CBC Radio Interview Induces Two-Day Headache

So my girl Ibi Kaslik (author of Skinny and the forthcoming The Angel Riots) was a guest yesterday on CBC's The Current. She was invited to talk about the importance of book reviews, alongside Toronto Star book editor Philip Marchand, and Louise Dennys, Knopf executive publisher and review-retorting ad buyer.

So, what did I learn from the 15-minute radio segment?

Louise Dennys and Philip Marchand are deluded.

When asked by the host if there are any "sacred writers" in Canada, Ibi reflexively chortled into her telephone, while Dennys and Marchand were all "noooo, of course not, there aren't any sacred writers in Canada..."

Because apparently a black hole ripped a time/space vacuum into the universe yesterday, momentarily erasing the existence of Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje, Mordecai Richler, Leonard Cohen, Carol Shields and Alice Munro.

I am not sure what pissed me more: the audacity of a major publisher to feign ignorance when it comes to this country's canon, or the way she pronounced "conTROversy" as "contreverSEE."

Bourgeois accents are so daytime television.