Brett Josef Grubisic

Meet The Gorgons The Legionnaires Chicken Treblinka The Statistics . . . Meet Dee, Gordyn, Em, and Jay, indecisive members of the greatest New Wave band to ever spring from River Bend City. Before they graduate from high school and flee a mill town that's seen better days, these ambitious friends (two sets of siblings) aim to make something from nothing as a test-run for planned careers of total glamour in New York City. Set between Labour Day 1980 and a Battle of the Bands contest in February 1981, From Up River and for One Night Only traces the unsure but determined steps of the gang's hopeful act of creation. The darkly comic and autobiographical story memorably captures the detours, setbacks, compromises, ethical quandaries, and illicit opportunities encountered along the twisty highway to the band's fifteen-and-a half minutes of fame.

From Up River and for One Night Only

Andrea Cabajsky

Fiction that reconsiders, challenges, reshapes, and/or upholds national narratives of history has long been an integral aspect of Canadian literature. Works by writers of historical fiction (from early practitioners such as John Richardson to contemporary figures such as Alice Munro and George Elliott Clarke) propose new views and understandings of Canadian history and individual relationships to it. Critical evaluation of these works sheds light on the complexity of these depictions. The contributors in National Plots: Historical Fiction and Changing Ideas of Canada critically examine texts with subject matter ranging from George Vancouver’s west coast explorations to the eradication of the Beothuk in Newfoundland. Reflecting diverse methodologies and theoretical approaches, the essays seek to explicate depictions of “the historical” in individual texts and to explore larger questions relating to historical fiction as a genre with complex and divergent political motivations and goals. Although the topics of the essays vary widely, as a whole the collection raises (and answers) questions about the significance of the roles historical fiction has played within Canadian culture for nearly two centuries.

Historical Fiction and Changing Ideas of Canada

National Plots

David L. Chapman

A fascinating collection of images, many in full-colour, depsicting the muscular American male as seen in movies, advertisements, magazines and product labels between 1860 to 1970. The introduction by Chapman offers insightful detail on individual images, while the essay by Grubisic places the work in its historical context. Includes male physique photography, movie posters, vintage advertisements and subjects such as Marlon Brando and Eugen Sandow. All the material is sourced from Chapman's personal archive.

The Muscular Male Body in Popular Culture, 1860-1970

American Hunks

Carellin Brooks

A collection of stories about sex by an exciting new generation of writers who boldly push the narrative envelope. These are not your typical bump-and-grind tales but stories written in a startling new language, bringing fresh meaning to the term polymorphously perverse.

Brave New Sex Fictions

Carnal Nation

In this introduction to prolific British novelist Beryl Bainbridge, Grubisic provides a biographical sketch of the writer, discussion of her motivations and techniques, and a detailed survey of her fiction that places the works in the traditions of British black comedy, social novels, and historical fiction. Emerging on the literary scene in the 1970s with widely praised novels such as The Dressmaker, The Bottle Factory Outing, Sweet William, A Quiet Life, and Injury Time, Bainbridge quickly established a reputation for her keen observations of social dysfunction and her darkly comic tone. In approaching her works, Grubisic maps Bainbridges movement from social to historical novels, beginning with the comic historicism of Young Adolf and continuing to her most recent fiction, The Birthday Boys, Every Man for Himself, Master Georgie, and According to Queeney.

Understanding Beryl Bainbridge

Tara Lee

Gisèle M. Baxter

What do literary dystopias reflect about the times? In Blast, Corrupt, Dismantle, Erase, contributors address this amorphous but pervasive genre, using diverse critical methodologies to examine how North America is conveyed or portrayed in a perceived age of crisis, accelerated uncertainty, and political volatility. Drawing from contemporary novels such as Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, and the work of Margaret Atwood and William Gibson (to name a few), this book examines dystopian literature produced by North American authors between the signing of NAFTA (1994) and the tenth anniversary of 9/11 (2011). As the texts illustrate, awareness of and deep concern about perceived vulnerabilities—ends of water, oil, food, capitalism, empires, stable climates, ways of life, non-human species, and entire human civilizations—have become central to public discourseover the same period. By asking questions such as “What are the distinctive qualities of post-NAFTA North American dystopian literature?” and “What does this literature reflect about the tensions and contradictions of the inchoate continental community of North America?” Blast, Corrupt, Dismantle, Erase serves to resituate dystopian writing within a particular geo-social setting and introduce a productive means to understand both North American dystopian writing and its relevant engagements with a restricted, mapped reality.

Brett Josef Grubisic

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