small things
(a random selection of anti-essays)
- Publisher
- Guernica Editions
- Initial publish date
- Oct 2018
- Category
- Essays, Canadian
-
Paperback / softback
- ISBN
- 9781771832939
- Publish Date
- Oct 2018
- List Price
- $20.00
Add it to your shelf
Where to buy it
Description
Small things is a book of mini-anti-essays, part of Sky Gilbert's project to dismantle and challenge the rigid classifications of genre, thus challenging 21st century notions of truth. Inspired by Oscar Wilde, Foucault, and the post-structuralist project, the small writings in small things are story, essay, and memoir combined. They question the notion that an essay is necessarily fact, or fair opinion, or even informed opinion, while at the same time challenging the dictum that fiction might necessarily be free of didacticism, or at least, ideas.
About the author
Sky Gilbert is a writer, director, and drag queen extraordinaire. He was co-founder and artistic director of Buddies in Bad Times Theatre (North Americaâ??s largest gay and lesbian theatre) for 18 years. His hit plays include The Dressing Gown, Drag Queens on Trial, Play Murder, The Emotionalists, and the Dora Mavor Moore Award-winning The Whoreâ??s Revenge. His first three novels: Guilty (1998), St. Stephenâ??s, (1999) and I Am Kasper Klotz (2001) were critically acclaimed. ECW Press published Skyâ??s first collection of poetry, Digressions of a Naked Party Girl, in 1998, and his theatre memoir, Ejaculations from the Charm Factory, in 2000. His second book of collected poems, Temptations for a Juvenile Delinquent, was published by ECW in 2003. He was recently the recipient of the Margo Bindhardt Award (from the Toronto Arts Foundation), the Silver Ticket Award (from the Toronto Alliance for the Performing Arts), and the ReLit Award (for his fourth novel, An English Gentleman), and also recently received a PhD from the University of Toronto. By day, Sky holds a University Research Chair in Drama and Creative Writing at the University of Guelph.
Excerpt: small things: (a random selection of anti-essays) (by (author) Sky Gilbert)
These ideas are not popular, they are outrageous and they are tinged with necessary sexuality. Sky Gilbert tells all. Arguably he has done that before. But here he creates a new form, the ‘anti-essay.' Are feminism, gay liberation, and gender ‘small things'? Not necessarily, says Gilbert in this provocative collection of tiny narrative rants. Penises are, however, much smaller than we imagine them to be. Does size matter? Most definitely, when it comes to ideas and their relations.
