Literary Kaleidoscope - Spring

Wednesday                          Barney’s Version

April 20th                             Mordecai Richler

Speaker:                                       Jason Wiens        

Randy, obstinate, loving, thoughtless, irreverent, kind, selfish... Barney Panofsky is the model of a life lived large. His ‘memoir’ is a brilliant portrait of a unique and fascinating individual not entirely unlike his inspired creator in some ways. Few Canadian writers have been able to reveal the absurdities of life and the contradictions inherent in all of us as richly and with such wit as Mordecai Richler, particularly in this Leacock and Giller Prize winner.

Dr. Jason Wiens is an instructor at the University of Calgary Department of English. His interests are in Canadian literature and contemporary poetry. He was a presenter at Mt. Royal University’s fall 2010 conference Under Western Skies: Climate, Culture and Change in Western North America.

Wednesday                              The Lacuna

May 18, 2011               Barbara Kingsolver

Speaker                              Dr Bob Solomon                           

When we first meet Harrison Shepherd, it’s 1929 and he’s 12 years old, living with his hopelessly romantic mother and her lover-of-the- moment in Mexico. Shepherd keeps his thoughts and experiences in a series of journals as he travels through a tumultuous period in history, meeting Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, and Leon Trotsky, and after returning to the US, the House UnAmerican Activities Committee. According to the NY Times, “The Lacuna can be enjoyed sheerly for the music of its passages on nature, archaeology, food and friendship; or for its portraits of real and invented people; or for its harmonious choir of voices. But the fuller value of Kingsolver’s novel lies in its call to conscience and connection.”

Dr. Bob Solomon is well-known to LitKal audiences for his unique, in-depth perspectives of the books he presents. A retired professor of English from the University of Alberta, he taught English courses there for 29 years, introduced comparative literature studies to first-year students, and wrote about women on the prairies, and English and Latin poetry. He also composed radio commentaries for CBC-AM. Now, he chairs a web forum on history, reviews books, restores photographs, and fixes friends' computers.

Meeting details below.