“Images by renowned Indigenous filmmaker and artist Alanis Obomsawin: treasured knowledge.”

Margaret Atwood, author of The Handmaid’s Tale and winner of the PEN Centre USA Lifetime Achievement Award

“Filled with love and understanding. I heartily recommend this book.”

Dr. Ruth, international authority on sexuality and relationships, and author of 45 books

“… terrific … makes the reader sit up and pay attention differently … inspired adaptation … I’m thrilled.”

Linda Hutcheon, frsc, oc, University Professor Emeritus, University of Toronto, co-author of four books on opera

“Augusta Read Thomas’s compositional voice exemplifies her extraordinary intellect, brilliant craftsmanship, and enormous heart. She is a miracle.”

Carol Rodland, Viola and Chamber Music Faculty, The Juilliard School

“O’Brien elaborates on and questions Finnegans Wake as an ‘unreadable’ book and calls it ‘communist’ … He is right – and he does something about it: he puts into practice a counter strategy. If the book is unreadable, it may be ‘writeable.’ ”

GERMAN-IRISH ART HISTORIAN CHRISTA-MARIA LERM HAYES IS PROFESSOR OF MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY ART HISTORY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM. SHE HAS CURATED EXHIBITIONS IN IRELAND, SOUTH KOREA, RUSSIA, FRANCE, AND THE NETHERLANDS.

“On the walls … were the jaw-dropping creations of Peter O’Brien, who had taken the pages of … Finnegans Wake and artfully filled them with colourful annotations and illustrations … I told him I’d love to have an entire book of this. He shared with me a sneak preview of some of the other pages and they are incredible.” ​

PETER QUADRINO RUNS THE “FINNEGANS, WAKE!” BLOG DEVOTED TO FINNEGANS WAKE AND THE HOMEPAGE FOR THE FINNEGANS WAKE READING GROUP OF AUSTIN, TEXAS.

“Evocative of the traditional Persian art of illuminated manuscripts … O’Brien’s illustrative interpretations highlight and draw out Joyce’s idiosyncratic and multilayered words.”

AKRAM PADRAMNIA IS AN IRANIAN-CANADIAN WRITER AND TRANSLATOR. SHE IS TRANSLATING JAMES JOYCE’S ULYSSES INTO PERSIAN, AND SHE HAS WRITTEN FOUR NOVELS IN PERSIAN.

“Finnegans Wake refuses to stay in its box and, as O’Brien demonstrates, it lures brave, brilliant accomplices dedicated to giving the book wings.”

DENIS BOYLES IS A JOURNALIST, EDITOR, AND AUTHOR, BASED IN FRANCE. HIS BOOKS INCLUDE EVERYTHING EXPLAINED THAT IS EXPLAINABLE: ON THE CREATION OF THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA’S CELEBRATED 11TH EDITION.

“A garden of delights.”

TIM CONLEY IS THE GRADUATE PROGRAM DIRECTOR OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE AT BROCK UNIVERSITY, ST. CATHARINES, ONTARIO. IN 2016 HE HELD THE JAMES M. FLAHERTY VISITING PROFESSORSHIP AT TRINITY COLLEGE, DUBLIN.

“[David] McKnight considers the most important of the [McGill] literary publications to be one of the University’s earliest. ‘Traditionally, the history of modern literature in Canada begins with The McGill Fortnightly Review,’ he says. … McKnight considers Rubicon (1983-1989), edited by Peter O’Brien to be ‘the most ambitious and most national in scope.’ ”

The McGill Reporter

“These interviews are fascinating and immensely valuable for their informal views they give us of creative minds at work.”

GEORGE WOODCOCK, BOOKS IN CANADA

“[The interviews] have spontaneity and that sense of exchange, rather than of statement, normally associated with the form. Certainly this volume contributes handsomely to our appreciation of writers and writing. … There is an openness in attitude in So To Speak.”

ESSAYS ON CANADIAN WRITING

“An admirable mag becoming indispensable.”

Laurie Ricou, Editor, Canadian Literature

“Interesting and authoritative … one of the major literary magazines we have in this country.”

Christopher Dewdney, Author, finalist for The Governor General’s Award And the Charles Taylor Prize

“Thank you so much for Rubicon – what a delight! And to see Juan Jose Hernandez in there – one of the most interesting writers in Argentina! And Margaret Atwood’s interview says much that I hadn’t heard her say before.”

Alberto Manguel, Officer of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of France, and the former Director of the National Library of Argentina

“This book will break your heart right open, and that’s a good thing – vulnerability draws us closer.”

Mike Downie, Co-Founder of the Gord Downie & Chanie Wenjack Fund

“By turns funny, insightful, and moving, O’Brien connects ancient history to contemporary family life in a fresh and thoroughly engaging way.”

Vicky Alvear Shecter, author of Warrior Queens: True Stories of Six Ancient Rebels Who Slayed History

“These interviews answer a modern need to add document to creation – a form of oral history and a series of insights into Canadian writers, their artistic experiments, their strivings, sincerities, postures and endeavours.”

Leon Edel, winner of the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize

“Charming. Endearing. Helpful.”

Chris Osgood, 17-year NHL goalie and winner of three Stanley Cups with the Detroit Red Wings

“A subtle symbiosis of simplicity and difficulty … mesmerizing … not mere illustrations of Finnegans Wake, but an interaction of the creator with the text, and a dialogue between them.”

TAMAR GELASHVILI IS ASSISTANT PROFESSOR AT IVANEJAVAKHISHVILI TBILISI STATE UNIVERSITY IN TBILISI, GEORGIA. SHE HAS PUBLISHED PAPERS ON LEWIS CARROLL, T. S. ELIOT, AND SHAKESPEARE IN FINNEGANS WAKE.

“This virtuosic world of wonders you have created. Quite amazing, quite mind-boggling.”

Johannes Debus, Music Director, Canadian Opera Company, and guest conductor with The Metropolitan Opera, Santa Fe Opera, etc.

“What a delight to find such an astute defender of the radical aspiration in art! It is increasing hard to find people who love, and take pleasure in art of purposeful difficulty. You provide an exquisite example of the textual play that nearly every phrase in the Wake animates! Wonderful!” ​

R. BRUCE ELDER, FRSC, IS A FILMMAKER, WRITER, AND PROFESSOR IN THE SCHOOL OF IMAGE ARTS & GRADUATE PROGRAM IN COMMUNICATION AND CULTURE, RYERSON UNIVERSITY, TORONTO.

“Joyce needed only words, but struggled to leave the space of his text alone. In glorious colour, Peter O’Brien here extends this principle and packs material into every spare space.” ​

FINN FORDHAM IS A PROFESSOR IN 20TH CENTURY LITERATURE AT ROYAL HOLLOWAY, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON. HE CO-EDITED AND WROTE THE INTRODUCTION FOR THE OXFORD WORLD’S CLASSICS EDITION OF FINNEGANS WAKE.

“Part homage, part autopsy, The echo is where sees O’Brien interpolating his own researches and ruminations into the pages of Joyce’s monumental literary folly.”

BETTY ANN JORDAN IS A TORONTO-BASED ARTS COMMENTATOR AND CULTURAL TOUR MAVEN. SHE WAS AN EDITOR AT CANADIAN ART AND CURRENTLY GIVES SEMINARS THROUGH CLASSICAL PURSUITS.

“Une sorte de symphonie chaotique, comme le ferait un musicien capable de jouer sur différents instruments des notes, des tempos, des mélodies et des sons bizarres à la fois.”

JOSEPH BRANCO IS A QUEBEC-BASED ARTIST. HIS WORKS ARE IN THE COLLECTIONS OF THE MUSEE NATIONAL DES BEAUX-ARTS DU QUEBEC, LE MUSEED’ART CONTEMPORAIN DE MONTREAL, AND THE MUSEE REGIONAL DE RIMOUSKI.

“Wonderful project … Peter O’Brien fa cose fantastiche …”

UNIVERSITY LIBRARY OF PAVIA, ITALY, FOUNDED IN 1778

“Courageous and exciting.”

JIM SHEDDEN IS A PUBLISHER, CURATOR, FIlmMAKER, ARTS PROGRAMMER, AND WRITER BASED IN TORONTO.

“Love-drenched, tenderly written stories … A Perfect Offering invites us to confront, and may even help us to overcome, our deepest fears.”

Barbara Kay, National Post

“Peter O’Brien runs a Toronto-based company called Thomas Memoirs, which helps people, well, write their memoirs … The final product looks good enough for display at the Smithsonian.”

Driven Magazine, The Globe and Mail

“So To Speak has something for every reader: human interest, political comment, the creative process, and more. … Editor Peter O’Brien manages to avoid ivory-tower irrelevance.”

QUILL & QUIRE

“ ‘Tell me a story, a story about me. They’ll interview you, take your picture, and craft your story into a lovely memoir – by you.’ … ‘This is something you could have for your great-grandchildren and their children,’ says Peter O’Brien, president of Thomas Memoirs.

Dave McGinn, Maclean’s

“As familiarity with art beyond one’s national borders must lead to creative growth for the recipient culture, Rubicon should be applauded for its international vision. Besides featuring this current anthology of Irish Poetry [edited by Charles Foran], it has reviewed Polish poetry, and promises in its next issue new poetry from Australia [edited by Grace Perry]. All this, while it regales us with in-depth interviews … home-grown poetry and fiction (both of high caliber), an abundance of consistently well-written reviews and the further pleasure of visual art.”

Irish Literary Supplement

“Engaging and articulate, like listening to a first-class baseball announcer. Wonderful tidbits of trivia.”

W. P. Kinsella, author of Shoeless Joe, made into the movie Field of Dreams

“… savvy irreverence … bracing and unexpected combinations.”

The Hamilton Spectator

“What is the source of a spark, or of a thought? The Meister Effect weaves together the 14th-century France of Christian mystic Meister Eckhart, with a near future where the source and nature of power are radically reimagined. Peter O’Brien extrapolates today’s most important trends (decentralization, neurodiversity, self-reinvention) while hinting at an underlying effervescence that is ever-present.”

LeeAnn Janissen, physicist, financial quant, ceramic artist, sci-fi superfan

“This book casts a warm light on a father and daughter enjoying some great times together.”

Gordon Lightfoot, inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, his songs have been recorded by Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, and Bob Dylan

“… a fascinatingly adept re-assembling and textual orchestration of these pages … a tone truly captured and a ritual truly engendered.”

Matthew Jocelyn, formerly with Paris’s Opéra Bastille and Canadian Stage

“O’Brien does not represent an organized, collective movement, instead having much in common with art brut: the kind of work produced by solitary figures on the margins of the institutions and markets of the art world, thus bearing witness to another kind of freedom.”

DAVID SPURR IS PROFESSOR EMERITUS AT THE UNIVERSITÉ DE GENÈVE, SWITZERLAND. HIS BOOKS INCLUDE ARCHITECTURE AND MODERN LITERATURE AND JOYCE AND THE SCENE OF MODERNITY.

“A colorful landscape … O’Brien helps us see the text … teaches us a new approach to reading.”

YAELI GREENBLATT TEACHES AT THE HEBREW UNIVERSITY OF JERUSALEM. SHE WORKS ON VISUAL ART INSPIRED BY FINNEGANS WAKE.

“Absorbing and marvelous … magma flows of letter and daub.”

SARAT MAHARAJ IS PROFESSOR OF VISUAL ART AND KNOWLEDGE SYSTEMS AT MALMO ART ACADEMY, SWEDEN. HIS CURATORIAL OBJECTS HAVE BEEN EXHIBITED AT THE SAO PAULO BIENNALE AND DOCUMENTA (KASSEL).

“… stunning and constantly shifting ingenuity … O’Brien’s sinuous and insinuating text babbles like a brook, flows like a stream, trickles and pools like something spilled and sticky.”

GARRY LEONARD IS A PROFESSOR IN THE ENGLISH DEPARTMENT, AND A MEMBER OF THE FACULTY OF THE INNIS GRADUATE SCHOOL IN CINEMA, AT THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO. HIS BOOKS INCLUDE READING DUBLINERS AGAIN: A LACANIAN PERSPECTIVE.​

“Joyce’s universe is vividly presented, and Peter O’Brien’s artwork adds yet more illustrative and intellectual layers onto this rich, inclusive, varied, and variable book.” ​

CONGRONG DAI IS A PROFESSOR IN THE DEPARTMENT OF CHINESE LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE AT FUDAN UNIVERSITY, SHANGHAI AND CO-DIRECTOR OF THE CONFUCIUS INSTITUTE FOR SCOTLAND, UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH. HER TRANSLATION OF BOOK I OF FINNEGANS WAKE WAS AWARDED CHINA’S INFLUENTIAL BOOK OF 2012 AWARD.

“… the labor and skill and imagination that went into taking the words of the Wake and transforming them into something so wildly and beautifully new gives it a more intense depth than I’ve seen in any other painting or visual art. What more can I say, except thank you, Peter O’Brien, for this treasure.” ​

MARGOT NORRIS IS CHANCELLOR’S PROFESSOR EMERITA AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, IRVINE. HER PUBLICATIONS INCLUDE THE VALUE OF JAMES JOYCE.

“This brave collection speaks to our common humanity … It’s what happens when big questions, vital questions, are let loose in the world.”

Camilla Gibb, author of five internationally acclaimed novels, including Sweetness in the Belly

“This is a collection of intriguing, some very good, writing, questioning themes and realities that escape the city limits. This breaking of borders seems to me a great and powerful advantage.”

Alberto Manguel, Officer of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of France, and the former Director of the National Library of Argentina

“A refreshingly random literary tour … The random nature of the book is the most refreshing thing about it. O’Brien’s intention was to provide a cross-section of literary voices – male and female, new and old, poet and storyteller – and ‘let the traditions fall where they may.’ So To Speak succeeds in doing that.”

JOEL YANOFSKY, THE MONTREAL GAZETTE

“… a grab-bag of jarringly diverse styles and approaches, ranging from the stiffly conventional to the wildly experimental … the writers include in Fatal Recurrences are indeed accomplished, and their work is worth reading.”

Robert Stewart, The Montreal Gazette

“I think it is super. If I can ever help you with this magazine, I will … You have good taste, good judgment and I found it totally interesting.”

Jack McClelland, Publisher, McClelland & Stewart

“I do want to commend your efforts and that of your colleagues who have been involved in the publication. Rubicon was without doubt a very impressive publication.”

Luc Jutras, The Canada Council

“Searing, compelling … This emotionally honest book is simultaneously brutal, beautiful, and deeply inspiring.”

Jennifer Meeropol, grand-daughter of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg

“Delightful, clever, and downright laugh-out-loud funny. What a lucky daughter!”

Linda Nielsen, author of Between Fathers & Daughters, and former President of the American Coalition for Fathers and Daughters

“… electricity, banter, stimulation – call it what you will …”

Westender