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Wrestling at the Chase
$18.95?Wrestling at the Chase is a fond, informative, amusing, and even poignant look at the who’s who of professional wrestling and legendary St. Louis promoter Sam Muchnick.
St. Louis was the capital, and Muchnick the ruler of professional wrestling, before Vince McMahon’s World Wrestling Entertainment took over. What happened in St. Louis paved the way for today’s multi-billion-dollar sports entertainment industry. The centrepiece of this magical operation was “Wrestling at the Chase,” a television program which broadcast from 1959 to 1983 from the majestic Chase Hotel.
Larry Matysik was Muchnick’s protégé and longtime announcer for the television show. With an insider’s eye for detail and accuracy, he recalls funny and amazingly touching tales about the characters who created professional wrestling as we know it. Ric Flair, “King Kong” Brody, Dick “the Bruiser,” the Von Erichs, Lou Thesz, Gene Kiniski, Pat O’Connor, Johnny Valentine, Dick Murdoch, Harley Race, Buddy Rogers, Jack Brisco, and Andre the Giant are all prominently featured. So is Muchnick himself, the Damon Runyan of wrestling, a man who helped mould the bizarre business of circus and sport. The savage twists of the politics of wrestling are on display as well, particularly the changes that rocked the mat world during the early ’80s.
Wrestling Babylon
$17.95Irvin Muchnick — a widely published writer and nephew of the late, legendary St. Louis wrestling promoter Sam Muchnick — has produced a book unlike any other on the astonishing growth of professional wrestling and its profound impact on mainstream sports and society. In Wrestling Babylon, he traces the demise of wrestling’s old Mafia-like territories and the rise of a national marketing base thanks to cable television, deregulation and a culture-wide nervous breakdown. Naturally, the figure of WWE’s Vince McMahon lurks throughout, but equally evident is the public’s late-empire lust for bread, circuses, and blood. As this book demonstrates, the more cartoonishly unreal wrestling got, the more chillingly real it became.What truly distinguishes Wrestling Babylon, however, is Muchnick’s ability to show how professional wrestling has become the ur-carnival for a culture that feeds on escapist displays of humiliation, revenge, fantasy characters, and sex. His People magazine article on Hulk Hogan blew the lid off the drug abuse of the sport’s signature superstar. His award-winning Penthouse profile of the ill-starred Von Erich clan was the first to connect the dots between wrestling, televangelism, and MTV-style production values. His never-before-published investigation of the death of Jimmy “Superfly” Snuka’s girlfriend suggests the cover-up of a murder. The book’s appendix — a comprehensive listing of the dozens of wrestlers who died prematurely over the last generation, with little or no attention — is both a valuable resource for wrestling historians and a shocking document of the ruthless way sports entertainment eats its own.
Wrestling Reality
$18.95A rare glimpse not only into the life of a professional wrestler, but the life of a gay man in a straight world, this tragic memoir is told in Chris Kanyon’s own words, with the help of journalist Ryan Clark.One of the most popular wrestlers of the late 1990s, Kanyon kept his personal life private from his fans until finally revealing his biggest secret in 2004: he was gay. Going through the various roles that Kanyon played, both in the ring and out of it, as well as his battle with manic depression, this book explores the factors that led to his suicide in 2010.In his voice and the way he wanted it told, these are Kanyon’s last words about his experience rising through the ranks to the top of the professional wrestling world while keeping his sexuality hidden.
Wrestling With Rhinos
$23.95Imagine it’s 1965, and you’ve just fulfilled a boyhood ambition and graduated from the vet college in Glasgow, Scotland. The very next week you find yourself in Kenya, treating wild animals. This is what happened to Dr. Jerry Haigh, who in Wrestling with Rhinos takes us deep into the post-independence Kenya of 1965, and shows us what things were like until he left ten years later for a teaching post in Canada. Dealing with a 17 foot tall lame giraffe was an early challenge, as there had not been many giraffes in the teaching pool at Glasgow. A fall back on common sense, with the help of the owner and a knowledge of cattle medicine helped to create a cure. Along the way, he encountered traditional domestic animal patients as well as rhinos, elephants, wildebeest, lemurs and pelicans. Among them was Joy Adamson’s cheetah, and we get a first-hand glimpse of their Born Free experiences. While living in a country just making the transition from colonial status to independence, Jerry also met President Jomo Kenyatta and treated his cattle.
Threaded through the text are observations — sometimes hilarious, sometimes scurrilous, sometimes poignant — on the social scene in Kenya, peppered with reminiscences about his soldier father, for whom the Kenya of World War II was a very different place.
In the final chapters, Jerry documents his perspective on human/wildlife conflicts, and looks ahead hopefully into the future.
Wrestling’s Greatest Moments
$19.95Every fan of professional wrestling remembers the moment that captured their heart forever and hooked them for life. Whether it was Ric Flair regaining the NWA Championship from Harley Race at Starcade, the Freebirds turning heel on Kerry Von Erich, Mick Foley flying off the cage at King of the Ring, Jake Roberts DDT-ing Ricky Steamboat on the concrete, Samoa Joe’s epic trilogy with CM Punk in Ring of Honor, or the premiere of WCW’s Nitro: these are the matches and moments that thrilled, terrified, or outraged — overwhelming you with real emotion.
Mike Rickard’s Wrestling’s Greatest Moments brings you all the most memorable and controversial moments from modern wrestling history. It’s an insightful and essential compendium of thirty years’ worth of groundbreaking matches, angles and interviews. From Hulkamania to the Montreal “screwjob,” from the NWA to the nWo, you’ll rediscover what really occurred in arenas and on the air worldwide, and learn all the backstage and behind-the-scenes secrets that made these highlight-reel moments possible from the men and women who were there.
Whether you watched Stone Cold Steve Austin point a gun at WWE honcho Vince McMahon’s head, or stood outside the building as D-Generation X “invaded” WCW; whether you look back with nostalgia to “The King” slapping Andy Kaufman silly on Letterman or believe wrestling was better when Bruno sold out Shea; whether you were one of the Philadelphia “bingo hall” faithful who made ECW “extreme” or a casual observer of the Monday Night Wars; whether you’re reliving these moments or discovering them for the first time, Wrestling’s Greatest Moments will enthrall you with the exploits and extravagance, the tragedies and triumphs of the sport of kings.
Write Across Canada
$13.00In this book, 19 of Canada’s most acclaimed storytellers contribute the narrative pieces that together compose a humorously accurate national reflection. Each author was commissioned by the Ottawa International Writers Festival to write a chapter, set in their local community, in a serial story moving across the country from East to West. Started by Michael Winter in St. John’s, Newfoundland, the narrative–revolving around the ever-transforming everyday Canadians Bruce and Olivia–is developed, embellished, deconstructed and completely manipulated by the likes of Mark Anthony Jarman (Fredericton, NB), Alan Cumyn (Ottawa, ON), Helen Humphreys (Kingston, ON), Sheila Heti (Toronto, ON), Uma Parameswaran (Winnipeg, MB), Thomas Wharton (Edmonton, AB), Arthur Slade (Saskatoon, SK), Richard Van Camp (Fort Smith, NWT), Ivan E. Coyote (Whitehorse, YK), Steven Galloway (Vancouver, BC), Bill Gaston (Victoria, BC), Donna Morrissey (Halifax, NS), Lesley-Anne Bourne (Charlottetown, PEI), Hermenegilde Chiasson (Moncton, NB), Nalini Warriar (Quebec City, PQ), Tess Fragoulis (Montreal, PQ), Dianne Warren (Regina, SK) and paulo da costa (Calgary, AB). Together, the authors represent the astounding regional and cultural diversity of contemporary Canadian literature. Write Across Canada is designed to celebrate our country, our communities, our regional identities and our distinct voices through a literary project that is truly national in scope. The result is a constantly surprising and uproarious cross-country adventure that showcases an amazing diversity of voices and cultures.
Write It on Your Heart
$29.95Write It on Your Heart is a celebration of the late Harry Robinson, one of the great storytellers of the Interior Salish people of North America.
Collected over a ten-year period, the stories selected for this volume tell from a First Nations point of view about the origin of the world; the time of the animal people; the time before the coming of the white man; the stories of power; the prophet cult and its predictions of profound cultural and economic change; and the post-contact world. The collection ends with Robinson’s own version of “Puss in Boots,” true in every psychological detail to the European story, but set in the ranching country of the Similkameen Valley.
This collection is unique in that it chronicles not only the treasure house of a vibrant First Nations culture, but also the sweeping changes which took place in that culture as it began to interact with the new colonists who introduced a foreign language and writing to the mythic world of Coyote, Fox and Owl. As more and more of his listeners, First Nations included, understood only English, Robinson began to tell his old stories in this new language in order to keep them alive. By the time Wendy Wickwire met him in 1977, he had become as skilled a storyteller in English as he had been in his mother tongue. Robinson knew that the profound cultural changes which had taken place in his lifetime would continue and took to heart the matter of preserving the storytelling tradition. With his approval, Wickwire recorded his stories and brought them together in this critically acclaimed collection. Write It on Your Heart stands as a monument to the epic world of Harry Robinson, ensuring its survival in the many generations to come.
Writing Circle, The
$22.95Five women gather every Friday night to discuss their writing lives. Isabel, returning home, where the writing circle are to meet, is attacked in her car at gunpoint and raped. But she manages to turn the gun on her attacker and shoot him. In coping with the killing, the disposal of the body, and the breakdown and recovery of Isabel, we learn about the intersecting personal lives of the women–Isabel, Carmen, Jazz, Beauty, and Amina, all successful professionals in today’s South Africa. And when the body is discovered, and the identity of the attacker revealed, all their stereotypes fall away. The novel is narrated by all five women in their individual styles.
Writing Class
$21.00Since the mid 1980s, the Kootenay School of Writing, a writerrun centre in Vancouver, has been the site of some of the most innovative poetry coming out of North America. Leaving behind conventional ideas about syntax and lyricism, the KSW poets have produced a body of work that is jarring, troubling, provocative, funny, and beautiful.
In their introduction to this sampling from the work of fourteen writers, Andrew Klobucar and Michael Barnholden describe the historical and aesthetic environment which produced the Kootenay School of Writing, and in doing so demystify a poetry that many regard as “difficult.” Writing Class is a fascinating introduction to the most vital poetry being written today.
Writing Cultural Difference
$25.00Writing Cultural Difference is a welcome addition to Canadian literary studies. The publication of this volume certainly dispels the belief that Italian-Canadian writing was a passing phenomenon three decades ago. The new generation of writers no longer focuses on immigration or speaks the dialect of their grandparents, but that heritage inspires their creative works. “Italian-Canadian writers have so much left to say — so much more to write and a lot more to publish,” writes Licia Canton. “We write in quiet seclusion. We focus on creating compelling characters. We are the writers and the Canadians that we are because we share a common heritage. That’s what brings us together; that’s what keeps us writing.” An important volume of creative and critical texts, Writing Cultural Difference features contributors from Canada, Italy, the United States and the United Kingdom: Michelle Alfano, Ralph Alfonso, David Bellusci, Licia Canton, Gary Clairman, Sheldon Currie, Domenic Cusmano, Liana Cusmano, Marisa De Franceschi, Giulia De Gasperi, Delia De Santis, Sonia Di Placido, Caterina Edwards, Gil Fagiani, Eufemia Fantetti, Terri Favro, Venera Fazio, Isabella Colalillo Katz, Maria Lisella, Darlene Madott, Carmelo Militano, Michael Mirolla, Gianna Patriarca, Tony Pignataro, Joseph Pivato, Olga Zorzi Pugliese, Joseph Ranallo, Maria Cristina Seccia, Osvaldo Zappa, Jim Zucchero.
Writing Menopause
$25.95The Writing Menopause literary anthology is a diverse and robust collection about menopause: a highly charged and often undervalued transformation. It includes over fifty works of fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, interviews and cross-genre pieces from contributors across Canada and the United States that break new ground in portraying menopause in literature. The collection includes literary work from award-winning writers such as Roberta Rees, Margaret Macpherson, Lisa Couturier and Rona Altrows. Emerging voices such as Rea Tarvydas, Leanna McLennan, Steve Passey and Gemma Meharchand, and an original interview with trans educator and pioneering filmmaker Buck Angel, are also featured. This anthology fills a sizable gap, finding the ground between punchline and pathology, between saccharine inspiration and existential gloom. The authors neither celebrate nor demonize menopause. These are diverse depictions, sometimes lighthearted, but just as often dark and scary. Some voices embrace the prospect of change, others dread it.Together, this unique offering reflects the varied experience of menopause and shatters common stereotypes.
Writing Personals
$18.95Wanted: One man of average height, well-muscled but not ironclad, neither overly or underly handsome, with more body hair than a baby’s behind but less than a gorilla, hefty penis, charge not too easily discharged, good mind, good sense of humour and humouring, joyful spirit, for a relationship of indeterminate time with a recently divorced woman who misses it.
Meet a world of offbeat characters in pursuit of love. Writing Personals is a funny, intellectual, raunchy, and sweet novel that takes aim at contemporary mating practices, middle-class values, and marriage for love as the glue of society. This is a quirky book in the vein of Tristram Shandy.
Sylvia Weisler is under contract with a small publisher to write a non-fiction book about personals advertising. She focuses on the middle-aged and older group who utilize print media rather than on the “too vast territory” of twenty-somethings and the Internet. Interviews with a variety of “persons”–people who place and respond to ads–appear throughout the book. Some of these characters remain interviewees–material for Sylvia’s book; others, however, enter the author’s private life and become enmeshed in the plot. This is held together by the major narrative thread–Sylvia’s own search for love.
Writing Poetry To Save Your Life
$20.00What I hope to accomplish in this book is to give writing prompts that will help you to get past all the outside influences that keep you from believing in yourself and in your ability to write. In order to write, you need to get rid of notions about language, poetic form, and esoteric subject matter ? all the things that the poetry police have told you are essential if you are to write. I wanted to start from a different place, a place controlled by instinct rather than by intelligence. Revision, the shaping and honing of the poem, should come later, and, in revising, care always needs to be taken to retain the vitality and electricity of the poem. Anyone can learn to craft a capable poem, but it is the poems that retain that initial vitality that we remember; these are the poems that teach us how to be human.
Writing the Common
$21.95In 1763, King George III granted 235 acres of common land “for the use of the inhabitants of the Town of Halifax forever.” This anthology celebrates the 250th anniversary of the establishment of the Halifax Common by collecting an impressive offering of poems about the Common by thirty-one writers. These poems reflect the diversity of ways in which citizens relate to the Common, their subject matter ranging from the rhododendrons in the Public Gardens to the Rolling Stones concert, from romances to dog walking and from nostalgia to heartache and grief. Together they explore the concept of public space and the unique role that it can play in the life of a city, including the ways it fosters the literary imagination of the community.
Contributors include: Joanne Bealy, Miriam Breslow, Lois R. Brison-Brown, George Elliott Clarke, Tanya Davis, Joan Dawson, Brigid Garvey, Corinne Gilroy, Sue Goyette, Bill Hanrahan, David Huebert, Joanne Jefferson, Pauline Kaill, Justin Kawaja, Anne Lévesque, George MacDonald, Jean MacKaracher-Watson, Heather L. MacLeod, Michael McFetridge, Kenna Creer Manos, Maryann Martin, Robin Metcalfe, Anne Moynihan, Michelle Paon, Jaywant Patil, Tamara Rasmussen, Karen Raynard, Wanda Robson, Vincent Tinguely, Helen M. Vaughan, and Matthew Walsh.
Writing the Okanagan
$24.95George Bowering was born in Penticton, where his great-grandfather Willis Brinson lived, and Bowering has never been all that far from the Okanagan Valley in his heart and imagination. Early in the twenty-first century, he was made a permanent citizen of Oliver. Bowering has family up and down the Valley, and he goes there as often as he can. He has been asked during his many visits to Okanagan bookstores over the years to publish a collection of his writing about the Valley.
Writing the Okanagan draws on forty books Bowering has published since 1960 – poetry, fiction, history, and some forms he may have invented. Selections from Delsing (1961) and Sticks & Stones (1962) are here, as is “Driving to Kelowna” from The Silver Wire (1966). Other Okanagan towns, among them Rock Creek, Peachland, Vernon, Kamloops, Princeton, and Osoyoos, inspire selections from work published through the 1970s and on to 2013. Fairview, the old mining site near Oliver, is the focus of an excerpt from Caprice (1987, 2010), one volume in Bowering’s trilogy of historical novels. “Desert Elm” takes as its two main subjects the Okanagan Valley and his father, who, as Bowering did, grew up there. With the addition of some previously unpublished works, the reader will find the wonder of the Okanagan here, in both prose and poetry.
Writing with Our Feet
$10.95Writing With Our Feet, a finalist for the Governor-General’s award, is a black comedy for agoraphobics about the creative impulse and the need to fling open one’s garage door and join the world.