The Invisible Counterpoint

Toward the End of Time (John Updike, 1997) Margaret Atwood : "Toward the End of Time'' is John Updike's 47th book, and it is deplorably good. If only he would write a flagrant bomb! That would be news. But another excellently written novel by an excellent novelist -- what can be said?  David Foster Wallace :  It is, of the total 25 Updike books I’ve read, far and away the worst, a novel so mind-bendingly clunky and self-indulgent that it’s hard to believe the author let it be published in this kind of shape. --- Margaret Atwood :  Like many late-20th-century writers, Updike is fascinated with bodily goo, and by things that go yuck in the night. The verbal pleasure he takes in describing the exact nature and texture of Ben's searing and dribbly symptoms rivals Cormac McCarthy on exploding skulls or Patricia Cornwell on decaying corpses.  David Foster Wallace:  As were Freud’s, Mr. Updike’s big preoccupations have always been wit...

Wolf of Wall Street (part one) There are no victims at the beginning of the movie. Basically, it begins with a lad finding himself in what turns out to be one of the engine rooms keeping a whole society running, that needs to be kept going smoothly lest – collapse.  To their "customers," they flood confidence, their own ego, surety, and unflappability. Anything equivocating must be "other side" – on the side of those investing in stocks, who need to have every bit of wavering greeted with an immediate return of reassurance. To be this for them, for society , means affixing themselves with the right mix of chemicals so to be a stable base of relaxed bliss from whence confidence can be spurt out as required. There are no victims, because the movie begins with a sense that this is just where society is. Whatever might have driven societies before then – which might in the past have been "righteous" war and sacrifice (the 40s), cautious but r...

I know I'm taking liberties, but if you don't mind, Emma:

Atwood lives downtown Toronto -- I don't even think you can see "geography" from downtown Toronto. And I'm not sure where exactly her loyalties lie: in "Surfacing" -- her supposed most nationalist and anti-American work -- other than the main protagonist (a literate, isolated Atwood-type), the Cdns in it come out seeming worse (or at least more pathetic) than the boarish Americans do. And I remember in her earlier work, at least, rural-types seemed oppressive morons. And if you don't like primitive rural-types, shaped by whatever river or mountain or prairie that happens to be nearby, I didn't think you were allowed to be Cdn. (Emma Peel hardly seems blue-grass. You sure you weren't shaped more by British wit than by prairie gophers?)

Also, all you people readily favoring literate Cdns, check out book-writing Rick Mercer's show-biz history: had a show where all he was conce...