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Nobody's a Critic Marc Lewis: A few kind words about Jordan Peterson PAGE 25 $6.50 Vol. 26, No. 3 April 2018 JOHN SEMLEY Nobody’s a Critic Did virtue and the think piece ruin criticism? PLUS MICHELLE DEAN & MICHELLE ORANGE Women and the art of opinion ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: HOWARD ADELMAN: The refugee conundrum ANNE THÉRIAULT: A brief history of romantic dissolution JACK MITCHELL: Child swallowings and vainglory Publications Mail Agreement #40032362. Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to LRC, Circulation Dept. PO Box 8, Station K, Toronto, ON M4P 2G1 Sleuth: Gail Bowen on Writing Mysteries by Gail Bowen “Want to write a wildly successful mystery novel? Buy and read Gail Bowen’s Sleuth.” Alan Bradley, New York Times bestselling author of the Flavia de Luce series “This is one of the best ‘how-to’ books I’ve read. Utterly entertaining and personable, Gail Bowen also has some very solid tips for writers. I got re-inspired.” Maureen Jennings, author of the Murdoch Mystery Series Participation made possible through Creative Saskatchewan’s Market and Export Development Grant Program. LRC SLEUTH ad U of R Press.indd 1 2018-03-07 10:46 AM Literary Review of Canada 100 King Street West, Suite 2575 P.O. Box 35 Station 1st Canadian Place Toronto ON M5X 1A9 email: [email protected] reviewcanada.ca Vol. 26, No. 3 • April 2018 T: 416-861-8227 Charitable number: 848431490RR0001 To donate, visit reviewcanada.ca/support 2 Thinking in Public 17 Hapless Old Harridans EDITOR IN CHIEF Michelle Dean in conversation Flapping Their Traps Sarmishta Subramanian [email protected] with Michelle Orange Who says the alt-right doesn’t like poetry? ASSISTANT EDITOR Aaron Giovannone 5 The Problem of Refuge Bardia Sinaee What do we owe our fellow humans in need? 19 Goodbye to All That ASSOCIATE EDITOR Beth Haddon Rescue by David Miliband; Refuge by Alexander The politics of romantic exits POETRY EDITOR Betts and Paul Collier; and Running on Empty Hard to Do by Kelly María Korducki Moira MacDougall by Michael J. Molloy, et al. Anne Thériault Howard Adelman COPY EDITOR 21 Come From Away Patricia Treble EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT 8 Oh Look—a Good Book Do we have a chance against alien species? Evangeline Holtz Criticism in the shadow of think-piece poptimism The Aliens Among Us by Leslie Anthony John Semley CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Mark Winston Mohamed Huque, Andy Lamey, Molly Peacock, Robin Roger, Judy Stoffman 11 Soggy Soup Bread I: 22 The Third Sister PROOFREADERS The Overture A poem Suzanne Mantha, Heather Schultz, A poem Lyn Butler Gray Tyler Willis Gina Hay DESIGN 23 The Thin White Line Rachel Tennenhouse 12 ‘The Thunderous Brows. The shifting boundaries of racial identity ADVERTISING/SALES The Long Silences.’ The Limits of Whiteness by Neda Maghbouleh Michael Wile Those marvellously unrelatable Greeks Bardia Sinaee [email protected] Creators, Conquerors, and Citizens by BUSINESS MANAGER Robin Waterfield and Mythos by Stephen Fry 25 Uncommon Sense Paul McCuaig Jack Mitchell Jordan Peterson’s complicated truth PUBLISHER 12 Rules for Life by Jordan Peterson Mark Lovewell 13 Savage Lands Marc Lewis [email protected] A poem BOARD OF DIRECTORS Tom Kierans, O.C., Don McCutchan, kerry rawlinson 28 Letters Michèle Mendelssohn, Andrew Baldwin, Trina McQueen, O.C., Jaime Watt Synanthropes David Dodge, David Berlin CORPORATE SECRETARY 14 Vali Bennett A poem ADVISORY COUNCIL Ben Robinson Michael Adams, Alan Broadbent, C.M., Chris Ellis, Carol Hansell, Donald 15 A Guardian of Time Macdonald, P.C., C.C., Grant Reuber, A family’s story and the burdens of the past O.C., Don Rickerd, C.M., Rana Sarkar, Vi by Kim Thúy Mark Sarner, Bernard Schiff Donna Bailey Nurse POETRY SUBMISSIONS For guidelines, please see reviewcanada.ca. LRC design concept by Jackie Young/INK Founded in 1991 by P.A. Dutil Poems in this issue are inspired by the theme of “migration.” The LRC is published 10 times a year by the Literary Review of Canada Charitable Organization. ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTION RATES Individuals in Canada $56/year plus GST/HST. Cover and interior illustrations by Ka Young Lee. Ka Young Lee is a Toronto-based illustrator. (Libraries and institutions in Canada $68/year plus GST/HST.) Outside Canada, please pay $86/year for Lee’s work relies on a combination of both analog and digital methods. Her use of soothing palates individuals, or $98 for libraries and institutions. and graphic components both transcends and pays homage to her Korean heritage. SUBSCRIPTIONS AND CIRCULATION Literary Review of Canada Illustration on page 19 by Leeay Aikawa. Aikawa is a multidisciplinary artist, illustrator, and graphic P.O. Box 8, Station K, Toronto ON M4P 2G1 [email protected] designer whose artistic practice extends to painting, drawing, and collage. Her work has been published 416-932-5081 • reviewcanada.ca in the New York Times, The Walrus, The Atlantic, and elsewhere. ©2018 The Literary Review of Canada. All rights, including translation into other languages, are reserved by the publisher in Canada, the United States, Great Britain and all other countries participating in the Universal Copyright Convention, the International From time to time, the LRC may allow carefully selected organizations to send mail to subscribers, offering products or services that may be of interest. Copyright Convention and the Pan-American Copyright If you do not wish to receive such correspondence, please contact our Subscriber Service department at [email protected], Convention. Nothing in this publication may be repro- or call 416-932-5081, or mail P.O. Box 8, Station K, Toronto ON M4P 2G1. duced without the written permission of the publisher. ISSN 1188-7494 The Literary Review of Canada is indexed in We acknowledge the financial Funding Acknowledgements We acknowledge the assistance the Canadian Literary Periodicals Index and the support of the Government of the OMDC Magazine Fund, Canadian Index and is distributed by Disticor and Magazines Canada. of Canada through the an initiative of Ontario Media Canada Periodical Fund of Development Corporation. the Department of Canadian Heritage. an Ontario government agency un organisme du gouvernement de l’Ontario April 2018 reviewcanada.ca 1 INTERVIEW Thinking in Public Michelle Dean in conversation with Michelle Orange he past few years have marked a golden age for Twomen critics and essay- ists. In 2017, there were trenchant new collections from Joan Didion, Rebecca Solnit, Roxane Gay, Mary Gaitskill, and more. And much- anticipated new books of essays by Zadie Smith and Marilynne Robinson have been published in the first few months of this year. In Sharp: The Women Who Made an Art of Having an Opinion (Grove), the Los Angeles– based Canadian writer Michelle Dean explores the experiences of the genre’s pioneers, a wave of twentieth- century critics who included Dorothy Parker, Hannah Arendt, Susan Sontag, and Mary McCarthy. (The book’s title captures both their wonderfully incisive writing styles and the label frequently affixed to them by their Women critics in a male-dominated field have had a complicated relationship with the feminist label. mostly male peers.) ENGRAVING BY M. DARLY, THE VIS A VIS BISECTED OR THE LADIES COOP (1776) Dean is a journalist and critic and IMAGE COURTESY LIBRARY OF CONGRESS PRINTS AND PHOTOGRAPHS DIVISION recipient of a National Book Critics Circle citation for excellence in reviewing. She has idea that each of these women were outliers in their how seriously good it was. contributed to publications such as The New time, but that doesn’t seem worth celebrating. In I suppose it’s not great that these women are Yorker, The Nation, Harper’s, and Slate. She spoke some sense you rescue these women from that, and left out of the academy, but I sometimes think about the past, present, and future of female criti- tell a different story. [Joan] Didion is so popular because she’s not stud- cism with the New York-based Canadian essayist Michelle Dean: Sometimes I wonder if they ied that much. Kael too. You can experience their and writer Michelle Orange, whose acclaimed 2013 would be mad at me for linking them in this way, work out of passion or accident. That tends to be a book This Is Running for Your Life: Essays (Farrar, even though in various ways they all seem to have better experience. Straus & Giroux) investigates through critical, jour- acknowledged connections to each other. It’s tricky. Orange: In tracing the arc of many of these writ- nalistic, and personal essays a world increasingly Women, for obvious reasons, don’t really respond ers’ lives you often confront the challenge each of mediated by images and interactivity. Orange’s well to having their individuality flattened. them faced with regard to developing confidence writing has appeared in Harper’s, McSweeney’s, Orange: Were you taught the work of any of the and authority on the page. I appreciated your focus the New York Times, and The New Yorker, and her writers you include in Sharp? How did you encoun- on that, because for women that challenge can be second book, Pure Flame, is forthcoming. ter them? Somehow I got through a double-major in particular. I’m thinking of Janet Malcolm: It struck They spoke over email. English and film studies and a graduate degree in the me, in your chapter on her, how much of her career latter without being assigned to read, say, Pauline she has had to spend in a defensive posture. You Michelle Orange: You’ve chosen a number of Kael. Have certain of your subjects suffered for being detail the decade-long legal battle that surrounded prominent twentieth-century female writers—each left out of the academy? Or does it matter anymore? In the Freud Archives, where her subject filed a of them known for a certain critical acumen—and Dean: At McGill, I did a degree in twentieth- $10-million suit against her, and the intense criti- drawn them together to tell a story about, among century cultural history.
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