The Quill Blog

I've just stumbled upon The Quill and Quire's blogsite. (A shining example of why I need to eschew blogland periodically -- I can spend way too much time here.)

Anyway, the postings are smart and funny and I wanted to share one with you. It's about the coveted (by at least some) Giller Prize: Secrets of the Canadian Literary Cabal.

"Stephen Henighan, known for his biting, if occasionally conspiracy-minded, commentary on the Canadian literary scene, takes aim at the Scotiabank Giller Prize in this column for Geist. Henighan calls the prize a symptom of the sickness ruining literature, saying, 'Nothing signaled the collapse of the literary organism as vividly as the appearance of this glitzy chancre on the hide of our culture.'”

He goes on to say that Margaret Atwood calls the Giller shots and that almost all prize winners between 1994 and 2004 lived within two hours of Bloor and Yonge.

As a rebuttal, Giller Prize administrator, Elana Rabinovitch reminded us of Mordecai Richler's prescience "when he stated, at the launch of The Giller Prize almost 14 years ago, that 'when you give Canadians an apple, they look for the razor blade inside'”.

Thank you, Mordecai, wherever you are.

Colleen