BECAUSE I KNOW that some of my readers are also writers, I post an occasional essay on writing. If the topic of writing bores you, here’s my essay on Anna Hazare and Gandhi for your consideration. Or perhaps you might… Read More ›
George Orwell
The Roundtable Podcast 58
• Week of 28.12.2013 Thousands across eastern Canada still in the dark | Stephen Harper thanks ‘brave men and women in uniform’ in annual Christmas message | Canada departs Afghanistan in 100 days | Featured Article: The Corporate “Free Speech”… Read More ›
Podcast 9: Eggs, Miley Cyrus, Christopher Hitchens, George Orwell, Michael Bryant and more
• Podcast 009 | Week of 19.08.2012 Download entire podcast (320 kbps mp3).
What difference does it make what Michael Ignatieff says?
In his essay “Notes on Nationalism,” George Orwell observed that “if one harbours anywhere in one’s mind a nationalistic loyalty or hatred, certain facts, although in a sense known to be true, are inadmissible.” By his reckoning, nationalism is a… Read More ›
Remembering Christopher Hitchens
I FIRST CAME across the writer Christopher Hitchens when he was a young Socialist contributing his “Minority Report” to the Nation. Very much yet in his soixante-huitard, Trotskyist phase, if not in possession any longer of his Socialist International card,… Read More ›
How Writers Write
THERE IS an enormous store of narrative concerning the working habits of authors, much of it interesting and in my case consumed with amusement but skepticism also.
How Different are Anna Hazare and Mohandas Gandhi?
IN RECENT days, critics of the so-called anti-corruption activist and Lokpal Bill agitator, Anna Hazare, have contested the notion that a Gandhi-like leader today walks among us. A National Post article, “Gandhian lookalike good for the messiah business, bad for… Read More ›
Bill Hicks and the Comedy of Wishing Things Were Otherwise
THE TRAILER FOR Matt Harlock’s and Paul Thomas’s 2009 documentary film “The Bill Hicks Story” begins with a quotation attributed by Charles Walker to George Orwell in a 2000 book called My Few Wise Words of Wisdom: In a time… Read More ›
The Compulsion to Write (pt. 2)
In his essay, “Why I Write,” George Orwell identifies the following ….
The Compulsion to Write (pt. 1)
Illustration by Anthony Russo I was eight years old and urinating in the bathroom of my parents’ Central Avenue house when the precise words manifesting a desire to fill my life with writing first came into my conscious mind. Why… Read More ›
(Big) Business As Usual
[Originally published in ASH Magaine, Volume Four Number Three, Summer 1997.] Now and then I find myself in a philosophical mood, pondering the evolution of this creature called ASH. I think it’s a healthy activity, the more so since I’m… Read More ›
