John Baker’s Blog

Robert Fulford in the National Post discusses why art is his religion. The cons and the pros.
. . . we also can’t claim that immersion in the arts will create a lively mind. Art education has produced armies of learned bores. I knew a man who had Shakespeare, Verdi, Beethoven and the rest of the [...]

The Other Mouths site asked the question: What should fiction do? The following is only part of one of the answers:
. . . the narratives generated and sustained by the American political system, entertainment industry, and academic trade have taught us over the last half century how not to think for ourselves. Essentially, those narratives [...]

It was in 1912 that a culturally provincial London began to experience some of the excitement of the Modernist movement, which, on the continent and across the Atlantic, was busy ruffling the feathers of convention. There was an open call for a redefinition of the function of poetry and a shaking-off of the fetters of [...]