FFWD Weekly
Copyright © 1999. All Rights Reserved

Bookends by FFWD Staff If you went to PanCanadian PlayRites earlier this winter you might have seen Paul Quarrington's mainstage play Dying is Easy. The title comes from an old actor's saying: "Dying is easy, comedy is hard." Well, if comedy is so hard, Quarrington must like to struggle, because he keeps on writing it. The author of Civilization and King Leary and even a Gemini-winning episode of Due South is known as a funny writer, but has said that "in no way" does he think of himself as a humourist: since he grew up reading Vonnegut and Brautigan and Heller, "I just thought being funny was part of the job." And it's a job he takes seriously — he named his two kids after writers Carson McCullers and Flannery O'Connor. How many assistant branch managers would do the same in honour of their professional inspirations? The title of Quarrington's new novel, The Spirit Cabinet , doesn't instantly suggest the story of a monosyllabic Vegas magician, which is what it's actually about – but if you think about it, you can kind of see it. The cigar-puffing jogger author from Don Mills is very much a guy type of man. Look at the evidence: you've got sports like hockey, you've got fly-fishing, you've got someone who's a self-described "chubby white bluesman." Case closed. Naturally he's pretty up-to-date, technology-wise, so you can read all about him at www.quarrington.org. Or you can do that retro non-virtual (is there a word for that?) thing and just physically go to the Big Secret Theatre, where Pages is sponsoring a reading on Thursday, April 8 at 7:30 p.m. Same event, different guy: David Gilmour also reads at the Big Secret Theatre, from his new novel Lost Between Houses. If you watch CBC TV, which according to some local journalists you probably don't, or at least wouldn't mind not doing if the national broadcaster disappeared – poof – then you know who Gilmour is. Learn about his print-medium, non-broadcast side at this small, um, live broadcast. Isn't it a small broadcast even if it's just a person talking to a bunch of other people in a theatre? Sure it is.

| Back To This Issue Table of Contents | Back To Main Index |