One reads the FRUTOPIA sequel. The title is so overlong and unmemorable (The State of the Arts: Living with Culture in Toronto) I was actually unable to Google it. (I had to ask at the counter of This Ain’t.)
I love the bitchy piece by Mark Fram about celebrity architects. I was just barely able to tolerate the unremediated ‘single quotes,’ holdovers from the first book that are contradictorily rendered with commas and periods inside. I guess this is the sort of thing you just can’t persuade Coach House Press to fix, since they contend there is no Canadian standard for quotation marks. (I asked. And they’re wrong.)
However.
Kate Carraway’s essay on leftist alternakids’ inability to make and save money, which could use some minor tightening, was ringing rather true to me. But I lost my shit entirely when I hit the following (emphasis added):
Although I have a genuine appreciation for the city and its citizen-oriented, back-to-the-streets renaissance, I don’t exist entirely within the strict parameters set forth by localized independent culture…. My own ideal version of things involves a much more politically cohesive attitude, in which the independent, art-over-commerce way of thinking meets ordered, efficient, Darwinian modes of conservatism. My own boundaries and interests snake out in a direction that my friends and cohorts would certainly call bourgeois. I was raised in a nice suburb and didn’t hate it. I appreciate luxury goods. I have a soft spot for Joe Clark, and I believe that the only thing we’re entitled to is the opportunity to work hard.
For extra symbolism, note that I read the foregoing while seated in the vitrine of the Lesliebucks, the inverse neutron bomb that landed in my neighbourhood without killing anyone or destroying any businesses.
I’m only gonna ask this once: How many conservative gay vegan writers residing in poor neighbourhoods can you name?