Steve Lipman A review of Turning Back: The Personal Journey of a Born-Again Jew, by Michael Lesher. Published by Lincoln Square Books The typical Jew-who-has-found-the-light-and-discovers-God book follows a familiar pattern: some description of the author’s upbringing in an identifiably Jewish but resolutely secular family, some event that causes him as a young adult to examine …
Edward Curtin In lieu of writing reviews of their own books – with the exception of Walt Whitman, who did that with Leaves of Grass – writers often write introductions or prefaces. The purpose of such introductions is to give the prospective readers a sense of what to expect in the pages that follow, as if the …
"OffG Recommends" is a new series we'll be putting out intermittently commenting on books, film, television or other arts and entertainment. This November 5th OffG heartily recommends V for Vendetta. Its themes are newly relevant, and its message could not be more timely.
John Steppling Some books demand slower reading than others. Ed Curtin’s new book is such a case. But then this assemblage of essays, many published elsewhere, is a corrective to the growing intoxication with technology, with the surveillance and the policing it is being used for, and to what Jonathan Crary wrote about in 24/7, …
Tony Sutton A review of The Sport & Prey of Capitalists: How the Rich Are Stealing Canada’s Public Wealth, by Linda McQuaig. Published by Dundurn It’s painful to recount the times in recent decades that we’ve been fed the neoliberal mantra that privatising public services is more cost effective than allowing them to remain in …
Edward Curtin Like the wandering and rascally Odysseus upon whom he models his life, Oliver Stone is “double-minded” in the most profound and illuminating ways. The title of his fantastic new memoir is a case in point. “One of the first basic lessons in filming,” he writes, “is chasing the light. Without it, you have …
Faceless beings with muffled voices stare at me through dark sunken sockets full of fear and fright. Muzzled and mugged, choked and tugged; I see them here there and everywhere! From dawn to dusk, from dusk to dawn; on the streets, in the trains, on the beach and in the parks! I know not who …
Rhys Jones The new spy thriller Alpha R, which is being shot in Donetsk for a release later this summer, features a “warning shot” about a possible escalation of the New Cold War on the part of the American ‘deep state’, if there is a (perhaps not only hypothetical) Joe Biden electoral victory. A special …
Edward Curtin Imagine this: A so-called presidential historian for a major television network publishes an interview in the most famous newspaper in the world with the most famous singer/songwriter in the world, who has recently written an explosive song accusing the U.S. government of a conspiracy in the assassination of the most famous modern American …
The pandemic is fetishized and much like the climate alarmism associated with Greta and The Guardian paper, there is a curious fetishized and cultic response in much of the population. And it is the latent masochism of the already terrorized. It also feels like a faint cry of Puritan angst, a call to piety. This is a very American sensibility, this punitive moralism.
