Episode 5 - Charlotte Gray's 2018 Harold Innis Lecture and Less

Lin went to the promisingly titled “Telling Stories in the Age of Historical Amnesia” 2018 Harold Innis Lecture at the University of Toronto, and found it did not live up to the expectations. Charlotte Gray, a highly acclaimed author of historical non-fiction, insisted on the need to understand and critique events in their historical context. We found it troubling when Gray used as an illustrative example the removal of the statue of John A. MacDonald, Canada’s first prime minister, from in front of the city hall in Victoria, British Columbia.

Margrit raves about the Pulitzer-winning novel Less, by Andrew Sean Greer, that rare kind of book that approaches deep issues, but leaves you feeling joyous and hopeful. A book that manages to embed love within its structure, Less deals with all its characters and their idiosyncrasies not with mocking cruelty but with supreme gentleness.

GIVEAWAY: Open from Friday, November 23, to Friday, December 10, 2018. We are giving away a copy of Less by Andrew Sean Greer. To enter, follow us on Twitter @World_ofStories, and answer our question on Twitter or by email at [email protected]. The winner will be drawn randomly and announced on our podcast on December 21, 2018.

Question of the episode: Have you come across a story that involved difficult topics, perhaps controversial, perhaps ugly, yet it was told in a beautiful and uplifting way?

Join the conversation on Twitter at @World_ofStories or email us at [email protected].