Monsters at the Margin

VIRTUE IS FOUND at the margins of society more often than at its centre. If this is so, Mary Shelley's Monster is a real find! Her creature is an isolate of great sensitivity, kindness, and insight. Contrary to James Whale's 1931 film of the Creature as a lumbering dolt, Mary Shelley's Monster was modeled on Rousseau's notion of humanity as the "noble savage." The nobility of the Creature is evident as he unveils his chronicle to Victor Frankenstein upon the icy crags of Mount Blanc. Meet Frankenstein's Creature

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Passions of Prometheus

I DON'T THINK that it is inconsequential that my heroes are men.... It is not because women are not as passionate, creative, or in any way undeserving that they don't make my short list of heroes. Rather, it is because I share with most men an inclination toward "Prometheanism". I don't know why it is not as prevalent in most women. Perhaps it is the hard wiring of centuries of birthing and caring for life (if I am allowed that stereotypical explanation). I do not think it is because women are morally superior to men, only that

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A Reading Guide For After The Flood

Lovers of books often complain that we read too slowly and wonder if we will ever take the time and effort to master the The Art of Speed Reading. My difficulty is that sometimes, strike that - often, that I need to acquire the Art of Reading Slowly to integrate what I read. I don't do that nearly enough. My habitual approach is to read a book with my mind and my hand outstretched to the read. I read distractedly often merely to get the basic gist, get through to book, and then add another book to my growing list

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A Response to The Shadow Year

Despite their difficulties the children are creative and imaginative. Together in their basement they invent a cardboard reconstruction of their town. Through a strange combination of mathematics and intuition, Mary, who may be borderline autistic or schizophrenic, directs the structure of the town with its clay characters who represent real-life people. Mary's two brothers discover an uncanny correspondence between the positioning of Mary's figures in her play construction and the precise geographical location of the townspeople as they go about their business. Much of the threesome's fun involves spying on the townsfolk using Mary's vision

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Marriage and Mary Shelley

I WAS SITTING in Merk's restaurant out on Pembina Highway with Bev in 1990 when I solemnly swore that if I were to do it again, I definitely would not want to be married. At the time I k that marriage left a very sour taste in my mouth. It wasn't only that I hadn't taken care of my marriage of seventeen years well enough to make it worthwhile, it was the whole idea of being married that irked me. I joked about marriage being a socio-economic relationship which was merely functional to get a mortgage

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