The Case Of The. Fox: Being His Prophecies Under Hypnotism of the Period Ending A.D. 1950: A Political Utopia

In this 1903 Utopian novel, Dr. Aerius Pott puts a poet under hypnosis to gain visions from the future. The work is a worthwhile read, if only for entertainment purposes. The legal system described is highly improbable as is the idea that crime would all but disappear by the year 1950. The relationship and labour structures described as well as the gaudy-sounding architecture are some high points in the text. 

The work is slightly obscure. Amazon.ca offers only high priced, scanned reproductions, which include a disclaimer that the pages and text may be flawed or incomplete in some places. The edition I read was an original 1903 printing. 

The Soul of Man Under Socialism (Oscar Wilde)

Previously, I was familiar with Oscar Wilde only through his fictional works, such as A Picture of Dorian Gray, so I was surprised to find his name on a library shelf containing books about socialism and politics. The Soul of Man is a small book. It's more of an essay really. 

Wilde makes some unusual arguments for socialism, stating that socialism breeds individualism more effectively than capitalism. He attributes this to the way people are blinded by capitalism into finding their identity through objects and property rather than through their mind and their abilities. Wilde is less concerned with the economic practicalities of his version of socialism, than he is with the system's ability to allow the creation of art. Although some of Wilde's ideas left me shaking my head, I feel reading the work was worthwhile. 

Tell the Wolves I'm Home (Carol Rifka Brunt)

Set in the 1980's, Tell the Wolves I'm Home deals with thirteen year old June and her family as they cope with the death of June's uncle Finn after he succumbs to AIDS. June realizes early on in the book that her uncle, who she had known was gay, had also had a boyfriend whom she never met. 

I read this book in an afternoon. I don't think I set it down for more than a few moments at any point. It's difficult to watch a young girl deal with the death of someone she was close to, but it's even more difficult to watch the people around her skirt around the cause of his death and speak of AIDS as if it was something they could catch by breathing the same air as someone with it. What made the story even more heartbreaking was Junes affection for her Uncle Finn, an affection that even her own mother realized, was slightly inappropriate. 

It's the kind of book that leaves you sitting and thinking afterwards. You close the final page and you sit in your chair, sipping your tea--which has gone cold--until you finally stand up and move on. It's a book that make you feel. 

I first heard about this book through the book-tuber TheReading Rhodes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yx8kl9eXr3I

Thirty Years: 1922-1952: The Story of the Communist Movement in Canada (Tim Buck)

This was a light read I pulled off the shelf at my university library the other week. I read most of it sitting down near a pond at my favourite park. It's an odd feeling to be sitting peacefully while at the same time reading about violence and political arrests carried out against Canadians who less than a hundred years before had been, in this same country, organizing labour unions. Not so long ago, in the 1930's, being a communist was considered a crime. 

The book, at about 240 pages is a short, but fascinating read. It's a good start for anyone looking to piece together the history of communist and socialist movements in Canada. 

A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder (James DeMille)

This book is mandatory reading for the Early Canadian Lit. course I'm taking this spring. I wasn't sure what to think about it when I first began reading. My immediate reaction a few chapters in was to say, "this is so Jules Verne." It also reminded me a bit of Gulliver's Travels and perhaps a little bit of the The Swiss Family Robinson.

The plot is two-layered. A small group of men of leisure, while sailing through the South Pacific pull a copper cylinder from water and find within it a manuscript written on papyrus. They proceed to spend the remainder of the book reading the manuscript aloud and commenting on it (not an unusual formula for 19th century novels). It is through this method that we the reader hear the story of Adam More, who became lost in a snow storm in a years earlier and was sucked into an opening of some sort within the south pole that carried him into another world with strange landscapes, strange people, and strange, dangerous customs.

The plot is nothing extraordinary and at times I found myself suspending my disbelief, not in the creates presented, but in the actions of Adam More. Not once does he discuss his life prior to the story and not once does he long for family or friends he left behind.

What took the novel to another level, away from sensational popular fiction, is the intense amount of philosophy as well as social and political commentary that the author, James DeMillie, has manged to weave into it. At times there seems to be a satirical battle between the validity of the capitalist and communist life-style. This pleased me. I'm automatically more interested in any book which I can relate political ideologies to.

I had no idea Canadian writing of the 19th century could be like this. A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder is a refreshing change from the settler focused and rural settings of much of the Canadian literature written around the same time period.

Mortar: Revolutionary Journal of Common Cause Anarchist Organization: Volume 2

This is Volume 2 of a publication put out by Common Cause, an anarchist-communist organization in southern Ontario. I was given this copy for free and I believe a simple Google search will produce a PDF copy. 

Reading it was interesting and not quite what I expected.  Although I do not identify with anarchist-communist politics, many of the ideas discussed are reconcilable with my own politics. I did not expect to relate to the arguments presented as much as I did. 

The publication stresses direct action and participation in struggles (the class struggle) through formal organizations which operate as alternatives to state structures, but also warns against being too radical or trying projects which lack common sense, such as alternative medical-care structures which put people's health at risk.

Activists need to look beyond their universities, unions and workplaces to take a neighbourhood or community-style approach, the authors say. Community building seems to be a focus of the Common Cause. I came into this work knowing little to nothing about the organization. Perhaps this quote summarizes partly what their goals are:

“As anarchist communists, we imagine a post-revolutionary society as being composed of a decentralized network of autonomous, self-governing assemblies and councils, where decisions are made collectively by those most directly affected by their outcomes. These localized structures can be federalized when necessary, into larger decision-making bodies that could address issues of broader regional significance—such as water and waste management”(27).

Part of the publication is devoted to a discussion of sexual violence and how Common Cause deals with it within their group on the rare occasion when they are forced to. Significantly, the writers said that they use their politics to shape their policy. I liked these lines: "People who sexually assault others should be thought of less as “community members” and more as class traitors. They take advantage of the divisions in society...for their personal gain” (74).

The publication closes with a brief discussion of the risks of activism, and of opposing the structure and taking part in the class struggle. 

I would certainly recommend Mortar for any reader looking to expand their perspective beyond the mainstream view.  

Fractured Man (Jacob R. Blacquiere)

This was given to me as a free e-book by the author in exchange for an unbiased review.

Cliché. The first thing I wondered is why one of the main characters had been named Winston. There’s nothing original about that name. It’s extremely Anglo-Saxon. It’s the sort of name you would expect to find in a science-fiction novel. Then there’s Yara, the first woman described in the novel. She has long blonde hair and blue eyes. In my whole life I have encountered only a handful of women with long blonde hair and blue eyes, yet this archetype continues to pop up in novels.

The plot is nothing spectacular, but it is fine. It is exactly what one would expect to find in a dime-store sci-fi novel. It seems that generations before a mass human exodus occurred and those who were left behind learned to survive with the aid of a substance referred to as synthetica (incidentally also the name of an album by Canadian Indie rock band Metric?). The novel opens as Winston and companions go out at night to collect the substance..

The novel reaches a higher note with the introduction of Aleha Sanderson, a scientist on the ship Pioneer-1, in the second chapter. She returns to have a look at the planet her ancestors abandoned 1000 years before. I was less impressed by Marian, who makes her entrance into the novel by playing the part of the weak woman and sobbing in Winston’s arms.

I do give author Jacob R. Blacquiere credit for his portrayal of the culture and the legends in which Winston lives. Like all civilizations, Winston’s people have stories surrounding their methods of existence which they both believe in and doubt at the same time. An interesting parallel can be drawn between real world religions, and institutions.

The novel is available as an e-book on Amazon.

The Alien House (Élise Turcotte)

Beautiful. The prose is beautiful.

The Alien House, by Élise Turcotte is an English translation of the original French version of the book which won the Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction in 2003.

I can't remember the last time I read a book where I felt almost every sentence acutely. The pathos created is so strong that I related to pains I myself have never felt and I connected them to the various shades of emotions that I have experienced.

The narrative follows Élizabeth, a professor interested in love and representations of the body during the middle ages. Her boyfriend Jim has recently moved out and left her. The novel follows her as she grieves over the loss of him, alters her life and home in an attempt to move on, experiments with a new lover and is plagued by dreams both good and bad.

The writing style is rich, as is the way Élizabeth perceives the world around her. For Élizabeth smell is especially important. This passage is one of my favourites: "I know that our emotions have an odour. Fear for instance gives off a somewhat acrid smell. What does loneliness smell like then, and aging, and helplessness?"(113).

I understand fully why this book was awarded the most honourable literary award in the country. Turcotte has the ability to make the reader feel as though they too, like Élizabeth, are experiencing emotional turmoil.

(A warning to young readers and sensitive readers. This book contains sexually explicit scenes)

The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao (Junot Diaz)

A few days ago I watched a book haul by one of my favourite book-tubers, TheReadingRhodes. He mentioned this book, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz. Intrigued by his description of it, I acquired a copy yesterday and read most of the book last night and this afternoon.

The book alternates between a setting in the United States and one in the Dominican Republic, switching between a 1970-1980s setting and previous decades. The story is of an overweight writer-nerd and his troubled family. Oscar struggles with finding both happiness and love in his life. He is socially awkward and a loner who sometimes struggles with depression.

Interestingly, both readers and characters must come to terms with the idea of what is referred to as fukú, a curse which seems to follow a family from generation to generation. The younger generations are skeptical of the existence of the curse, but as readers discover, that changes.
                                                                                                                                                   
Diaz's book is a fascinating mixture of fiction, with just a touch of fact. Like all good "literary works"( I should note that I use "literary" as a flexible genre term due to its lack of solid definition) it tackles a variety of issues, like love, sex, loneliness and evolving cultures.  

The Pelican Brief (John Grisham)

I pulled this book off a sale rack at a discount shop for about five dollars. I had never read a John Grisham book before, but was intrigued by the plot synopsis on the back. I was greatly impressed and managed to read the book in about twenty-four hours, the same twenty-four hours in which I also studied for and wrote a midterm. 

The plot is simple. After two Supreme Court Justices are murdered a law student writes up a brief speculating at the motive and person behind the deaths. The reader is left in the dark about the details of her brief until almost the end of the book, but the brief which is quickly dubbed "the pelican  brief" stirs up dust when it makes its way into the hands of the FBI and the White House. Naturally, the author of the brief is soon on the run, fleeing for her life while feeding information to a reporter. The plot is nothing novel, yet it is intensely suspenseful, making the book hard to put down. The book's general flavour reminded me very much of the first time I watched "All the President's Men." 

Champagne and Meatballs: Adventures of a Canadian Communist

I found myself wandering through one of the many floor of my university's arts library searching for something to help me whittle away a few hours I had between classes. The eighth floor always catches my attention the longest. Not far from the elevator doors a few aisles of shelves house the books on communism and socialism. Eventually the shelves bleed out into other political science subjects, but I don't usually get that far when I'm searching for reading material.

I think the title of Champagne and Meatballs may have had a lot to do with why I pulled it from the shelf and settled down in a cozy corner on my campus to read it. The fact that its subject matter was also Canadian probably had a lot to do with it too. Champagne and Meatballs is the memoir of a Canadian man from his birth around the start of the 20th century into the 1960s. He retells key parts of his life as a communist in Canada at a time when, especially during the second world war, communists were seen as enemies of the state (due to Russia)and his on-off career as a writer first in Canada and then as a foreign correspondent in such countries as China and Russia.