roughghosts

There are very few things that man needs: to love, to be happy, to eat; and then he dies. Yet there are over six thousand languages spoken in the world — why do there need to be so many in order to make such simple desires understood? And why do we manage it so rarely, why does the light in words fade as soon as we write them down? One touch can say more than all the world’s words, that’s true,…

Toronto consists of enclaves. All right, and parks. Enclaves are areas inhabited by minorities. There are a hundred and five minorities in Toronto, and new ones are being created all the time. Surrounded by invisible lines, walls and wires of separation and by a very visible medley of customs and languages, these minorities are becoming the majority. The little territory left over, in the centre,…

Father Luis Cordoba was a large man, and his heart even larger—too large, in fact. When, after attempts to treat his condition with a pacemaker, diet, and exercise proved insufficient to ease his poor organ’s further decline, it became apparent that he would require a transplant. But while waiting for a suitable donor to die, he would have to rest quietly and refrain from strenuous activity, like…

On the street in front of a sleazy bar in a low-rent part of an unnamed city there has been a catastrophic incident. A man who was, just moments before, inside the bar, suddenly walked out and stepped in front of a moving bus, intentionally or otherwise. Now he lies disfigured on the pavement. The eponymous hero—no, hero is not quite the right word—of Tobias Ryan’s discomfiting novel, Glantz,…

In recent weeks, talk, at least in the literary circles I circle, has turned to literary prizes and prize winners, more explicitly to the question of the use of AI to at worst generate complete stories or at best, toss ideas around in the creation of said stories. So, wanting a fresh, pre-artificial intelligence take on the matter of awards honouring writers and artists, I naturally thought of…

Roughghosts is twelve years old today. I debated whether or not I would officially mark this day with a post as I typically do, but have decided as the day nears an end, to say a few words anyhow. My immediate thought was to comment on the ongoing gnashing of teeth about the death of book reviews which always seems to go hand in hand with blaming the decline on book blogging. It seems to me that…

The past is so long ago. A lot is certain and clear—there are documents. But I was only a few years old at the time, so it’s difficult: I only know what I experienced physically. That I do know. But the paths, the detours we followed, even the ones I was there for, those I have to imagine. Heinz Fritz grows up haunted by a past filled with mystery, secrets, ghosts. He is the son of a Norwegian…

The latest offering from isolarii, the unique publishing venture that produces small—think palm-sized—“island books” that feature the work of novelists, scientists, artists, theorists, and philosophers and others. But don’t let the small scale fool you, these micro-masterpieces can pack a punch. The latest, their sixteenth title, is Ah!merica by Beat poet Allen Ginsberg, a meditation on the…

There must be a crack in the fabric of the house, the candle flickers as if it can’t decide, and the piece of paper on which I’d been scribbling all day long, trying to find a beginning, lies on the floor, butter-side down. But the doors and windows are all tightly closed. A beginning of what? —from poem #13 When we look back now at those eerie early months of the pandemic, when we all retreated,…

This is not a novel that eases you in slowly, gradually revealing its excesses. Rather, the truth of the situation at hand is immediately on display. Grotesque and disturbing, the first few chapters can make for uncomfortable reading. It is not simply the event taking place, but the attitudes that surround it, the relationships and circumstances that are swiftly and bluntly made clear. In a hut…

My feeling and the star were ecstatic in their idyll. You passed through the garden and your hand, playing, paying no attention, tore off my feeling. (poem 107, “Flower”) Winner of the 1956 Nobel Prize for Literature, Juan Ramón Jimenez (1881–1958) is widely regarded as one of the most important Spanish language writers of the twentieth century. But, as is often the case, the popularity of his…

“We always say that the Mahri is the mirror of his rider. If you want to stare into the rider and see what lies hidden within, look to his mount, his thoroughbred. Now that I look at you more closely, I can see that you’re a young man who’s got everything. Whoever owns a Mahri like this piebald will never complain for want of noble values. You’ve honored our homes, O noble youth descended from…

Imagine a travelling fair in a small provincial town, complete with all of the expected food stalls and amusements. And there, amid the festivities, stands a small unassuming structure with a sign advertising it as a panoptikum—a wax museum. But when our narrator steps inside, there are no heroes or historical figures waiting for him. ‘What is this?’ he wonders: But because I have handed over my…

. . . I want to record all this, I want to write down that everything is all right, the end of the world is behind us anyway, no machine guns in sight, only the signs of another oncoming flood, it’s early, and at the other end of the train tracks she’s gradually woken up by the seagulls, and the room in which she opens her eyes looks different, in her slumber she may not even comprehend  what’s…

The premise of the novel regarded as a classic of nineteenth century Czech literature is as simple and unassuming as its title. An old woman enjoying a quiet life in a mountain village surrounded by friends receives news that her eldest daughter is returning to Bohemia from Vienna where she has lived for many years now that her German husband has taken on a position in the service of a princess…