Manatee Hat

Call for Submissions: What’s Your Favorite Tumblr?

timemagazine:

At TIME.com, we’re working on a guide to the best Tumblrs out there. But we want to know what you think first.

What Tumblr can’t you live without? (Aside from ours, of course.) Whether it’s news, photography, design or just cat videos, we want to know what you follow — and why. 

Reply to this post (and include the URL) with your picks. We’ll mark popular suggestions as “Readers’ Choice” in our final list, which should come out by the end of January.

http://thisisyouralien.tumblr.com/ Celebrating our love for E.T. - 30 years later!

Typocosmy of Montreal Writers

Upon moving to Montreal, I went to straight to my local public library to learn more about Quebecois authors. A book called The Writers of Montreal by Elaine K. Naves would surely offer me an overview of the literature scene since the founding of Montreal. It doesn’t matter in the least to me who is arguably the most grand or finest writer.  But Naves, writing her essays almost 20 years ago (in 1993) found it imperative to include one sentence in her biographies for each writer that possibly OR without question SUMMED UP their career and place amongst Canadian writers. I found her epitomizing to be extremely diverting…so diverting that I learned possibly less about Montreal writers than I knew before I began reading. Here are my notes:

Emile Nelligan (1879-1941) “was without question Canada’s greatest nineteenth-century poet and, for reasons both of form and content, its first modern poet.”

Yves Thériault (1915-1983) “is French Canada’s most prolific and versatile writer of serious fiction.” (His serious fiction was so versatile it was possibly non-fiction).

F.R. Scott (1899-1985) “has been called the most remarkable Canadian of his generation.” (Called remarkable because “most intelligent and important” were already feasibly taken).

Leonard Cohen (1934): “one of the best-known singer-songwriters of the late twentieth century. His international acclaim as a pop star has by now largely obscured his earlier writing career.” (Can’t get enough of his pop songs!)

Hugh MacLennan (1907-1990): His “biographer dubbed him the ‘Grand Old Man of Canadian Letters.’” (I hope he was without question larger and grander than any other old man living in the late 20th century with Canadian letters).

Michel Bibaud (1782-1857) “was a jack of all literary trades and a master of none.” (Then why is he included in this book?)

Louis Honoré-Frechette (1839-1908) at his best could rise above his own mediocrity. (Again, this guy should not have made the cut).

A.M. Klein (1902-1972) “was arguably the most important English-Canadian writer in the first half of the 20th century.” (probably a wise thing to argue at this point in the book).

Naïm Kattan (1928): “has been called ‘Ottawa’s Grants Fairy’ and ‘our only Arab-Jewish-French-Canadian writer.’

Gabrielle Roy (1909-1983): is “particularly adept in the portrayal of strong female characters, she cannot be classified under any particular rubric.” (Yes, you did it! Finally!)

Yves Beauchemin (1941): “Posterity will decide whether or not Quebec’s literary superstar is a great writer.” (Posterity gets to formulate a designation? What a cop out!)

Irving Layton (1912-2006) “is one of the only two Canadian poets who possessed ‘the Grand Style,’ grand in both content and in its ‘rolling, rhythmical syllabic music.’”

Réjean Ducharme (1941): “One of Quebec’s most original authors, he is, without question, its most mysterious and reclusive.” (because he hid away from all Canadian summations).

Mavis Gallant (1922): She is “one of the finest living fiction writers of English.” (This did prompt me to read her short stories and I will grant exactitude to this brazen statement).

Mordecai Richler (1931-2001): “one of Canada’s most outspoken writers.” (i.e. tried to come up with his own polemic label?)

Roch Carrier (1937) “is probably English Canada’s most widely-read contemporary francophone writer.” (Isn’t this something you’d be able to MEASURE unlike “the most versatile writer” or “most famous?”

Stephen Leacock (1869-1944): “The most famous Canadian author of his day.” (his day was absolutely one day in 1911 when more people had heard of Stephen Leacock than had heard of Canada).

Hugh Hood (1928-2000) is “‘one of the five or six best short story writers now alive in the English-speaking world,’ according to The Fiddlehead. Despite these accolades, Hood is hardly a literary household word… these stories appeared to puzzle critics (some of whom damned him with faint praise for his convincing portrayals of Canadians in ‘specific Canadian situations’).” I would LOVE to know how one precisely damns another with faint praise for Canadian situations!

Hubert Aquin (1929-1977): “variously described as ‘the greatest novelist of modern Quebec,’ ‘a literary saint,’ ‘a national hero,’ and ‘the most intelligent writer in the Francophone world’ took a shotgun…raised it to his mouth and killed himself.”