The News

In a few years, G-d willing, I’ll be telling my grandchildren about something called "the news."

“The news,” I’ll say in that rambling, affectionate way grandfathers do, “was once gathered and delivered by skilled professionals called 'journalists'—people trained to separate what mattered from what didn’t.” I’ll compare them to miners extracting gold from the dross, or farmers sifting wheat from the chaff, the way people used to back in the olden days. And I’ll explain what “dross” and “chaff” mean.

“But how could those—what did you call them? Journalists?—how could they know what was important to you?” my granddaughter will ask.

And by you, she’ll mean me personally. Because she will have grown up in a world where “important” is whatever pleases her in the moment, served up by a perfectly calibrated personal feed. The idea that other people once chose what everyone needed to know will strike her as bizarre—as archaic as people tapping out telegrams in Morse Code.

I’ll try to explain that some events were important to everyone, or at least to most of us. She’ll look unconvinced.

And I’ll be thinking about the time when we arranged our evenings around the 6 PM or 10 PM broadcast. A time when the morning paper on the doorstep was more than information, it was a unifying force, curating not only facts but shared priorities. It told us not just what happened, but what mattered. It helped shape our sense of place—our community, our country, and the wider world. It offered a kind of moral framework, because we were all drinking from the same fountain, imagining ourselves as part of the same story.

How do I explain such a thing to a child whose world is a constellation of self-contained narratives, each one tuned to the desires and impulses of a single person?

Maybe I’ll bring it down to something she knows.

I’ll ask her whether someone who only tells you what you want to hear is a real friend. Or whether a true friend is someone who tells you the truth—even when it’s uncomfortable, even when it’s something you’d rather not hear. If someone only ever tells you what pleases you, I’ll say, they don’t really care about you. They care about being liked.

And somewhere in the back of my mind, I’ll realize that this is exactly what our technology has been doing to us. Not empowering us, like other inventions. It's doing the opposite. Disempowering us. Infantilizing us. Turning us into children—which might explain why so much of public discourse sounds like the schoolyard.

I won’t say that part to my granddaughter. But I suspect she’ll understand anyway. After all, we’re all at her level now.

In Praise of Laggards

A long time ago, when I was in my late teens and working as a part-time ticket-taker at a repertory movie theatre, I had a co-worker who was unusually enthusiastic. By “enthusiastic,” I mean the sort of person who would line up outside McDonald’s before opening so he could be among the first to taste the McRib.

It was 1981 and I still remember the day he showed up to work carrying a warm McDonald’s paper bag filled with McRibs. The expression on his face as he took that first bite—pure bliss, as though he were communing with something sacred. And I remember thinking: who exactly lives for the privilege of being first to try the latest lab-tested addition to the McDonald’s menu? Who sees a processed meat patty shaped like a pork rib and thinks, finally, my moment?

Apparently the same kind of person who will stand outside Starbucks at 5 a.m. for a limited-edition green-and-red Hello Kitty holiday mug. That would be a colleague I work with today. She arrived at the office this week triumphant, Starbucks bag in hand, and within minutes half the team was gathered around her desk as she unboxed the thing like it was a Fabergé egg.

This one, at least, had a certain logic behind it. The mug had sold out immediately and was already doubling in price online. I looked it up myself. Meanwhile the McRib—discontinued in 1985, resurrected in 1989, cancelled in 2005, and now inexplicably back again in 2025—remains the fast-food equivalent of an unemployed couch-surfing buddy making the rounds.

I don’t understand any of this. I hate crowds. I hate standing in line even more. At bar mitzvahs I remain seated until everyone else has hit the buffet, on the theory that there’s plenty for all. Admittedly, I have eaten more than one piece of brisket that looked like it was carved from the heel of a hiking boot.

It seems there are “adopters” and there are “laggards.” My McRib and Hello Kitty colleagues are adopters. I am, without question, a laggard. Adopters love new things because they’re new. They need to be first. They live in a perpetual state of FOMO (fear of missing out) like someone plagued by migraines.

Laggards prefer the tried and true. We prefer the sweatshirt that has a familiar smell that never comes out in the laundry over the latest fashion, and the refrigerator we got twenty-five years ago that hums in the basement over the shiny model upstairs. Newness doesn't usually mean better, it means more complicated, more expensive to fix, and less reliable.  

Culturally, adopters get all the flattering adjectives: bold, visionary, entrepreneurial. Laggards are told, “You snooze, you lose.” Which is convenient for people trying to sell you something.

But lately I’ve started to wonder if maybe laggards like me are finally having our moment. This early bird does not want to catch the worm, because the worm seems to be infected with a brain-eating parasite. 

I'm talking about the parasite that infects through technology. With information pouring into their heads through their devices, like water from a broken hydrant, the brains of adopters are turning soft and mushy. Meanwhile, we laggards—by virtue of our god-given skepticism and natural reluctance to embrace anything 'latest' or 'improved'—may be in a better position to survive this period of history with our sanity and perspective intact.

Being a laggard, it turns out, is no longer just a personality trait. It's the future. I can live without the newest McRib. My coffee tastes just fine in the stained mug I've been using for the last 20 years. Actually it tastes better.

Seymour Blicker z"l (1940-2025)

One of the great blessings I have had in my life in the last 20 years or so has been getting to know the great Montreal novelist and playwright Seymour Blicker, who passed away at his home this past Friday. 

Seymour made a name for himself in the late 1960s and 70s with the publication of three novels, Blues Chased a Rabbit (1969), Shmucks (1972) and The Last Collection (1976). I wrote about Shmucks in an earlier blog post. In the 1980s and 90s, Seymour went on to write screenplays, television scripts and plays. He is perhaps best known for the play "Never Judge A Book By Its Cover" (1987) which I know was still being performed internationally a few years ago, and the film script of The Kid (1997). 

It was Shmucks that brought Seymour and I together. The novella was mentioned to me by my friend  and co-author Seymour Mayne. He said that he had recently re-read it for consideration to be put on a syllabus for a Jewish Canadian literature class he was teaching at University of Ottawa, and found that it had stood up surprisingly well. I immediately tried to find a copy, locating a used hardcover edition on Abe Books. I loved it. It was funny, poignant and clever. I wondered whatever happened to Blicker. A bit of online searching revealed that he had continued to write plays, taught in the creative writing department at Concordia University, and had moved up north in the Laurentians. I was intrigued by his apparent reclusiveness. And there was something else that caught my interest, his work in television, particularly an episode he had written for the police comedy Barney Miller. When I was growing up I was a fan of that show, and one episode in particular had stuck with me. It's possibly the most famous Barney Miller, when a man comes to the station claiming that he's a werewolf and asks to be incarcerated before midnight when he transforms and wreaks violent havoc. It's a masterfully written story. I remember the anticipation of waiting until the very end of the episode to find out if he actually becomes a werewolf. Unbeknownst to me Blicker had written that memorable episode.

Mayne put us in touch, and the two Seymours and me (they called me an honorary Seymour) met for coffee in Cote-Saint-Luc. By that time Blicker had moved back to the city. I felt giddy (and honored) to meet him. That was the first of many coffees with Seymour. We stayed in touch, regularly exchanging emails and meeting every so often at the local McDonalds. The last time was about a year ago I think. We had planned to get together for coffee last spring and at various points over the summer but something always got in the way. He'd had health difficulties for many years but somehow always mustered the energy to meet. It was apparent now that his health was declining more quickly. By the end of the summer he was messaging that he wasn't feeling well enough for a visit but would let me know when he was up for one. I had a feeling I wasn't going to be seeing him again. 

It's a terrible shame that Seymour has not received the acknowledgement that he deserves. In around 2019 when Seymour was approaching his 80th birthday I contacted some people I knew at the Concordia creative writing department to see if they would be interested in organizing a public literary event to celebrate his birthday. I also brought the idea to the Jewish Public Library where I know there is an archive of clippings on his career. I received polite but unenthusiastic responses. Busy in my own life, I didn't press harder, which I now regret.

Seymour had undoubtedly been a talented and ambitious writer in his prime. In the mid-70s he packed up his family and moved to Los Angeles in the hope of establishing himself as a writer for film and television. It didn't last very long. I asked him what happened. He said, LA was no place to raise a family. I got the impression it was culture shock for him.

By the time I got to know him he had mellowed, maybe even become disillusioned. Like so many writers who felt they deserved more recognition, he now seemed to have become ambivalent about it. In truth, I think Seymour had acknowledged that the culture had moved on. You might say that he was a casualty of the times: Novelists, playwrights and even filmmakers were no longer held in the same esteem as they had been. 

Every time we met I asked if he'd been writing, working on a new play or short story. He'd say he had ideas, but was finding it harder and harder to focus enough bring his ideas to fruition. At one point he travelled to Vienna to see the opening of one of his plays, which he found gratifying. And he was excited when his novels were re-issued by his publisher as e-books. At one point, I suggested to my publisher Vehicule Press, who specializes in publishing classic forgotten Montreal novels, to consider buying the rights to publish a new edition of Shmucks. The literary industry being what it is, it's doubtful that this satirical novel, which has comic elements that are decidedly 'unwoke', will have a new print edition too soon unfortunately. Even the novels of Mordecai Richler have been taught less and less in the years since his death. 

I look forward to the day that Blicker is back on the syllabus alongside other great Montreal literati Richler and Cohen, where he deserves to be. Sad that he won't be here to enjoy the accolades.  

Bonus: My brief online review of The Last Collection, a novel which didn't get close to enough attention when it was released.

Absolutely hysterical and thoroughly enjoyable. Canada is not known for its satirical novels, but in Shmucks and The Last Collection Seymour Blicker proves himself to be equal to the masters of the genre, especially the Jewish sub genre, which has it's own style and flavour. This novel is especially reminiscent of Woody Allen's wackiest. Memorable characters include a particularly neurotic psychiatrist whose office features tropical decor and a remote controlled recliner chair that spins and rises to the ceiling, and a Jewish thug with a soft spot. Blicker does what all the best authors do, he turns the tables on the characters and at the same time on the reader. The cons get conned, and we can't ever really be sure who is the genuine article. And therein lies the deeper resonance of this novel, as in all superior satire, the layers of truth and deceit are revealed. The last collection referred to in the title is not only collection on a debt, or the mental illness of hoarding and greed which afflicts the protagonist and which gets him into debt in the first place. But it also cleverly refers to the collection of moral sins that one party wants to atone for and the collection of guilt that the other party wants to liberate themselves from.

Love Everywhere

CLICK HERE TO HEAR THE SONG

There is love everywhere,

It's like the air we breathe.

Don't look very far,

It's like the flowers and the trees.

It comes to you in silence,

It comes without fanfare.

It comes to you when life, 

Is more than you can bear.

It comes to you from friends,

It comes to you in song.

It comes to you in memory, 

Of someone who is gone.

It comes to you in whispers, 

It comes in soothing tones.

It comes when you're together,

It comes when you're alone.  

Love is everywhere,

Love is everywhere,

Believe me when I say,

Love is everywhere.

It's not rare as a diamond,

It's not precious as gold.

You don't have to go digging,

In some deep dark hole.

Just open your eyes,

Take a deep breath.

Feel it in your bones,

Feel it in your chest.

Love is everywhere,

Love is everywhere,

Believe me when I say,

Love is everywhere.

Believe me when I say,

It won't hurt a bit.

The secret to finding love: 

It comes if you allow it.

Love is everywhere,

Love is everywhere,

Believe me when I say,

Love is everywhere.

Save West Mabou Provincial Park: Strike Three?

Update: It's been officially rejected by Premier Houston. Cabot's proposal to build a golf course in the protected provincial park.   

A big sigh of relief. Public outcry works! David can beat Goliath. 

My only question is whether this strike three means they're out for good!

An Anniversary and An Uneasy Future

This month marks the twentieth anniversary of the publication of my first novel, The Rent Collector, released in November 2005. I wish I could say I’m excited. I’m not. Not because my publisher hasn’t offered to bring out a twentieth-anniversary edition — the book went out of print a decade ago — but because publishing itself now feels almost like an anachronism. The novel lives on as an e-book, half the price of the original paperback, destined to be sold digitally in perpetuity.

What I feel instead of excitement is a kind of unease. Looking back, I realize the novel seems to have intuited something that was coming, though I couldn’t have known it then. The story follows a property manager in a worn industrial building in Montreal’s garment district — an ultra-Orthodox Jew temperamentally unsuited to his trade. Rent collection, in the book, becomes a metaphor for indebtedness — not only financial but existential.

At the time, I was reading Emmanuel Levinas, whose philosophy of “infinite responsibility” described indebtedness as the very foundation of the ethical self: an obligation not chosen but inherited. We are born, he said, already indebted — to our parents for giving us life, but also for everything else we have,  our language, our culture, our heritage, our traditions, our community, our world. To exist is to owe.

In The Rent Collector, that sense of debt takes both physical and spiritual form. Physically, it’s represented by the building the protagonist manages — a literal inheritance from his father, to whom he owes not just his life but his livelihood. Spiritually, it’s his debt to the soul and to God. The rent collector seeks to repay that spiritual debt by finding meaning in the mundane rhythms of work — in encounters with the tenants, the decaying infrastructure, and the declining industry. “Life is rented,” he muses to himself, which echoes one of my grandfather Sam’s favorite refrains: “The banks own everything.”

I won’t claim the novel foresaw the future. But sometimes writers absorb the undercurrents of the zeitgeist before they break the surface. What I see now is that the world my rent collector inhabited has metastasized into a broader condition — what one commentator I follow, The Functional Melancholic, calls “modern techno-feudalism.”

Today, more people than ever live on borrowed time and borrowed money. They own nothing of enduring value and will likely never be able to. They live by subscription — to housing, to entertainment, even to the means of making a living. The bottom fifty percent rent from the top one. My generation, for the most part, still lives off the remnants of inherited stability; the next faces digital indentured servitude — a kind of techno-sharecropping in the gig economy.

The symbol of this dystopian future came to me this week when Trump floated the idea of a 50-year mortgage — a plan announced not long after he toasted martinis with billionaires at a Great Gatsby-themed party at Mar-a-Lago, while SNAP benefits, which feed an astonishing 42 million Americans, teetered on the edge of cuts.

Twenty years after The Rent Collector, more and more people can barely afford rent, let alone dream of ownership. My protagonist’s struggle to collect back rent from tenants on the cusp of bankruptcy now seems almost quaint beside the moral and economic bankruptcy of our age.

So no — I don’t feel much like celebrating.

Keboard Slips

I wonder if keyboard s slips an\re similar to Fru7edians slips if thgey arerveal somethinbg soubconsc cioius of just carelessness in the is world we whwere we are all all multi-=taskikng doing too muchn overwhlemed by tjhe with responsiobiolitierts and tasked outsourchiomng critical information no thinking running everybgting through spell check becaUSE EVEYRHITBNG IS HAPPENING SO FAST AND THE MIOND AND THE HANDS WERE NOT MADE FOR THIS KIND OF SPEED AND THEN FIUNGERS SLKIP ALL OVER THE KEYBOEARD, HITTING BIUTTONS WE VE NEVER YINBTENDED  to got to hiot and we don;t even bother to rereard or reconsoder or deliberate and would rathje rhavre the machines do ith fpor us because we still want perfection or at leats the appearance of perfectiopn and efficiency but lets face it what s done is done theres no going back this klife is one draft and frankly im okay with the mistakes because it m,akes me feel like there is a trace of humanity left