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Bookends by Harry Vandervlist Every summer the Banff Arts Festival offers its Cultural Journalism Conversations, and for a few hours it’s possible to believe you’ve left the Banff Centre’s pine-scented precincts and journeyed somewhere like London, where cosmopolitan intellectuals respire a grittier air, perfumed by idling diesel buses and nourished with the miasma exuded by gracefully disintegrating architectural monuments. It’s from the Great Wen that Granta editor Ian Jack makes his way this Monday, July 24. If you already know and appreciate Granta, as you should, just skip this part. If not, then it’s worth catching up by reviewing some past issues of the quarterly that boasts of publishing writing "about life" rather than "about other writing." Even though this is a silly boast (there’s lots of witty, insightful writing about other writing, and some would argue that most writing responds to other writing), Granta incontestably has reason to brag. From Milan Kundera to Arundhati Roy to Nick Hornby, the magazine that looks like a book has introduced an eclectic range of quality writers from around the world to hungry readers around the world. Beautiful or troubling photography accompanies the writing in theme issues like the one they did on "The Family" (you remember, they led with poet Philip Larkin’s unsentimental words – They Fuck You Up – on the cover). I know more than one dedicated reader with near-complete sets of Granta lined up along the baseboard, stacked precariously on top of the fridge, or even arranged chronologically on bookshelves. There’s more to Ian Jack than just Granta, of course. He’s been a journalist since the 1960s, has worked in Scotland and India, and won British awards as reporter, journalist and editor of the year. Formidable. He’s also the author of Before The Oil Ran Out : Britain, 1977-86. Jack speaks at the Rolston Recital Hall at 8 p.m. Admission is free. Here in Calgary, this Thursday July 20, aSza hosts a poetry and jazz event at BeatNiq Café, 811 1 St. S.W., downstairs. Things start at 8 p.m. and it costs $1 for students and $3 for those who have officially ceased learning altogether. Then next Thursday July 27, the PHU collective launches its Web disincarnation PHU ON LINE 1.0 with an event entitled Inphusion, at the Truck Gallery (Bsmt, 815 1st Street S.W.). Readings start at 8 p.m. and will pheature Jill Hartman, Darren Matthies, Tillie Sanchez, Natalie Simpson, and T. Maurice Speller. The site can be seen at www.ucalgary.ca/~dkmatthi/phu.

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