The Toronto Globe and Mail has a unique inventive commentary — click the Red Dots — on the writing of Alice Munro, the first Canadian to win the Nobel Prize for literature.
Photograph: Paul Hawthorne/AP
Her genius is derived from a complex mixture of gifts. She makes indelible characters, yes, but she’s just as remarkable for her crisp language, the remarkable rhythm and pacing of her prose, her wide-ranging and empathetic interest.
Here, a dissection of the opening section of her 1982 story Bardon Bus explores facets of her singular talent. Because showing’s better than telling, especially when it comes to celebrating one of Canada’s greatest writers.
Alice Munro is a genius
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The lost and forgotten words
From snollygoster to wamblecropt, these forgotten words just might come handy, says Mark Forsyth’, the author of The Horologicon. Take Uhtceare, for example:
Uhtceare is an Old English word that refers to anxiety experienced just before dawn. It describes that moment when you wake up too early and can’t get back to sleep, no matter how tired you are, because you’re worried about the day to come.
Lost words
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Advice on Life and Creative Integrity
“The truth is, most of us discover where we are headed when we arrive.”
On May 20, 1990, Bill Watterson, creator of the beloved Calvin and Hobbes comic strip, took the podium at Kenyon College, Maria Popova writes at Brainpickings, and gave the graduating class a gift of remarkable insight and impact.
e.g.
Selling out is usually more a matter of buying in. Sell out, and you’re really buying into someone else’s system of values, rules and rewards.
The so-called ‘opportunity’ I faced would have meant giving up my individual voice for that of a money-grubbing corporation. It would have meant my purpose in writing was to sell things, not say things. My pride in craft would be sacrificed to the efficiency of mass production and the work of assistants. Authorship would become committee decision. Creativity would become work for pay. Art would turn into commerce. In short, money was supposed to supply all the meaning I’d need.
Bill Watterson on selling out
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The Art of Famous Book Covers
“It’s often the case that a great book cover is created solely for the book itself, but sometimes a savvy designer finds an extant piece of art that’s so perfect it seems as if it were created just to be put on the jacket,” Gabe Habash writes in PWxyz. “Here are 9 of the best art-and-book-cover matches.”
Art used on The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell
Perfect cover fit
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