Cat’s Eye by Margaret Atwood is a novel about paintings—and even resembles one in its stillness. It’s also about the young girl who’ll create those paintings, currently growing up in late-1980s Toronto, nine years old and badly startled by the contrast between city life and her previous life in the northern Ontario woods with her…
Graduation day at Rhodes College had the Class of 2025 assemble in the amphitheater by 7:30 a.m., and it was a gently clouded 25°C when the ceremony began in Fisher Gardens. The sun broke out mid-ceremony, bathing the audience and graduates in light, and hit 31°C by noon, frying the Class of 2025 neatly in…
This wild American hitchhiking saga by Jack Kerouac can be read as a quasi-tour of the United States. And an introduction to the Beat generation. “Beat” was the new term I learned by reading this book. I thought it was a funny name for a generation—suggestive of music, drums, and defeat. The Beatniks were road-tripping…