After serving many years as a veteran radio producer and video-journalist at the CBC, Tom Jokinen set it all aside in 2006 to be an apprentice undertaker at a family-run funeral home and crematorium in Winnipeg, Manitoba. This drastic vocational change at the age of 44 resulted in the book Curtains, an exploration of our culture’s relationship with the dead, dying, and left behind. The author and his wife currently reside in Ottawa, Ontario.
Tom Jokinen
In Jonathan Franzen’s view, e-readers will disrupt the permanence of books, with dire consequences for human society. A Czech novelist would recommend that he calm down and have a drink.
There’s a popular myth that hardship leads to accomplishment, and—relatedly—that the more troubled the artist, the better the work. It’s a nice idea, but a little-read book from 1963 teaches us otherwise.
Since men have flown aircraft, men have dropped bombs—and bombing has gotten better, say the architects of war, relative to the last war. So have our justifications.
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