Rare chance to take part in a Michel Hellman atelier in Montreal, Herta Müller interviewed by the Paris Review, Bill Moyers and Joseph Campbell, Terrance Hayes in Toronto: Cultural Digest September 2

• Comics artist Michel Hellman (Mile End, link in French) is doing a workshop at Drawn & Quarterly. Don't miss this. It's $150 but there are only 10 spots available and it's a rare opportunity to work with one of the masters of the genre but also to walk away with a beautiful notebook that you've created yourself. I'd do it myself but I'm out of town that day. For those who remember, Hellman did an event at the Festival this year, a discussion about Mile End in books with Sigal Samuel (The Mystics of Mile End) and Guillaum Morissette (New Tab). It was a packed event with excellent questions from the audience. Hellman's workshop will be bilingual.
• American poet Terrance Hayes will be in Toronto on September 17 to read his work and be interviewed onstage. Hayes is one of the rising stars of American poetry and represents one of the new voices of our era. With allusions to everyone from Gwendolyn Brooks to race riots to the quiet beauty of domestic life with his family, there's something in his work that melds the personal and the political in very accessible ways. He's really a great performer, too. It costs $60 but it includes a copy of his latest book and a "special gift" as well.
• Herta Müller, winner of the 2009 Nobel prize for literature, talks about her history, her past and her writing with the Paris Review. I've tried reading her work a few times and have yet to gain a foothold into it, but reading this interview makes me want to try again.
• Many hours of lectures by the amazing Joseph Campbell have made their way online. Campbell was a hugely influential teacher and scholar and one of my first youthful obsessions was his series on myth, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, which was very prominent and read often by people coming of age when I did. Bill Moyers' series of interviews with Campbell and subsequent book, The Power of Myth, was also something that every smart person I know read and talked about when it came out.

Bill Moyers and Joseph Campbell: highly influential series of interviews

Blue Met 2015: The Mile End Series

We are very happy to announce a new series as part of our 2015 Festival (which runs April 20 - 26, 2015):

The Mile End Series!

This series of literary events in both French and English with innovative and bold writers from all over the world will be at select venues in the Mile End district of Montreal from April 20 - 26, 2015.

We can't say more just quite yet about which authors or which venues or events, so stay tuned for more. But for those who live in or go out in Mile End, April 2015 will be a great opportunity to get involved and see some fascinating events without having to come down town (to our regular venue hotel, Hotel 10, where we'll also be hosting some fun and interesting events at the same time).

More details to come!

We look forward to seeing you in April!

Urban Irony: yech

There is a very interesting piece over the weekend in the NYT blog about contemporary irony as a generational style and it aligns with so much that I've thought about in the past few years. I am struck particularly when I am in Mile End or parts of the Plateau: the girls with oversized 80s eyeglasses, the men with handlebar moustaches, odd posters on the wall (like the one below that I Tweeted about a couple of weekends ago: Lionel Richie on the wall at Flocon Espresso), high-waisted mom jeans on 18 year olds. Francophone young people seem less enamoured with this tendency than Anglophone young people do but the NYT writer captures perfectly an analysis of how it might have come about and why it's potentially damaging or if that's an overstatement, so pointless and banal.

Hello, is it me you're looking for?

What irks me about the whole urban irony thing is the sense that sincerity is almost subversive. Everything is one step removed from intention. Do the people who run Flocon really like 1980s Lionel Richie? Or is this a pose, an affectation? What would a poster of some funky cool new band on the wall communicate? Sincerity, so it's something you'd never see.

I think about when I was in my 20s, the kind of music and style I abhorred was anything that parents would have liked (now, of course, I appreciate Carole King and Neil Young and early 70s film) but now it's like certain allusions to the past allow young people to communicate that they are somehow capable of knowing everything that is cool now (which was how we measured how cool someone older was when I was in my 20s: if he knew Depeche Mode and the Violent Femmes and Erasure, then he was OK; if not, then he was old), not only are they aware of contemporary music and film and style, they know about everything that came prior particularly my generation's icons though it's always people who were terribly "uncool" in the 1980s: Lionel Richie (when I was young, this was middle-aged people's music), Barry Manilow (ditto: my grandmother adored Barry Manilow), etc.

This kind of ironic style isn't that new but the ubiquity of it is: in Montreal, in New York, in Portland, many cities where I have spent time recently, all have young people who look identical. I suppose that's been true for a while but I have to say that going to a new city where there is a unique kind of style is so refreshing. And it happens so infrequently...

It's odd that irony only relates to pop culture or fashion. This demonstrates the shallowness of the tendency: never do you see young people clutching paperback copies of Danielle Steele ironically.  Why aren't hipsters ever ironic about Billie Holliday or Coltrane or Henry James or Thomas Hardy? I guess that's too far away...? It's the contemporary link that contains all the resonance...? And it would require too much thought and analysis? I don't know but the piece linked above is certainly thought-provoking...

Mordecai Richler and Montreal: three key events to watch out for

Charles Foran, winner of the Charles Taylor prize for his biography, Mordecai, will be part of three important events this year at and during Blue Met:

Charles Foran

First, he will be part of the Open Your Library-Canada Edition, hosted by CBC's Sue Smith (and also including Alexander MacLeod, Kathleen Winter, and Kate Pullinger). It's a discussion about our Canadian writers and their libraries: their favorite books, their most treasured books, their oldest books. What is Charles Foran's favorite Richler book? What books did Kathleen Winter read as research for her novel Annabel? What is Alex MacLeod's favorite book about hockey? Any book lovers out there? This is your event! Friday, April 29th, 2011 at 8pm.

On Saturday, April 30th at 12noon, Charlie will be onstage with Brian Busby, author of another important biography of a Montreal writer, John Glassco (John Glassco: A Gentleman of Pleasure, Poet, Memoirist, Translator, Pornographer) in Varied Trajectories: Richler & Glassco. This promises to be an interesting discussion about the lives and legacies of these two very important Montreal writers and the very different public receptions they had to their works as well as the reputations they could never seem to overcome. This event is hosted by CBC's Jeanette Kelly.

Tickets to both of the above events can be purchased online.

Another really interesting event that we have planned (in partnership with the Mordecai Richler Writer in Residence Program at McGill University) will be held on Sunday, May 1st at 11am, lasting about 2 hours:  Mordecai's Montreal: From Parc Avenue to the Main. This is an outdoor walking tour with geographical and anecodtal information about one of Canada's most beloved writers, hosted by none other than Mr. Charles Foran himself. And what an opportunity: touring Mile End and the Plateau in search of remnants of Richler's life with the author of the most comprehensive and thorough biography of Mordecai Richler. Charlie is obviously a Richler expert but his entertaining style and wit will keep you engaged and fascinated every step of the way.

Learn about Montreal and Richler while enjoying the gorgeous Montreal spring (Though if it's raining, bring an umbrella!). 

This event is not listed in our programme this year, but you can pay for it on our site here (via Pay Pal). This one will sell out fast (very limited space) and participants will meet in Mile End Sunday morning just before 11 at Wilensky's, 34 Fairmount. $15/person: a steal! This one is NOT to be missed...