To thine own self be true

(with provenance)

(signed Ross books are very rare; this is the only one of this one out there)

is this collection of Depression stories. I anthologized a few of them in my high school English textbooks.

Richler’s best.

And the movie adaptation is very well-done and worth a boo. One of the best Canadian movies ever made.

(A rare signed pb ed.)

(rare signed pb edition)

A collection of interrelated stories and characters. Easily one of the top 10 Canadian literature books. I taught it very successfully in grade 10 Academic Challenge. Great teaching novel.

The events of June 8 on the US Internet sites and apps make this one even more plausible….

You can be sure that everyone around the world with a phone and computer will go nutso when sites and apps go down for a longer spell than this morning in the States with this massive internet outage.

It’s obvious governments and corporations are already not ready to deal with cyberware and ransomware attacks, but the failure of content delivery networks–which has just happened–will, undoubtedly happen again, for longer, and be more widespread. No government or company is immune to massive site and app outages.

It’s long been obvious that the machines are fallible and susceptible to crime, corruption, and overload. The one night that the lights went out in New York City in the ’60s will pale to the possibilities events that are forthcoming or imminent.

If a national or global outage occurs, there will likely be chaos and panic in the streets, homes, businesses, home and abroad. All the guys in charge have worshipped and taken the machines for granted for too long.

Excessive reliance on and overabuses of the internet could bring it all down, so to speak. There are way too many bad guys out there and the operations and networks are not perfect or immortal as we well know.

Perhaps the chickens are starting coming home to roost again and this brave new techno-world may already be teetering on the edge of a dangerous 21st-century Dark Age.

……………………….

The only note that I will add–based on the experience of having my computer contents totally taken out after innocently searching for treadmill instructions(!)–is that the effects will be sudden, immediate, and without warning. The Big Outage shall, likewise, be blindingly, irrevocably fast and very much one-way.

Actress Juliet Stevenson’s voice and tones are perfect for a reading of the complete novel on CD.

This 2003 video adaptation of the novel is a faithful adaptation with an emphasis on character and atmosphere. Each character is well-cast including a young Branagh as a petulant university scholar. Rosemary Harris is excellent as the mother. Michael Gough makes an appropriate gruff father. T.P. McKenna plays the failed ‘resident poet’. Highly recommended for anyone who has read the book.