Born 25 or so years apart, Margaret Mitchell and Harper Lee were each defined by a single book. Mitchell’s was Gone With the Wind, while Lee’s was To Kill a Mockingbird. Both women – daughters of the 20th century American South – situated their work in their native regions. Mitchell chose Civil War Georgia for her…
As July dwindles down into August, here are a few personal reflections on three of the month’s big stories – Greece, Iran, and the brouhaha about Atticus Finch. It was obvious from the get-go that Greece was placing all its chips on the belief that the Northern Europeans, particularly the Germans, would ultimately agree to…
To Canadians’ shame, Canada’s greatest novelist’s centenary has been met with silence
Only a forgetful silence has marked this month’s centenary of the greatest of all Canadian-born novelists. Yet those who care to remedy such a state of affairs still have time before Saul Bellow’s birth month is out to read his astonishing 1976 Nobel Prize Lecture. They have the rest of their lives to marvel that…