Alex Good

The conventions of orthography evolve as language itself changes. Some developments are accidental while others are more directed, but there’s no telling which will last. There have been novelties in punctuation, for example, that have never been fully adopted (like the “irony point” and the “question comma”). And the jury is still out on emojis and the interrobang (a combination of question and…

Negative criticism—its utility, ethics, and cultural politics—is one of those subjects that keeps on giving to essayists and newspaper columnists. I know this because that’s how a column I wrote ten years ago for the Globe and Mail started off. Since then I’ve been asked on several other occasions to write at length about “going negative.” It’s a debate that some of us need to keep…

Given their marginal place in today’s publishing world, one wonders if short stories are in danger of becoming an exotic and insular form of literary life. Separated from a larger breeding population in the cultural mainstream their development has begun to take on the characteristics of island biogeography, spawning giants, dwarves, and other freaks. Various labels have been forwarded to describe where this development has brought…