[avatar user=”jporter” size=”medium” align=”left”]J.S. Porter, Writer/Contributor[/avatar] So…you’re a celebrity. What do you want in your dressing room? Britney Spears wants Herve Leger dresses, snickers bars, Diet Coke, magnolia blossoms, chicken, and potato salad. She also…
Browsing CategoryJ.S. Porter
Sarah Polley’s Toronto
Sarah Polley hangs out a big friendly welcome sign from Toronto to you in her new film Take This Waltz.
How to Write Heartbreaking Sentences à la Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald
Be in love, be deeply in love, lose the one you love, then put words together in a necklace of sorrow and irretrievability. Zelda wrote two great sentences, the first on alcoholism which she shared…
Richard Kostelanetz’s “Disintegration” – A Single Stroke of Genius
Richard Cory Kostelanetz. A man with a poem in his name. Polyartist (his coinage). “Earl of Wordship” (his playful self-characterization). King of the New York City literary and artistic underground. Author, editor, compiler of hundreds…
Monsieur Lazhar vs. A Separation
Quebec and Iran are powerhouses in world cinema. Some of the best films of the last few decades have come from Quebec (Léolo, Jesus of Montreal, Incendies, Maelström) and Iran (Taste of Cherry, Children of…
An Open Letter to Jeanette Winterson
[avatar user=”jporter” size=”medium” align=”left”]J.S. Porter, Poet / Author[/avatar] Dear Jeanette, Congratulations on taking up the two-year post of professor of creative writing at Manchester University. What a treat for students to have a mind as…
Literary Tattoos (ii): Tattooing Jack Kerouac
Jack Kerouac (1922-1969) was born a Catholic in a French-Canadian community in Lowell, Massachusetts. He was the key figure of the cultural phenomenon of the 1950s known as the Beat Movement. Beat as in beatific,…
Literary Tattoos (i): Tattooing Gertrude Stein
Tattoos are in the zeitgeist. Go back to Peter Greenaway’s The Pillow Book (1996) and take another look at the beauty of script on skin. Consider the strange attractiveness of Noomi Rapace as Lisbeth Salander…
Saying Thanks to Ursula Franklin
[avatar user=”J.S.Porter” size=”thumbnail” align=”right”]J.S. Porter[/avatar] Parents teach us to say thank you. Sometimes we forget. Sometimes we don’t get the chance or seize the chance, to say thanks to individuals who have contributed to our…
The Lorax: Who Speaks for the Trees?
The small orange forest-creature The Lorax does in the recent Hollywood movie inspired by the Dr. Seuss picture book. So do the protagonist Ted’s grandmother (voiced by Betty White) and his love interest Audrey (voiced by Taylor Swift)…