General

Logrolling in our time: LRC edition

Yeah it’s more the-LRC-is-totally-bitchin’ blogging from me, so move along if you don’t care for it. But seriously, why don’t you subscribe? The October issue arrived yesterday, and it opens with a major opening essay by JRS about how we need to stop trying to fit the Canadian North into a Southern model. Things really heat up though with the review of Brian Crowley’s Fearful Symmetry, the book that has given half the pundits in the country something to write about these last few weeks.

Unlike the more credulous takes on the book, as well as the reviews that have focused mostly on the Quebec question, Dal economist Lars Osberg hones zeroes in on the most contentious material in Crowley’s book, namely, the claim that a fifty year “bidding war” for the hearts of Quebecers has deformed not only our institutions and economy, but our national character as well. (One of the oddest parts of Crowley’s book is that he actually invites the impatient reader to skip the three chapters of the book where he lays out the case for this). Anyway, as Osberg points out, “it is remarkable that a book that is ostensibly about changing Canadian values presents no survey data whatsoever to support Crowley’s many large assertions.”

There’s more fine writing in the issue, including a careful look at Struan Sinclair’s new work of po-mo fiction Automatic World, the only seriously critical review of Atwood’s new book that you’re going to find in this otherwise fawning literary culture of ours, and a survey of two new peakonomic books (incl. Jeff Rubin’s big-seller) by none other than Richard Lipsey. Richard Lipsey!

This is great stuff. Don’t wait for them to stick it online, go buy a copy today.

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