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Diana McIntosh -- Night Table Recommendations

Thursday, Mar 17, 2011 at 4:45pm

A Natural History of the Senses by Diane Ackerman (Vintage)

I'm enjoying re-reading Diane Ackerman's fascinating book about the fives senses, called A Natural History of the Senses. She explores, with humour and poignancy, each of our senses. Several years ago I wrote a music/theatrical piece using quite a lot of text from Ackerman's book, having gotten permission from her publisher. I've enjoyed performing my piece, which I've titled "In a Sense" to several different audiences, all of whom loved the text. My piece is for spoken text, a thumb piano, wind chimes and movement. It's fun to be re-reading this delightful book.

The Selected Writings of Gertrude Stein by Gertrude Stein (Vintage)

Another book I'm reading for the second time is The Selected Writings of Gertrude Stein. I've used several sections of text, particularly from her Tender Buttons, in a major multi-media theatrical work. Of mine which combines piano, percussion, live electronics, spoken text and movement. My one-woman piece is called "McIntosh, the Stein Way"! (But I've often performed it on a Baldwin or Yamaha piano!) Stein loved using words for their rhythm and sound rather than for their meaning, and I play with this idea in my piece. Re-reading this book by Stein, I'm again astonished at how original and fresh it remains today - considering it was written in the middle of the last century. It's a big book with several chapters. My favourite are The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, Tender Buttons and Three Portraits of Painters. It's best read out loud!

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Diana McIntosh is an acclaimed Winnipeg-based musician with a long history in performance and composition, and one of the founders of the GroundSwell new music series. She joined us at our Grant Park location on February 24th to launch her most recent recording Pinnacles.

Categories: Reviews, Poetry, Music, Winnipeg, Night Table Recommendations

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A Natural History of the Senses

- Diane Ackerman

Trade paperback $25.99
Reader Reward Price: $23.39

Diane Ackerman's lusciously written grand tour of the realm of the senses includes conversations with an iceberg in Antarctica and a professional nose in New York, along with dissertations on kisses and tattoos, sadistic cuisine and the music played by the planet Earth.

"Delightful . . . gives the reader the richest possible feeling of the worlds the senses take in." --The New York Times

Selected Writings of Gertrude Stein

- Gertrude Stein

Trade paperback $29.00
Reader Reward Price: $26.10

"This collection, a retrospective exhibit of the work of a woman who created a unique place for herself in the world of letters, contains a sample of practically every period and every manner in Gertrude Stein's career. It includes The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas in its entirety; selected passages from The Making of Americans; "Melanctha"from Three Lives; portraits of the painters Cezanne, Matisse, and Picasso; Tender Buttons; the opera Four Saints in Three Acts; and poem, plays, lectures, articles, sketches, and a generous portion of her famous book on the Occupation of France, Wars I Have Seen.

Tender Buttons

- Gertrude Stein, Steve McCaffery

Trade paperback $15.00
Reader Reward Price: $13.50

A seminal text in the history of poetry and poetics, Tender Buttons was originally published in 1914 and is considered one of the great Modern experiments in verse. At one time or another it has been thought of as a masterpiece of Cubism, a modernist triumph, a spectacular failure, a collection of confusing gibberish, and an intentional hoax. Despite the fact that it was written by an ex-pat American, the text of Tender Buttons has had massive infuence on Canadian poetry and poetics for nearly three quarters of a century. Therefore, BookThug is pleased to produce the first Canadian Edition of this important text in a publication that pays homage to the original 1914 edition.

Gertrude Stein was born in 1874 and died in 1946. An American writer who spent most of her life in France, she was a catalyst in the development of modern literature and art. Stein was the author of more than 25 books of experimental writing, many of which were self-published. Tender Buttons was her second published work, and set the foundation for not only her own oeuvre, but for generations of writers to come. She never visited Canada.

The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas

- Gertrude Stein

Trade paperback $22.95
Reader Reward Price: $20.66

Stein's most famous work; one of the richest and most irreverent biographies ever written.