“You know, we’re really like the coffee-and-cigarettes generation, when you think about it. You know what I mean? In the ‘40s it was the pie-and-coffee generation.”
Tom Waits
It was a dry and unseasonably warm February morning - though this is Canada, so unseasonable is a relative term - when I met Toronto author David Nickle in a café called the Tango Palace Coffee Company on Queen Street East. When thinking of how to describe said café, the word “cozy” comes to mind and sticks there hard and fast. Apparently they also do good business, as we learned competing over the buzz ...Read More
Since I first laid my hands on their initial release in 2009, baffled by the logistics of perfect binding books by hand, I've been intrigued by the spirit of the Ferno House micro-press. Comprised of Spencer Gordon, Matt (The Door) Laporte and Arnaud Brassard, Ferno House is a fledgling press in Toronto that has taken the art of bookmaking personally. Editing, designing, and producing all of their books in-house (literally in their house, where the three are roommates), Ferno House has created a niche for itself that borrows from the DIY aspect of chapbook presses, but packs the zeal for ...Read More
Let’s face it: I love theory. I live for it, I crave it, and desire it. I’m a theory head. A theory junky. Yet there are some theories which are just plain idiotic and have no merit: I’m talking about conspiracy theories. What are conspiracy theories? How are they different from other theories? And perhaps the most important question of all: what constitutes a theory as credible? It’s interesting to note that there exists another branch of genuinely bad theory, and that is the recently new cultural phenomena of marketable ‘secret’ theories such as the Oprah Winfrey-backed The Secret and ...Read More
