tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-85652450089345219022012-01-26T10:52:36.356-08:00Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.comBlogger2351100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-471977738240905282012-01-26T10:37:00.000-08:002012-01-26T10:52:36.370-08:00

Yeah, I know - I'm just as surprised as anyone. But yes, there's a new review of Off Book over on Daniel Perry's blog that popped up yesterday. Perry's got some nice things to say about the book's characters and story, and he's spot on when he describes it as a "hybrid of the academic novel and the bildungsroman." He is also, sadly, spot on when pointing out the text's various flaws and errors,

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-14193695249234260572012-01-25T04:51:00.000-08:002012-01-25T04:57:31.251-08:00

It’s not so much the idea as what you do with it. This has been the mantra of countless critics, reviewers, writing profs and editors, and it’s generally true. You can write about something as ordinary as surviving a trip to the supermarket (as, say, Amy Jones does brilliantly in her short story “How to Survive a Summer in the City”) or something as extraordinary as surviving the dropping of the

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-68068630181321542072012-01-18T04:49:00.000-08:002012-01-18T04:54:11.815-08:00

It’s been a while since I’ve dipped into the strange, elusive world that is French literature. With the exception of a Michel Houellebecq novel a few years ago and a backlist title by Marie-Claire Blais last year (she’s French Canadian, yes, but the elliptical weirdness and envelope-pushing was still there), I can’t think of the last time I had my brainmeats expanded by the forays of a French

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-2055755605235916142012-01-12T02:41:00.000-08:002012-01-12T02:44:09.796-08:00

If you read a lot of literary journals, as we do in this household, you’ll know that every issue of every journal is a distillation of the very best writing among hundreds or even thousands of submissions. So to take every issue of every major journal published in Canada in any given year and painstakingly select 50 of the best poems from them, then what you end up with is a distillation of a

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-43408439963582623162012-01-11T08:03:00.000-08:002012-01-11T08:05:35.386-08:00

Curious what all the moms out there think of this interesting article from today's UK Guardian on French parenting.

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-90141515372396356682012-01-08T14:36:00.000-08:002012-01-08T14:38:29.764-08:00

I consider it a real mark of my maturity, the way my opinion of Mavis Gallant has evolved over the years. When I first read her work in the form of her collection Home Truths, back when I was a fresh-faced grad student in Winnipeg, I remember being less than impressed. “What’s the big deal with this woman?” I remember telling myself. “These seem to be little more than character sketches. Where

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-11643950513177132272012-01-05T17:29:00.000-08:002012-01-05T17:31:05.056-08:00

When it comes to the poetry of Dionne Brand, (as the title of one of her other books tells us), no language is neutral. And in the case of Ossuaries, her most recently released collection, no language is safe either. In this starling long poem, words and phrases become at once unshackled and conscripted– freed from their conventional meanings and complacent connotations, but also enlisted to

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-39660933686367336192012-01-04T17:59:00.000-08:002012-01-04T18:01:45.699-08:00

Anyone who has read The New Yorker even occasionally over the last two decades will be familiar with the works of George Saunders. His short fiction has become a mainstay in the pages of that venerable magazine and he counts himself along with Alice Munro and Mavis Gallant as one of its most constant and consistently good contributors. In Persuasion Nation, published in 2006, collects many of

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-79651015570998243352012-01-01T16:23:00.000-08:002012-01-01T16:42:46.315-08:00

So it’s been a bit quiet here on Free Range Reading over the last couple of weeks, but of course that’s because I’ve been on vacation and trying very hard not to do any actual work. But I have taken some time from all this lounging around in my pajamas and drinking myself blind to compile my annual reading year in review – my top 10 books, my top 5 disappointments. After much eggnog-induced

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-11094919292916822312011-12-14T06:29:00.000-08:002011-12-14T07:07:15.800-08:00

So apparently I have an essay in the latest issue of CNQ. Who knew! I certainly didn't. I wrote and submitted the piece back in the summer but wasn't given any date for publication. I found out it was in print only after my future in-laws read the piece and conveyed to RR how much they enjoyed it.At any rate, the essay discusses an early novel by David Helwig called The Glass Knight, published

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-79343529243234593212011-12-09T04:40:00.000-08:002011-12-09T04:48:33.490-08:00

Sometimes, you just can’t judge a book by its (back) cover (blurb). If you were to read the impenetrable bumpf describing Beth E. Janzen’s first full-length poetry collection The Enchanted House, you’d probably be left scratching your head as to exactly what the poems were about. The back cover’s vague plaudits indicate that something is going on here, but they belie the clear-eyed and deliberate

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-29531101677516090372011-12-07T17:00:00.000-08:002011-12-07T17:03:17.238-08:00

Just a quick capsule review of this book, which is more of a reference guide to a wide variety of poetic forms, both well known and not-so well known. Parrott has assembled a collection of – and this is a generous description – “light verse” exemplifying various modes of poetry, from the haiku and sestina to the glosa (here called “glose”) and the nonet. Early on, How to Be Well-Versed in Poetry

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-34311185553408632442011-12-02T04:43:00.000-08:002011-12-02T04:50:08.788-08:00

The fall of empire can be such an unpleasant thing. Up becomes down, moral relativism runs amok, and competing forces battle to fill the void left by the departing hegemony. It’s also an occasion for the sheer ludicrousness of existence, the unstable grasp we often have on human interactions, to come to the fore. So who better to write a farce about the collapse of colonialism and its very human

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-31288210480032352172011-11-25T04:13:00.001-08:002011-11-25T04:18:48.426-08:00

Ack, I lied! My other Quill & Quire review, that of Tristan Hughes's wonderful novel Eye Lake, is indeed online - over at Coach House's website. (Just goes to show one should check Google before checking anything else.) Anyway, I've seen hardly ANYTHING else out there about this splendid book, which is a shame. But you should definitely go pick up a copy; you won't be disappointed.M.

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-68003162723805408492011-11-25T04:04:00.000-08:002011-11-25T04:11:28.699-08:00

Quill & Quire has posted my recent review of The Return, by Dany Laferrière. You may recall this novel, translated from the French by David Homel, making the long list for this year's Giller Prize. I wasn't exactly blown away by the book, but I still think there's enough in it to make it worth reading. I have another review in the pages of Q&Q right now, but it doesn't seem to be online yet. I'll

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-17763381536765479142011-11-20T15:03:00.000-08:002011-11-20T15:05:50.615-08:00

I had the great pleasure of reading with Jeff Bursey back in August at Type Books here in Toronto, but I’ve only now gotten around to reading his 2010 novel Verbatim. The event at Type was one of the most enjoyable I’ve ever done, as it involved myself and others participating in Jeff’s portion of the show by assuming a role from Verbatim and reading out lines like a kind of play.The need for

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-73903788533979234692011-11-13T16:04:00.000-08:002011-11-13T16:09:13.768-08:00

E.M. Forster held the rare distinction of being a modernist writer without writing much like a modernist. While Joyce was going insane with recreating stream of consciousness on the page and Woolf with the quotidian detail of everyday life, Forster was busy with far more classical ambitions. His work tackled big-P Picture ideas through the lens of Flaubertian realism, and this put a lot of his

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-4263742746626031942011-11-05T13:06:00.000-07:002011-11-05T13:11:51.728-07:00

It’s probably no accident that the cover of Lynn Coady’s new novel, The Antagonist, looks a bit like an incomplete Facebook profile. The notion of an online persona looms large in this book about an erstwhile hockey enforcer named Gordon “Rank” Rankin Jr. who uses email to confront an old university chum named Adam after Adam has filched part of Rank’s life story in a novel he's published. Rank

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-30685278021155534482011-11-02T16:46:00.000-07:002011-11-02T16:57:54.249-07:00

I am probably not the target audience for David Gilmour’s new book, The Perfect Order of Things, and yet I am, paradoxically perhaps, an ideal reviewer for it – considering that I haven’t read any of his previous works before. The Perfect Order of Things borrows narration from Gilmour’s previous books to create a sort of neo-meta-narrative strategy, in which an unnamed protagonist revisits the

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-85467057266327328892011-10-28T04:49:00.000-07:002011-10-28T04:56:21.515-07:00

It was really great to settle back into a new book of stories by my good friend J.J. Steinfeld. A Glass Shard and Memory is his first full-length collection of short fiction since 2003’s Would You Hide Me? (A short novel he published in 2009, Word Burials, did, however, include a handful of short stories at the back.) As I mentioned in a review last year of his latest poetry book, I’ve known J.J.

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-70710287052056156342011-10-25T04:40:00.000-07:002011-10-25T04:49:41.136-07:00

Perhaps the best way to describe what Gunmetal Blue is, is to describe for you what it is not. Poet, critic and family physician Shane Neilson has not written a pat memoir making pat connections between medicine and literature. Nor has he written a densely academic treatise about the role poetry plays in healing. He hasn’t written a sensationalized tell-all about his patients and how their

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-10465253296951917022011-10-18T03:47:00.000-07:002011-10-18T04:25:09.911-07:00

As everyone probably knows by now, Esi Edugyan’s Half-Blood Blues has gotten nods from pretty much every major literary award it’s been eligible for, including the Man Booker (announced later today), the Giller Prize and the Governor General’s Award for Literature. For a novel to pull off that kind of feat, one could argue, it needs to be about more than just one thing, to have more than one

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-14681521632981882932011-10-13T09:12:00.000-07:002011-10-13T09:24:11.283-07:00

So it looks like there’s another fracas developing around the shortlist for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry here in Canada. Whenever I see stories like this, my mind begins filling with all kinds of thoughts on how we might improve literary judging in this country, to make it less incestuous, more objective, more considered and less prone to conflicts of interest.The problem is,

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-15205551671951824832011-10-07T04:27:00.000-07:002011-10-07T04:37:19.256-07:00

I think it must be a lot of fun putting together a collected works of Leon Rooke. Such a wide oeuvre to choose from, hundreds of stories written since the 1960s. So much zaniness – and so many different kinds of zaniness – to be read and reread, and then selected, and then arranged into an order that answers to its own logic, its own peculiar arc.Hitting the Charts brings together 19 of Leon

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-37305450892544068472011-10-04T02:30:00.000-07:002011-10-04T02:49:57.638-07:00

... is what the hell is proper style for referring to the terms "long list" and "short list"? It seems we're all over the map. I was prompted to ask after spotting this piece on Michael Christie's The Beggar's Garden on cbc.ca, which, if you include the web abstract, makes four inconsistent uses of the terms - longlist, long list, short list and, most inexplicably, short-list (as a noun) - in the

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-6737272431821566682011-09-28T06:15:00.001-07:002011-09-28T06:31:46.030-07:00

It's a long way off, but I thought I'd mention now that I'm scheduled to do a reading here in Toronto as part of the Draft Reading Series on Sunday February 12, 2012. By sheer feat of coincidence, the (as for now, tentative) locale for the event is at my favourite bar in the city - The Only Café. I started drinking in this place even before I moved to the city and I continue to stop by to partake

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-60510887785674807972011-09-25T17:39:00.000-07:002011-09-25T17:43:40.593-07:00

Carol Shields is one of those writers I keep coming back to when I’m in need of some flawlessly executed expansiveness. In her very good novel Unless and in her even better novel Swann, I fell immediately in love with not only the worlds she created but also with the seemingly effortless way she created them. Shields’s writing is as reliable as any in contemporary Canadian fiction.So coming into

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-88728184731803859412011-09-20T08:41:00.000-07:002011-09-20T08:58:56.045-07:00

So something really cool has happened. RR and I have been profiled together in an article on the Canadian Bookshelf magazine website. It talks about living with and loving another writer, our relationship with each other's work, and how we get along with the ups and downs of the literary life.It also contains audio recordings of us reading from The Big Dream and Off Book respectively. (Forgive

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-56241270746336387292011-09-20T02:37:00.000-07:002011-09-20T03:00:18.875-07:00

A couple of weeks ago I attended the launch for Sachiko Murakami's latest poetry collection, Rebuild, and while there learned about a neat project she's initiated to coincide with the book's release, called Project Rebuild. It's essentially a website housing poems that you can 'move into' - i.e. edit and renovate - in order to make a new poem. I thought I'd give it a try.I tried to do something a

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-27078129644325691882011-09-15T04:39:00.000-07:002011-09-15T04:41:01.440-07:00

It’s difficult to talk about the various plot points of Michael Murphy’s debut novel, Description of the Blazing World, without giving the whole story away. The book has what we might call a diptych structure – that is, two separate narratives that alternate back and forth, chapter after chapter. The first stream introduces us to pathetic everyman Morgan Wells, who grows obsessed after a postcard

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-2776863166080644002011-09-11T14:56:00.000-07:002011-09-11T14:57:22.022-07:00

This was a reread for me, and it was quite interesting coming back to Hemingway’s short fiction after having not read much of it over the last 10 or 12 years. I figured it made sense, considering that 2011 marks the 50th anniversary of his death. I was happy to reacquaint myself with several pieces in here that I loved when I first reading – including “A Day’s Wait” (a story about a boy with a

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-54252763088055696722011-09-04T12:36:00.000-07:002011-09-04T12:43:33.170-07:00

“I suppose I must have a rock-like confidence in my own talent, for I simply did not believe that the handicap of one small illegitimate baby would make a scrap of difference to my career …” When Margaret Drabble published this line in her 1965 novel The Millstone, she may have meant for it to be taken comically, or ironically, or both. Forty-six years later, such a sentiment has thankfully

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-5134756335889997502011-09-01T12:07:00.000-07:002011-09-01T12:11:09.651-07:00

Had a great reading at Type Books last Thursday with RR and Jeff Bursey. If you missed it, Jeff put up a nice little write-up of it on his blog, which includes a nice photo of RR and me. Enjoy!

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-6499717281112898132011-08-25T09:57:00.000-07:002011-08-26T06:07:07.878-07:00

This is just going to be a short review, since I read this 1993 anthology of essays on the art of the short story more for professional development than I did for pleasure. I’m getting back into writing short stories again after a lengthy hiatus to write a new novel, and How Stories Mean came highly recommended as a text to get one thinking about the story as an art form, and to get the short

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-43946856094390827072011-08-25T05:41:00.000-07:002011-08-25T05:42:49.694-07:00

Just a friendly reminder that I'll be reading at Type Books on Queen Street tonight from 6 until 8 pm, along with RR and Jeff Bursey. Please come out if you can make - there will be cookies! (Plus literature.) M.

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-48906991756894355562011-08-22T08:42:00.000-07:002011-08-22T08:48:20.301-07:00

So both RR and I finished our rereading of John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany at the tail-end of last week as part of our Co-habitational Reading Challenge. While we both still consider the book a delightful romp and one of the great treasures of our young(er) reading years, we have to say that the book does totally fall apart in the second half or so. I suppose it’s a testament to how much

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-82999592730765246982011-08-11T08:45:00.000-07:002011-08-11T09:42:05.387-07:00

So if you’re been following along on RR’s blog, you can see that she’s already posted some wonderful stuff about our discussions of A Prayer for Owen Meany, which we’re rereading simultaneously. We had great fun going over the hilarious Christmas pageant scene last night, which to my mind is one of the funniest passages in all of American literature. (Pages 214 to 220 in the standard paperback

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-27971219716860580732011-08-08T08:55:00.000-07:002011-08-08T09:16:09.780-07:00

I know this has been making the rounds on a bunch of different websites, but I thought I'd mention it here as well: RR and I will be reading at Type Books in Toronto, along with PEI novelist Jeff Bursey, on August 25th. I met Jeff briefly about 10 years ago while I was home on the Island, and he contacted me out of the blue a couple of months ago to ask if I'd read with him while he was in town.

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-87443032987522735772011-08-08T04:43:00.000-07:002011-08-08T04:49:18.538-07:00

Many writers attempt to find the absurd in the tragic, but few are able to translate their efforts into something highly, compulsively readable. Stuart Ross, in his new novel Snowball, Dragonfly, Jew, certainly gives us a healthy dose of tragedy: his protagonist, Ben, a Jewish performance artist in Toronto, has lost both his parents to cancer, has a brother with a brain injury that has ruined his

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-12572830506656421842011-08-06T14:52:00.000-07:002011-08-06T15:04:23.547-07:00

So as many of you probably know, RR and I moved in together back in the spring. One of the things we did to cement our undying love and commitment was to painstakingly combine our huge personal libraries. While this has resulted in a massive wall of books now taking up the entire length of our living room, it did have the interesting side effect of producing a whole box’s worth of doubles. (This

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-10784014229539127952011-08-05T04:43:00.000-07:002011-08-05T04:49:26.973-07:00

There is something to be said about the beauty of concision. Tom Walmsley knows the power of the minimal, the insight and illumination it can bring to a reader’s mind. In his new novel, Dog Eat Rat, Walmsley composes scenes of incredible tightness, a ruthlessly stripped-down approach to action, dialogue and characterization. It’s a fitting style for this book, considering that his protagonist,

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-77232881244189319122011-08-02T02:40:00.000-07:002011-08-02T09:50:39.532-07:00

The Canadian literature community was saddened by the news that on June 21, Robert Kroetsch - author of more than 25 books and winner of the Governor General's Award for Fiction - had been killed in a car crash near Leduc, Alberta. When I heard about Kroetsch's death, I put out a call to various writers I know to participate in a tribute to him on this blog. The assignment was simple: choose a

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-30445321279738251532011-08-01T16:24:00.000-07:002011-08-01T18:51:15.586-07:00

It’s rare for a poetry collection’s jacket copy to say something succinct rather than hyperbolic about a poet’s work, but whoever it was at Goose Lane Editions that wrote the back-cover blurb for Jeffery Donaldson’s new book, Guesswork, certainly knew what he or she was doing. The copy describes Donaldson’s verse as “[r]evealing a mind at once conversant with literary deities and the subtleties

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-45460275638223461932011-07-27T03:53:00.000-07:002011-07-27T03:58:52.545-07:00

There are many ways to show courage through poetry. Some poems dare to let their beauty arise through the gaps in meaning, in the lacunae they create to thwart our immediate understanding. Others dare to say something outright, to take the risk of making bold, definitive statements about some aspect of the world, to conjure that whiplash snap of recognition in the reader’s mind. Robert Earl

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-15759458215078950682011-07-25T04:40:00.000-07:002011-07-25T04:49:14.584-07:00

Oh, Stephen Fry. It takes a certain kind of delightful genius to write a series of memoirs and still make the reader feel welcome even if he hasn’t read them in order. I’m certainly in this boat, not having encountered Fry’s earlier autobiography, Moab Is My Washpot, before cracking the covers of his latest tome, The Fry Chronicles. No matter: Fry, that famed British actor, author, gadfly, and

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-27589104080965096752011-07-22T04:36:00.000-07:002011-07-22T04:42:55.932-07:00

I first learned of Richard Russo’s work back when I living in Korea. At the school where I taught, his novel Nobody’s Fool got passed around among the teachers faster than the flu. I remember it being a hugely funny, expansive novel full of richly drawn characters and an intricate plot – something reminiscent of the best of John Irving. The consensus seemed to be that Empire Falls was an even

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-57309786788115710852011-07-15T04:30:00.000-07:002011-07-15T04:37:40.219-07:00

As I pointed out last year in my review of her novel The Black Prince, I came to Iris Murdoch’s work with a completely unwarranted perception of it –unwarranted because I had hitherto read exactly nothing by her. Something about it being dry, prim and claustrophobically British. Of course, The Black Prince blew the wheels off that prejudice, and her 1964 novel, The Italian Girl, does it again. I’

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-55674030359155042422011-07-10T15:34:00.000-07:002011-07-10T15:44:03.396-07:00

Well, vacation is over and I've safely returned to the ensconcements of my Toronto routines. England was lovely - 11 days of travelling around London, Oxford and Manchester seeing the sites and taking in the fun and beverages all around us. Highlights including watching a Tom Stoppard play in London, visiting the International Anthony Burgess Centre in Manchester, visiting the British Museum,

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-1807546040916108482011-06-28T12:37:00.000-07:002011-06-28T12:45:52.153-07:00

Well, RR and I off later tonight on a good old-fashioned English holiday. I for one have never been on that side of the Atlantic ocean and am very much looking forward to soaking up some old-world charm. It's going to be a fairly jaunty trip (see, I'm picking up the lingo already) with excursions to London, Oxford and Manchester. Highlights for me will be the London Museum, pretty much all of

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-46103394297883593802011-06-28T03:59:00.000-07:002011-06-28T04:03:33.041-07:00

Recently, I was reading a series of articles in The National Post that asked a group of poets in the lead up to this year’s Griffin Prize if there is such a thing as a “perfect poem.” At the time the question struck me as a little daft, but then I read John Terpstra’s 2003 collection Disarmament and had second thoughts. His piece “Planetary Lives” may never achieve poetic immortality, but it

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-70717363571079306142011-06-27T04:28:00.000-07:002011-06-27T04:36:57.463-07:00

It’s fascinating to go back with an author who has enjoyed a very long and productive career, a career twinkling with awards and accolades, and read her debut novel, written at a time when her talents were clearly evident but not yet fully formed. The novelist in question here is A.S. Byatt. I’ve read a couple of her other works – Possession and Babel Tower – and consider them two of the most

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-18170083052958538942011-06-22T11:01:00.000-07:002011-06-22T11:12:29.360-07:00

I was very saddened to hear the news this afternoon that Robert Kroetsch, famed Canadian novelist, poet and critic, was killed in a car accident last night following a literary event in Alberta. As I mentioned in my review of his novel Badlands last year, I met Kroetsch a couple of times during my time as a graduate student in Winnipeg in 2000-2002. I know there are many writers -especially poets

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-77694362977123557862011-06-20T04:40:00.000-07:002011-06-20T04:44:34.612-07:00

I came to Karen Solie’s 2009 collection Pigeon with some pretty high expectations, not only because of the cavalcade of awards it garnered (including the 2010 Griffin Prize) but because I loved her first book of poems, Short Haul Engine, so much. The great strength of Solie’s writing, evident in many places throughout Pigeon, is how she creates just enough of a gap between authorial intention and

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-12300911416950891252011-06-17T04:06:00.000-07:002011-06-17T04:12:09.108-07:00

Roddy Doyle has done something remarkable with his new short story collection, Bullfighting: he has taken the precepts that normally govern the best of women’s writing and turned them on their heads – or more accurately, turned them around to face the other direction. His subject here is the emotional worlds of men, the deep, inscrutable undercurrents of middle-aged males who feel betrayed by

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-28159416678464572632011-06-07T04:23:00.000-07:002011-06-07T04:33:45.245-07:00

It’s been a long time since I’ve hated a novel as much as Jonathan Coe’s The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim. I mean, wow. This book is so bad that it can’t help but acknowledge – inadvertently or otherwise – its own awfulness at odd intervals. It tells the “story” of pathetic fortysomething Londoner Max Sim who quits his job as a customer service rep at a department store to become a salesman of

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-901449139787307012011-06-02T08:57:00.000-07:002011-06-02T09:00:59.019-07:00

Yep, it's true: V.S. Naipaul thinks there's no female writer who can hold a candle to him. Gad.Thankfully, you can now test yourself to see if you're as smart as Naipaul at picking male writers from female writers. (I scored 6 out of 10.)M.

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-50777319273575451572011-05-31T04:46:00.000-07:002011-05-31T04:54:37.441-07:00

Not to let the cat out of the bag or anything, but I think it’s safe to say that Diane Schoemperlen’s 1998 short story collection Forms of Devotion is going to make my top 10 list this year. The book, which won the Governor General’s Award for Fiction when it came out, is one of those very rare things: a highly stylized example of experimental writing that is also compulsively, addictively

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-55322567447142091462011-05-27T03:16:00.000-07:002011-05-27T03:18:15.381-07:00

I must admit, I’m a little low on juice today to commit myself to a full review of this book, but I’ll give it my best shot to say something about it. Invisible Cities packages itself like a novel but really it’s closer to a collection of beautifully rendered prose poems. The narrative frame, such as it is, involves the great Tartar emperor Kublai Khan discussing the many cities in his empire

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-1808896300683670302011-05-24T04:21:00.000-07:002011-05-24T04:27:50.467-07:00

Don’t say I never give an author a second chance. After my relentless thumping of J.G. Ballard’s novel Crash last year, you’d think I’d never touch anything by the man again. Not so. Truth be told, I became a little obsessed with Ballard following that initial and disappointing foray into his work and decided I wanted to try something else. His short stories seemed to make the most sense, since a

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-75451320625879284422011-05-20T04:10:00.000-07:002011-05-20T04:14:50.457-07:00

My reaction to this 1966 novel by famed French Canadian author Marie-Claire Blais was similar to my reaction to Sylvia Fraser’s Pandora. Both books seem to belong to an age that no longer exists: there is something so relentlessly serious here, a solemnity to tone that is almost encoded into the craftsmanship of the writing itself. In an age where so many of our authors strive to be not only cute

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-525374015288403742011-05-17T09:44:00.000-07:002011-05-17T09:45:55.706-07:00

Okay. So on Saturday morning, whilst reading one of our national newspapers over a bagel and coffee, I stumble upon a full-page colour ad for a discount airline offering seat sales for the upcoming summer. The ad brags a cost of $98 to fly from a certain southern Ontario city to certain Maritime city – the former of which I live in and the latter of which I’m in the market to fly to during the

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-38848665806881158932011-05-17T04:38:00.000-07:002011-05-17T04:45:38.802-07:00

Oh my. Ahem. Alrighty, then. Take that, traditional immigrant novel. It’s virtually impossible to know where to begin describing and assessing Gary Shteygart’s high-octane and deliriously brilliant 2006 book Absurdistan. I don’t think I’ve engaged this much with (and laughed so hard over) a novel’s complexities since Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything is Illuminated. All I can say is that when I

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-6283480369552112072011-05-16T08:49:00.000-07:002011-05-16T08:58:26.507-07:00

is now online at the Quill and Quire website. It's actually been a few months since I read this book, but I'm glad to see it's getting some attention. (There was also a review of it in one of the national papers on the weekend.) While I didn't enjoy every aspect of Aguirre's "Memoirs of a Revoluntary Daughter," I still think this is an important piece of nonfiction and worth picking up. You

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-54732491806205943382011-05-15T18:52:00.000-07:002011-05-15T18:55:07.452-07:00

I’m not sure what got me in the mood for a good cowboy story. Maybe it was listening to this New Yorker podcast of “Cowboy,” by Thomas McGuane, that opened me up to the possibility of reading a full-length novel about wranglin’ horses, sleeping outside, eating chow, and falling in love with sultry Mexican damsels. All the Pretty Horses, by Cormac McCarthy, is as unapologetically a cowboy novel as

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-48701946701890137612011-05-13T11:45:00.001-07:002011-05-13T11:59:12.402-07:00

I got word earlier this week that the "Island Poems" exhibit that ran at the Gallery at the Guild in Charlottetown last month, which included my poem "Donor", is now online. (More information on the show here.) Anyway, lots of interesting paintings and poetry for your gawking pleasure. Enjoy!M.

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-75772165536761935422011-05-10T02:04:00.000-07:002011-05-10T02:17:03.955-07:00

The CanLit community got the sad news this week that acclaimed novelist and short story writer John Lavery passed away on Sunday. I was very fortunate to have read and reviewed his novel Sandra Beck here on the blog back in November and enjoyed the book immensely. If you're looking for a good profile of Mr. Lavery, The Globe and Mail ran this one, also back in November. And for a beautiful

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-58612484592391634482011-05-07T13:15:00.000-07:002011-05-07T13:17:44.174-07:00

This is another one of those entries I hesitate to label a “review,” since Jake’s a friend and somebody I see around a lot at various literary soirees here in Toronto. Instead, let’s call this a public service announcement: in case of mental torpor or a persistent inability to see the world in startling new ways, please read Folk by Jacob McArthur Mooney for immediate relief. It really is that

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-76954249730340233562011-05-05T01:56:00.000-07:002011-05-05T02:19:39.729-07:00

Any Calgary peeps out there? If so, let me extend an invitation to you to attend the launch party tonight for FreeFall magazine's new issue, which contains my poem "On Choosing a Mattress," which won second prize in the magazine's poetry contest. Being stranded here in Toronto, I obviously can't attend myself (this is the third event in the last few months involving some bit of my work I've had

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-10717136658552086072011-05-02T17:42:00.000-07:002011-05-02T17:50:39.609-07:00

I’m not exactly sure what precipitated me writing this blog post. Perhaps it’s because I’ve had an unusually high (for me) volume of smaller pieces published over the last few weeks, each one arriving with a different definition of “payment” attached to it (each of which I’m grateful for). Or perhaps it’s because I’ve recently listened to this hilarious interview with novelist Gary Shteyngart

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-7790152317922500292011-05-01T11:29:00.000-07:002011-05-01T11:38:21.650-07:00

The historical novel remains a huge temptation for any Canadian writer, especially when the history involved hasn’t gotten the exposure that it should. The rewards for tackling obscure history in fiction are many, but so are the challenges. Antanas Sileika, in his new novel Underground, has the additional complication of writing about a subject matter that is near and dear to his own heritage:

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-50987249706129795812011-04-21T06:06:00.000-07:002011-04-21T06:20:30.299-07:00

Just reminding any Charlottetown peeps out there that the Island Poems exhibit at the Gallery at the Guild, which includes my sestina "Donor", has its opening reception tonight, starting at 7:30. I still have no idea what the show looks like, but my intelligence operatives on the ground (meaning my friend J.J. Steinfeld and his lovely wife Brenda) tell me it's pretty impressive. If you can go and

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-90122587674048039772011-04-21T04:46:00.000-07:002011-04-21T04:49:39.247-07:00

My first encounter with Priscila Uppal’s work was last summer during the road trip that RR and I took to PEI. We brought along a stack of literary journals so we could read aloud and critique the short stories therein during the long drive. One of the stories we read was by Uppal, and it was about a diver. It was obvious right from the beginning that Uppal is passionate about athletics, about the

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-40024310341422051832011-04-20T04:19:00.000-07:002011-04-20T04:24:13.750-07:00

This anthology of essays – spectacularly subtitled “Writers on Inspiration, Desire, War, Celebrity, Exile, and Breaking the Rules” – is the latest in a series of books released by McClelland & Stewart as a fundraiser for the very noble organization PEN Canada. Edited by Jared Bland, Finding the Words tackles the topics above and a lot more, sometimes with humour and sometimes with a deadly

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-3901855107873721392011-04-19T04:24:00.000-07:002011-04-19T04:30:27.065-07:00

Of all the telling details in Charles Foran’s epic biography of Mordecai Richler – and there are many – the ones that stand out for me reveal how Richler went about founding his strongest and most enduring friendships. To describe this lion of Canadian letters as a prickly pear would be a gross understatement, and yet he seemed to have no trouble opening himself up to those who showed a temerity,

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-60776511997666490392011-04-18T06:03:00.000-07:002011-04-18T06:27:09.631-07:00

So the website for FreeFall magazine has been updated with information on its new issue - Volume XX1 Number 1. I'm particularly excited about this, as my poem "On Choosing a Mattress" has been published in it after winning second place in the magazine's annual poetry contest. What's more, there's audio of me reading the poem that you can listen to. The hissing you hear is probably a result of the

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-42268661634056515702011-04-15T02:25:00.000-07:002011-04-15T03:05:42.585-07:00

Okay friends and neighbours, some pretty big news around here: Got word last night that an excerpt from my novel-in-progress has just been published in the latest issue of The Quint (Vol. 3 No. 2), a multidisciplinary literary journal based out of the University College of the North in Manitoba. As you may recall, they published four poems of mine back in the fall, and editor Yvonne Trainer asked

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-84227274170100717282011-04-12T12:45:00.000-07:002011-04-12T13:21:09.031-07:00

To any Charlotteotown readers out there: I'm happy to announce that a poem of mine, entitled "Donor", is going to be part of a show called ISLAND POEMS: A Collaborative Art Project, running from April 19th to the 30th at the Gallery at the Guild, 115 Richmond Street in Charlottetown. The exhibit, which is a joint project between the PEI Writers’ Guild, Peake Street Studios and a group called this

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-19394139178907221892011-04-11T02:09:00.000-07:002011-04-11T02:45:41.880-07:00

So the reading that RR and I did together on Friday night in Perth, Ontario went over very well. We read, along with Tish Cohen, to an enthusiastic and engaged audience at the Factory Grind Cafe, right on the edge of Perth's beautiful downtown. The event was hosted by the intrepid Johnny Pigeau, who has launched his First Edition Reading Series and will be opening a new bookstore in Perth in the

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-70702620499750701652011-04-08T06:23:00.000-07:002011-04-08T06:26:10.598-07:00

Just a reminder that RR and I, along with Tish Cohen, are doing a reading tonight at the Factory Grind Cafe in Perth, Ontario as part of the First Edition Reading Series. The festivities start at 5:30 pm and should make for a wonderful time. Come on out if you're in the area.

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-26533546034576416422011-04-04T09:34:00.000-07:002011-04-04T09:45:28.696-07:00

So I'm happy to report that this weekend's move went more or less without a hitch. We were, predictably, screwed with our pants on by Bell Canada, which hooked up our phone but then promptly crossed the wires with someone else's line. But other than that, things went about as smoothly as can be expected when you're combining two homes into one.The new apartment is, by the way, fabulous - the

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-56372547050409020222011-03-26T09:09:00.000-07:002011-03-26T09:20:39.607-07:00

This blog is staying put, but I certainly am not. If you've found things quiet on FRR lately, it's because I'm in the midst of packing up my life to move at the end of next week to new digs with RR. It's been a MASSIVE chore. Writers always find moving especially taxing - all those books, all those papers that make up the "archive." (Myself, I have whole novels I wrote dating back to my mid teens

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-67477235635811505652011-03-25T10:09:00.000-07:002011-03-25T10:14:11.150-07:00

Had a great time last night at McMaster University, where I was once again invited down to do a reading/lecture to a creative writing class. I had done a similar event about a year ago and last night was equally fun. Thanks again to my host Bob Spree and his intrepid class of young scribes. It was a blast.

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-56172381974589337922011-03-16T03:28:00.000-07:002011-03-16T03:45:01.578-07:00

Novels set in a university creative writing department are a dime a dozen. It seems to be a rite of passage for a certain type of mid-list and/or mid-career author to tackle the hallowed (if somewhat Kafkaesque) halls of academia, seeing how so many of these writers gain steady employment there. The books inevitably deal with a garden variety of topics: sexual tension between teachers and

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-56821215717883443342011-03-15T08:40:00.001-07:002011-03-15T08:52:07.940-07:00

Got word last week that I'm confirmed to read at the launch of the new First Edition Reading Series at the Factory Grind Cafe in Perth, Ontario on April 8th.I'm especially excited about this event because it will mark the first time that RR and I have ever shared a stage together. Naturally, we've been in the audience at many of each other's events since we started dating, but this is the first

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-41285505119561540742011-03-11T12:04:00.000-08:002011-03-11T12:10:09.866-08:00

Thinking about Japan's earthquate today, and other earthquakes. Which takes me back to pages 10-11 of last fall's issue of The Quint. Just because.

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-88404806672567669482011-03-10T03:06:00.000-08:002011-03-10T03:10:47.779-08:00

I received a correction from FreeFall magazine last night: my poem has won second prize in their poetry contest, not third as previously reported. A great way to start the day!

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-43096657336320367812011-03-06T08:29:00.000-08:002011-03-06T08:35:54.532-08:00

I was very pleased to come home last night to learn that my poem "On Choosing a Mattress" has placed third in FreeFall magazine's annual poetry contest, judged by Douglas Glover. The poem will appear in the forthcoming Volume XXI Number 1 of the magazine, based out of Calgary. Congrats to the other winners and to those on the shortlist.

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-46572732288850619722011-03-03T03:32:00.000-08:002011-03-03T03:41:22.779-08:00

I’ve always felt it important to pick up creative writing manuals every now and then as a refresher on certain skills or tenets that I feel should be instinctual by this point in my life. A lot of these manuals are little more than reference books, which is why I don’t typically put them down in my reading log. But Dorothea Brande’s book, Becoming a Writer, has been on my radar for a while now

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-78883947173682359432011-02-22T04:32:00.000-08:002011-02-22T04:39:08.800-08:00

I have a confession to make: When I read what is arguably Saul Bellow’s best-known novel, Herzog, a few years back, I absolutely hated it. Maybe it was my disposition at the time, but I found that book infused with a kind of dick-swinging machismo that I had little patience for. I had written off Bellow as a result – I know, I know, he’s supposed to be one of the great American writers of the

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-33292655451192170462011-02-18T08:40:00.000-08:002011-02-18T09:10:44.767-08:00

Well, it's the end of another workweek and I figure some of you may be in need of a little distraction. Here in Ontario, we're heading into a long weekend (the government-legislated "Family Day" - formerly known as "Lonely Bachelor Day" around these parts) which I'm especially excited for. It's been a productive week for me - wrote a couple of book reviews, got manuscript copies of my new novel

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-36045919605485889142011-02-16T02:16:00.000-08:002011-02-16T02:22:15.389-08:00

The Writers Union of Canada this very wonderful and heartfelt video to speak out against proposed changes to copyright rules here in Canada. Essentially, the new rules would muddy the waters when it comes to educational publishing and what counts as fair use. I thought I'd share it with you here:

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-29528265241392925592011-02-15T03:34:00.000-08:002011-02-15T03:42:19.310-08:00

It’s so good to see that some people still believe that the novel can and should be taken in weird and original new directions. This has been Tom McCarthy’s reputation ever since he burst onto the scene with his 2005 book Remainder, which took seven years to find a mainstream publisher but has since been heralded as a masterpiece by the likes of Zadie Smith. His follow-up novel, C, was

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-79168419516065540442011-02-07T04:26:00.000-08:002011-02-07T04:33:11.767-08:00

Is it possible that sound can act as a kind of comfort food? If so, then let me say up front that this interview with Nuala O’Faolain on CBC Radio’s Writers and Company is my comfort food. I’ve probably listened to it about 10 times since first discovering it online, and doing so elevates my spirits in a way that few things can. In fact, I strongly recommend that before you read another word of

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-3908279654039377712011-02-02T12:20:00.000-08:002011-02-02T12:25:02.085-08:00

I was expecting great things from this novel by British writer Howard Jacobson, not only because it had won the Booker Prize this past year but because it was heralded as one of the few genuinely comic novels to win that award. I love comic novels. And I love to see them get their due when it comes to big prizes and international recognition. It doesn’t happen often enough.Unfortunately, The

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-52782849398315503502011-02-01T05:47:00.000-08:002011-02-01T05:49:40.577-08:00

... in which Yann Martel takes four years to realize what the rest of us knew almost immediately:http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/feb/01/yann-martel-book-canadian-pm

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-74026691842786194702011-01-20T19:10:00.000-08:002011-01-20T19:15:17.166-08:00

Lorrie Moore really loves to write about dancing, and she does it so incredibly well. This was something that I noticed as I finished reading her debut short story collection, Self-Help, published in 1985. The final piece in it, “To Fill”, contains an exuberant scene of a young boy named Jeffrey trying to teach his mother some dance moves that he’s learned at school. It reminded me of another,

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-18471254479777005282011-01-20T07:33:00.000-08:002011-01-20T07:37:40.367-08:00

Really interesting blog post on masculinity in literature by Michael Bryson over at Underground Book Club. In this piece, Michael shares an excerpt from an unfinished essay he was writing a decade ago in relation to Richard Ford’s brilliant novel The Sportswriter, and he has some good insights on the various contentious issues involving gender in literature.It’s too bad Michael never finished

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-11930627968299917902011-01-17T17:44:00.000-08:002011-01-17T17:47:17.668-08:00

The short stories of Frank O’Connor have been on my hit list for quite a while, so I decided to read the entire canon of them by tackling his Collected Stories, edited and introduced by Richard Ellman, in one single gulp – all 700+ pages. There is something to be said about absorbing a writer’s oeuvre in this way – especially a writer with the reputation and consistency of O’Connor. By taking on

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-73935137280260296932011-01-10T18:44:00.000-08:002011-01-10T18:46:44.017-08:00

Ian Williams’ debut collection of poetry You Know Who You Are attempts to do an incredibly daring thing – to meld an unmistakable postmodern sensibility to deeply personal, even sentimentalized subject matters. The poems in this collection explore the perils of embattled relationships, of squandered opportunities and existential angst, but do so with a style that is both quirky and innovative. In

Mark Sampsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02853247452846940409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8565245008934521902.post-61068951571084558902011-01-05T06:01:00.000-08:002011-01-05T06:27:32.765-08:00

Over at That Shakespearean Rag yesterday, I was pleased to see literary critic Steven Beattie make reference to the very fun game we played here on this blog last year called The Retro Reading Challenge. Even more interestingly, Steven has launched his own reading challenge for 2011.I love the nature of what Steven is proposing for the simple fact that it dovetails what I feel (in my better

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