Four Montreal Jewish writers worth hearing (at least three of them anyway.)

I organized and participated in a session of the recent Association of Jewish Libraries conference in Montreal. The idea was to gather a group of local writers to read from new work and talk about what it means, if anything, to be a Jewish writer. It's worth your time if you happen to have a spare hour and a half, or less.

Sherwood Schwartz 1916-2011

He gave us Ginger and Marianne. The three hour tour. The critics hated his shows and we loved them, and still do, and for that alone he is worth honouring. He rejected the staid father-mother-two kids suburban portrait of the typical 1950s American family and decided that there was something truer and more absurd to our existence. We're actually an incompatible motley shipwrecked bunch thrown together on a lush beautiful island with no obvious way to get off, and somehow we survive together.

Sherwood Schwartz has finally found a way off this crazy island. Here's a fond salute to one of the most influential storytellers of my generation.

Salesmanship: The ebook

Ever since jumping hesitantly on the bandwagon a few weeks ago I've become positively enamoured with my ereader. Now I am a full-on devotee. The natural next step was to start toying around with epublishing. A few hours of tinkering with free downloaded software and walla!! My first e-book, appropriately titled "Salesmanship", and featuring three short stories. Admittedly, the savvy internet user will be able to track down two of these three stories on the web. But why read off a screen when, for the outlandishly inexpensive price of $4.99 (shipping and handling included), you can own this digital edition to add to your personal ereader library? I'm still not exactly sure how it'll work administration wise, but try it out by clicking on the Buy Now button and maybe, if all goes as planned, you'll receive shortly a special e-package of literature in the e-mail. And best of all no trees were sacrificed.

The $50,000 poem

Hear ye!! Hear Ye!! Calling all poets!! Don't delay. The deadline for the inaugural $50,000 Montreal International Poetry Prize approaches this Friday, July 8th! It's open to all poets - and that means you (who doesn't consider him/herself a poet). Everyone's eligible!

Look, I'm actually fan of poetry. Read the stuff, edited a couple of anthologies, even write the stuff on occasion. So why does this new prize for a poem seem so completely absurd? I keep asking myself, can there possibly by such a thing as a poem worth $50K? We're not talking a novel that takes years to write or a body of literary work; a single poem! And why does it seem that as less people read poetry and buy poetry publications the more poetry prizes there are, and the higher their purse. Clearly, a declining readership has prompted a kind of false, one might even say sad, effort to prop up flaccid, sagging prestige. The spectacle (if that's what it could be when it involves poetry) recalls the compensations needed by the owner of a souped-up muscle car. A new prize will not generate new interest in poetry, if that's what the organizers are after, and certainly not new book buyers. Never have, and never will. As well-intentioned as this prize might be it only serves to make generally ignored poets feel better about themselves, at least one poet anyway. I keep thinking about all that money being put to good use by spreading the largesse; imagine how many poetry collections $50K could buy.

Where Saint-Urbain intersects Chabanel

It does in fact - I mean Saint-Urbain and Chabanel intersect as you'll see in the video below. I was asked by the Gazette to participate in the commemoration of the tenth anniversary of Mordecai Richler's death. My written contribution is here. My video contribution, from Chabanel naturally, is below.

Tolerance? Understanding?

There will be no synagogue expansion on Hutchison. At least, not this synagogue. And not this time. The real loser here is... (you fill in the blank). Actually I blame both sides. I'm guessing that the Hasids have never invited their neighbours over for tea, let alone smiled and said hello when they passed in the street.

Another referendum in Quebec

I wrote about the Outremont Hasidic community in The Rent Collector and their fight to erect an eruv, a virtually invisible boundary allowing certain practices on the Shabbat. Round two came when the Hasidim asked the local YMCA to cover a window that allowed passersby to view women exercising in skimpy clothes (the Hasidim paid to have frosted glass installed). Round three is at hand - this battle about whether a small synagogue should be allowed to renovate and expand their building. Of course, this is really all about tolerance and the perceived increasing 'encroachment' of a growing religious people on the surrounding secular community. My guess is that rounds four, five and six are not far away.