LRC Highlights

There are some great articles in this month's edition of the Literary Review of Canada.

There is Suanne Kelman's masterful review of the memoir of Peter Stursberg, former head of English programming for CBC. Kelman lands perhaps the best literary KO ending I've seen in a long time: '... if you want to create a network with mass appeal, you really need some yourself.' Ouch!

An excerpt from John Price's book Orienting Canada: Race, Empire and the Transpacific, makes for horrific and compelling reading, telling of the way Canadian soldiers who fought in Korea and committed atrocious crimes, essentially got off lightly because of the endemic racism in National Defence in the era. If the rest of the book is written as well as the excerpt, it should be an excellent read.

Andrew Potter continues his thoughtful critique of the power of 'authenticity' in the 20th century in a review of Modris Eksteins's Solar Dance: Genius, Forgery and the Crisis of Truth in the Modern Age.

Former Speaker of the House of Commons gives a positive review of Helen Forsey's book on her father, Eugene Forsey: Canada's Maverick Sage.

And Christopher Moore is always good to read, especially here as he takes on one of my (and Forsey's) favourite topics, parliamentary democracy.

Only some of the reviews are online, but the LRC subscription isn't too much.

And if you subscribe, you can even read my review of Yves Engler's unbalanced, megaphone-like book on Lester Pearson which is also in this issue.

See the LRC website here