Posted by: Tom





Your writing covers issues such as globalisation, media saturation, fast food, human trafficking, food genetics and drug culture. Would you describe yourself as a political writer?

Yesterday I was speaking with a friend of mine who’s a psychiatrist. I admitted to him that after a long night of the soul I realized I had no idea what my political convictions are. None. Liberal? Conservative? Anarchist? Zip. I know how I was raised and how my parents tried to indoctrinate me, and I’m long over that. And I know how I feel on separate issues. But to fit me into a slot from a doctrinaire standpoint? Blank. My friend thought my horror at my lack of direction was really funny. He said most people don’t have a clue but pretend that they do. He said the world’s a mess. He said that I’m the generic swing voter and both a pollster and politico’s dream. And I’m unsure of how that makes me feel. I like to think I believe in what’s right, yet a sense of irony allows me to contain a lot of opposites in my head at one time. Net result? A need to play out my internal conflicts about big issues on paper. So—and this is a very unexpected response—I’d have to answer your question with a yes. And it would be so much easier just to be able to say no.

-- Douglas Coupland in a Q&A Session with bloomsbury.com


A question and Douglas Coupland's response in bloomsbury.com Q&A session around his book jPod. I can only say "Huzzah!" and "Amen."

Posted by: Tom

As I think about writing, I think about how people write. One of my favourite authors is Tom Robbins. In most fiction, one follows a fairly clear and defined narrative path. There are the odd stops and starts, but generally it's a gratifying, fairly straight forward path that allows you to see all the wares he or she has to offer along the way. Most books follow a familiar and comfortable approach - it's sort of the Ikea approach to story telling.

When I read Robbins, I find it more like an undulating, heavily overgrown path that twists up a mountain side to a launch pad where you board a rocket, travel at the speed of light, drop into an ocean, burrow through the core of a planet, pop out the other side, fall ass over tea kettle out of the rocket (which now looks like a giant racoon wearing Batman underwear) and land back at the beginning of the path with stardust and bits of mushrooms hanging from your hair.

I always wondered how the hell he achieved such a different experience. This article written by Michael Dare, explains just how Robbins does it and it blows my mind as much as any Robbins narrative. | Read More...

Albert Camus and Charlotte Bronte

Posted by: Tom

I recently read an article that outlined a study conducted on the reading preferences of men and women. In the study, 500 men and women were interviewed about their reading habits and about the most important pieces of fiction in their lives. Through the course of the interviews, they were asked to identify "milestone" works of fiction - books that had changed their lives. The study (and article) listed the top 20 choices of men and women and the results are very interesting. Below, I've highlighted some of the more salient, if not surprising, results of the study as they were described in the article. Follow the "Read more" link below ...

Incidentally, I took the photo and drawing of Albert Camus and Charlotte Bronte posted above from the original article. Seeing the image posted on our site just above a photo of Ang and I that I had posted in an earlier entry on this blog, I began to worry. Ang and I are in a similar, tete-a-tete sort of pose (albeit inverted). I hope we don't look as dour and distant as dear Albert and Charlotte! Read More...