Tuesday, July 15, 2003

The eleventh Scream in High Park literary festival was held last night in High Park, Toronto's largest urban park. Readers were Wakefield Brewster, Lise Down, Sheila Heti, Dennis Lee, Jay MillAr, Motion, Elizabeth Ruth, Shyam Selvadurai, Karen Solie, Michael Turner, and Fred Wah. Highlights for me were Fred Wah, Dennis Lee, and Wakefield Brewster.

Since I am on the topic of writing, I should mention sex. There are some interesting discussions of library porn out there. In Sex in the Stacks, Candi Strecker gives us short descriptions of ten pornographic novels featuring librarians and libraries. The Image of Librarians in Pornography provides synopses of some of the 49 novels listed. They have such catchy titles, like Helpful Head Librarian and Nympho Librarian.

Recoil News Parody Magazine reported in June 2003 that "[t]he universally held suspicion among male youths that all female librarians transform from polite, repressed spinsters into coquettish, aggressive sexpots upon the removal of glasses and hair pins is unrealistic, or at least exaggerated, Cornell University researchers announced Monday." The report added that librarians are inaccurately portrayed "as smoking hot sex mongers who prey on young male library patrons. " Parody, perhaps, but probably true.

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