News & Reviews
In 1989, the Ayatollah Khomeini declared a fatwa against “the author of the Satanic Verses book,” arguing that the book “is against Islam, the Prophet, and the Qur’an.” The Ayatollah continued, “all those involved in its publication who were aware of its content, are sentenced to death. I ask all the Muslims to execute them…
Read More...
In Prince George, Brian Fawcett is considered royalty, a scion of the family that owns Kelson Group, one of the largest owners of rental property in western Canada. The company started here, and the town is thickly sprinkled with Kelson apartments. He is also the town’s most famous writer. Since much of his writing is…
Read More...
“Recently I was interviewed by the CNC Student Association” said Graham Pearce, Creative Writing instructor and co-ordinator of the English Program at CNC. “Damon Robinson and Anubov Sharma asked me how I developed my teaching style. I told them my formal education had some bright spots, but, overall, the postmodernists had taken over the classroom. “When I…
Read More...
I first met Brian Fawcett during a visit to Vancouver for Expo ’86. I was a reporter for The Medicine Hat News at the time. Earlier in 1986, during a trip back to Medicine Hat, I had picked up a copy of The Globe and Mail in an airport newsstand. I was fascinated by a review in it of…
Read More...
You can’t, grammatically, have more than one best friend, but Brian Fawcett was one of my best friends. I met him in 1973, when I arrived in Prince George to start work as an instructor at the college. We were introduced by another of my best friends, Barry McKinnon. Brian was bigger, better-looking, and…
Read More...
Prince George recently suffered the loss of its best-known literary chronicler. Chickenbustales plans to celebrate his life and capture his spirit in a series of reminiscences, articles, and snippets of poetry and prose, material that is both fresh and archival. We start with reminiscences by Barry McKinnon. Brian left Prince George in 1966, after…
Read More...
Michael Walzer’s piece in the February 28 Persuasion is a timely caution against “Woke” historical revisionism — against, to use one of Walzer’s examples, the idea that Thomas Jefferson was not a hero but a moral monster because he owned slaves and took one as a mistress. The revisionists tend to argue that, because he…
Read More...
In the Foreword to The Answer to Everything, editor Rob Budde says he hopes that his selection of the poems of Ken Belford, “is chosen by future scholars as a representative introduction to his work.” Those future scholars might so choose, but not readers familiar with Belford’s work. This is because Budde and his co-editor…
Read More...
Anger be now your song, immortal one, Achilles’ anger, doomed and ruinous, That caused the Greeks loss on bitter loss. Those lines from the Iliad refer to a difficult time for the Greek forces in the final year of their decade-long siege of Troy. Their hero Achilles, blessed by the gods with invincibility, was…
Read More...
I understand that Paul Strickland’s recent review of the northern arts magazine Thimbleberry has raised some controversy in Prince George’s arts scene concerning not just how much a reviewer can quote from the original texts, but also whether reviewers can quote at all from this magazine. I think the sane responses to such attempts at resisting scrutiny are a)…
Read More...
The latest (Spring 2021) issue of ThimbleBerry, Art and Culture in Northern B.C., provides a cross-section of literary accomplishment, artistic creation, and aesthetic thinking in the region. For the magazine’s editors, Rob Budde and Kara-lee MacDonald, these accomplishments are vital to “societal well-being.” Their introductory “Letter from the Editors,” which starts in first-person plural but…
Read More...