Also, I want to send some support to our striking writer friends. Who knows really what's going to happen in the future with digital content, but in the meantime, I'd hate to see the writers get shut out of revenue streams.

 

This is how I see myself today.



try it for yourself.

rI just finished reading Philip Roth’s latest book, “Exit Ghost.” It is (most likely) the final installment in the series of Roth’s books that document the life and times of his literary alterego, Nathan Zuckerman. The Zuckerman books are among my favourites of all time, and he’s one of the greatest characters, who insists on walking the line between autobiography and fiction; Roth and Zuckerman share a very similar history, but, in “Exit Ghost,” most emphatically, Zuckerman remains staunchly fictional. What a great comfort it is to hear a familiar voice, like an old (very old) friend, and this book is one of his best. It’s an examination of the differences between an artist and his work, and the lies we tell in order to tell the truth about ourselves, as well as a eulogy for one’s own place in the world, both socially and corporeally. I was struck by one section in which he writes about George Plimpton, the late publisher of The Paris Review, and famous “participatory journalist.” It made me think a bit about Ed’s tv show, “Ed’s Up,” which has begun its second season on OLN here in Canada. In the series, Ed takes part in a raft of unsavoury jobs, including cleaning the emergency-room toilets in a Brooklyn hospital. Tyler often jokes that he got his own tv show doing this stuff because “he’s a great… guitar player??” but we all know it’s more than that. Just as Ed’s guitar playing is not responsible for any of our success (even the memorable licks in “Pinch Me” or “If I Had $1000000”), it’s not responsible for his success as a television personality. Personality is a key word here – it’s been key to both successes, but also a willingness to make a fool of one’s self. Of Plimpton, Roth writes, Courting embarrassment and losing his dignity and flaunting his inadequacies with the pros, George in fact succeeded in maximizing his glamour rather than repudiating it, a ploy for which I admired him and that was at the heart of my enjoyment of the books. Books advertised as pitting the ungainly amateur against the impregnable professional were in actuality about a well-coordinated, excellently equipped athlete… playing at being a bumbler of an athlete with the majestically equipped… superstars of sports. And much the same can be said for the charm and pleasure of “Ed’s Up,” or for the regular-guy image of Barenaked Ladies. What is truth? What is manipulation? Does the manipulation get us closer to something real anyway? And is that the whole purpose. On a side, unrelated note (or is it?), I’ll be playing a couple of songs at the launch for Give A Day on Tuesday at 5:30 pm at First Canadian Place in downtown Toronto, to benefit Dignitas and the Stephen Lewis Foundation. Say hi if you can make it.