For 52 weeks, bill bissett and Carol Malyon met for brunch and conversation at the Golden Griddle in Toronto.
This sustained conversational encounter between Carol Malyon, who writes within the objective bounds of standard English usage, and bill bissett, one of contemporary writing's most exotic practitioners, working with the visual forms of language in his own non-hierarchic, phonetic orthography, produces, as if by accident, invariably astonishing social, moral and ethical critical insights. Each of these writers' particular uses of language-the most radically different in contemporary literature-consistently foregrounds and interrogates the cultural origins of "common" perceptions that too often remain hidden and undiscovered in the dictionaries we search for "common" meaning: proof positive that each person's perception of life's most fundamental questions and answers is almost never shared, and is always and only ever subject to translation, even among those who "share" the same language.
Here is what they talked about:
Trouble and the Self
What is Forever
Does Belonging Exist
Luck and Life
We Need Not Hold Our Experiences Against Life
Is There a Script
The Role of Mysteries in People's Lives
Time
Free Will and Wider Wiring
Families
God &/or the Loved One and Individual Freedom
Mortality and the Jigsaw Puzzle of Replicating a Parent in a Lover
Why "Shoulds" are No Good
Delusional Relationships
The Chemistry Metaphor
Censorship and Propaganda
True Love
Fact or Fiction-Where's the Line
Do We Invent Everything We Go Through
Is Rationality a Costume
Can We Influence Larger Book Sales
Maybe We All Want to Move to Sweden
Just for Today I'm Confused About Religion
Tax Reform
Predictability
Stage Fright
Carol, What Is It
Them
Know Thyself and the Writer's Delusions
Wondering What about the Stars and Our Friends
Childhood Versus Later On
Real Life-Does it Really Exist
All Those Prayers-Where are They Going, Exactly
Meaninglessness
Time and Relativity
Each Day We Wake Up and Realize They've Given Us Another Day
Everything is Answered
The Questions in Our Lives-the Balance, and What's Peripheral
Dogs Give Unconditional Love, Why Can't People
Life is Difficult and We are Up to the Challenge
Personal Happiness and Destiny
Federalism-Is It Too Late to Save It
The Payoff is Always Inside Ourselves
Cultural Translation
Can We Know Beforehand
Spirituality
Loss and Grief
Is This Real Life We're Experiencing
Jealousy
Why Aren't People in Love with Us When We're in Love with Them
Do We Have Freedom Outside Our Imprintings-Can We Find Reciprocal Love if Our Imprintings Prevent That from Happening
