Literally Blogging

No Canadian author is as widely respected in the realm of fiction today as is Douglas Coupland. He is quickly becoming one of my favorites. The latest novel that I have checked out of my local library is “All Families Are Psychotic”.
It is essentially a collection of vignettes surrounding a limitted plot about a Canadian family called the Drummonds. The main characters are Janet and Wade Drummond, and the voicing is theirs, sometimes Janet’s sometimes Wade’s, including flashbacks, amazingly prosaic language, and a good deal of humour.
Coupland tackles issues like AIDS, Modern thought in Post-Modern times, the family, …read more

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When Roland Barthes said “the Author is dead” (in the appropriately named “Death of the Author”) he was refering to a stanza of…oh crap, Bahktin I think, where the voice behind the words was not that of a character, or even the author, but that of the reader. It was in this moment that he realized that the Author said nothing. Every written word is just black ink on white paper until someone reads it. And when they DO, they upply all of their own understanding, and none of the Authors. Thus, it is the reader who gives meaning …read more

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In 1915 Franz Kafka wrote a sureal short Novella entitled “The Metamorphosis”. The mere fact that you are currently checking out a literature blog suggests that this is not news to you. In this story Gregor Samsa wakes one morning and finds that he has been transformed into the likeness of a “giant insect”. His legs extend over the side of his bed, and he is a substantial beast. Kafka offers no explanation as to why this happened, so it’s not a sci-fi story. Nothing good comes of this transformation, so it isn’t Fantasy literature.
No, this is a deeply veiled …read more

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