George Fetherling – författare

The compelling, tragic and often bizarre life stories of history''s famous and infamous assassins, now collected in one comprehensive, easy-to-use volume.The names are well-known, but how much do you know about the inner lives of John Hinckley Jr.,  who shot Ronald Reagan in a misguided attempt to impress actress Jodie Foster, or Mark David Chapman, who, after shooting John Lennon, sat down on the sidewalk to continue reading The Catcher in the Rye? And what about the world''s not-so-famous assassins? Find out what happened when Carlito Dimahilig attacked Imelda Marcos with a bolo knife (and how one of her many famous pairs of shoes came into play!), or why Max Hödel could be considered one of the least successful assassins in history.With breadth of study and a keen eye for detail, George Fetherling has compiled a fascinating and very readable compendium -- the first of its kind -- of more than 200 biographies of assassins from all periods and countries, for the scholar and general reader alike. Fetherling also provides an overview of the history of assassination, outlines the five psychological types of assassins and gives a run-down of the most useful literature in the field.Ideal for students, historians, history buffs, psychologists and readers interested in biography and true crime, this book is a must have window into the lives of those who have drastically shaped the history of our world.From the Hardcover edition.

Selected from thousands of pages of the daily journals of George Fetherling - the inexhaustible novelist, poet, and cultural commentator - The Writing Life reveals an astute and candid observer of his contemporaries as well as himself. Hundreds of figures in the arts and public life crisscross the pages of Fetherling''s journals, from Margaret Atwood and Marshall McLuhan, to Gwendolyn MacEwen and Conrad Black. The book begins in mid-1970s Toronto, a time of cultural ferment, and carries on to Vancouver and a new century. A captivating and intimate narrative, The Writing Life provides a compelling portrait of the last three decades of Canadian cultural life. From the book: Tuesday 4 February 1992 / Toronto Early this morning the latest in a series of strange phone calls from Edmund Carpenter in New York to discuss successive versions of his Canadian Notes & Queries piece on Marshall McLuhan. He falls to reminiscing and at one point says: "Marshall always reminded me of that passage in Boswell in which Boswell says that if you chanced to take shelter from a rain storm for a few minutes in Dr Johnson''s company, you would come away convinced that you had just met the smartest man in the world. Marshall was like that too. Of course, if you spent an hour with Marshall, well, that was something quite different."

Selected from thousands of pages of the daily journals of George Fetherling - the inexhaustible novelist, poet, and cultural commentator - The Writing Life reveals an astute and candid observer of his contemporaries as well as himself. Hundreds of figures in the arts and public life crisscross the pages of Fetherling''s journals, from Margaret Atwood and Marshall McLuhan, to Gwendolyn MacEwen and Conrad Black. The book begins in mid-1970s Toronto, a time of cultural ferment, and carries on to Vancouver and a new century. A captivating and intimate narrative, The Writing Life provides a compelling portrait of the last three decades of Canadian cultural life. From the book: Tuesday 4 February 1992 / Toronto Early this morning the latest in a series of strange phone calls from Edmund Carpenter in New York to discuss successive versions of his Canadian Notes & Queries piece on Marshall McLuhan. He falls to reminiscing and at one point says: "Marshall always reminded me of that passage in Boswell in which Boswell says that if you chanced to take shelter from a rain storm for a few minutes in Dr Johnson''s company, you would come away convinced that you had just met the smartest man in the world. Marshall was like that too. Of course, if you spent an hour with Marshall, well, that was something quite different."

Follow George Fetherling as he travels through Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia looking for any remaining traces of the Indochina that was.

In Indochina Now and Then, George Fetherling recounts multiple journeys through Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, keeping an eye peeled and an ear cocked for whatever faint traces of French rule might remain. While doing so he searches diligently in village markets, curio shops, and rubbish bins, not to mention bookstalls along the Seine in Paris, for early picture postcards of Southeast Asia, the sort that native Frenchmen and Frenchwomen sent home to Europe.

The book is illustrated with 60 such images, most of them taken before the First World War. They evoke vanished ways of life in these exotic "lands of charm and cruelty" that have survived the wars and turmoil of the late 20th century to emerge, smiling enigmatically, as the friendly face of free-market socialism. In its prose and pictures, Indochina Now and Then is a travel narrative that will leave an indelible impression in the reader’s imagination.

Follow George Fetherling as he travels through Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia looking for any remaining traces of the Indochina that was.

In Indochina Now and Then, George Fetherling recounts multiple journeys through Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, keeping an eye peeled and an ear cocked for whatever faint traces of French rule might remain. While doing so he searches diligently in village markets, curio shops, and rubbish bins, not to mention bookstalls along the Seine in Paris, for early picture postcards of Southeast Asia, the sort that native Frenchmen and Frenchwomen sent home to Europe.

The book is illustrated with 60 such images, most of them taken before the First World War. They evoke vanished ways of life in these exotic "lands of charm and cruelty" that have survived the wars and turmoil of the late 20th century to emerge, smiling enigmatically, as the friendly face of free-market socialism. In its prose and pictures, Indochina Now and Then is a travel narrative that will leave an indelible impression in the reader’s imagination.

The Vietnam War was a regional conflict that turned into an epic confrontation between ideologies, leaving deep scars on the psyches of nations that fought and long-lasting physical damage to Vietnam itself. The three books in this bundle cover different aspects of the war and the region, from Michael Maclear’s personal memories as an embedded journalist in North Vietnam to George Fetherling’s observations of the state of Southeast Asia today to military historian Fred Gaffen’s analysis of the experiences of soldiers travelling to faraway lands to fight in their countries’ wars.

Includes Cross-Border Warriors Guerrilla Nation Indochina Now and Then

The travel writing of celebrated writer George Fetherling is filled with vivid prose and bizarre characters.Includes:One Russia, Two ChinasA travel narrative written over the course of ten years, One Russia, Two Chinas is about change and resistance to change in the postmodern world. A valuable document that freezes some important world events for close inspection.Running Away to Sea: Round the World on a Tramp FreighterAt a turning point in his life, George Fetherling embarked on an adventure to sail round the world on one of the last of the tramp freighters. The four-month voyage carried him 30,000 nautical miles from Europe via the Panama Canal to the South Pacific and back by way of Singapore, Indonesia, the Indian Ocean, and Suez. Written with dash, colour, and droll humour, Fetherling’s narrative is peopled by a rich cast of characters, from the Foreign Legionnaires of French Polynesia to the raskol gangs of Papua New Guinea.Indochina Now and ThenGeorge Fetherling recounts multiple journeys through Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, keeping an eye peeled and an ear cocked for whatever faint traces of French rule might remain. Indochina Now and Then is a travel narrative that leaves an indelible impression in the readers imagination.

The Toronto Star called him a legendary figure in Canadian writing, and indeed George Fetherling has been prolific in many genres: poetry, history, travel narrative, memoir, and cultural studies. Plans Deranged by Time is a representative selection from many of the twelve poetry collections he has published since the late 1960s. Like his novels and other fiction, many of these poems are anchored in a sense of place - often a very urban one. Filled with aphorism and sharp observation, the poems are spare of line and metaphor; they display a kind of elegant realism: loading docks, back doors of restaurants, doughnut shops with karate schools upstairs. In the introduction, A.F. Moritz places Fetherling in the modern picaresque tradition in the aftermath of Eliot and Pound, highlighting his characteristic speaker as an itinerant cosmopolitan outsider, a kind of flâneur, impoverished and keenly observant, writing from a position of ""communion-in-isolation."" He contrasts Fetherling's contemplative intellectualism with that of the public intellectual and highlights this outsider's fellow-feeling, making the poems indirectly political. Fetherling's afterword is an anecdote-anchored exploration of what the poet sees as his two central approaches - ""the desire to create new codes of hearing"" and ""writing-to-heal"" - and how they are reflected in the collection.

At a turning point in his life, George Fetherling embarked on an adventure to sail round the world on one of the last of the tramp freighters. The four-month voyage carried him 30,000 nautical miles from Europe via the Panama Canal to the South Pacific and back by way of Singapore, Indonesia, the Indian Ocean, and Suez.

Written with dash, colour, and droll humour, Fetherling’s narrative is peopled by a rich cast of characters, from the Foreign Legionnaires of French Polynesia to the raskol gangs of Papua New Guinea. The author captures the reality of life aboard a working cargo ship – the boredom, the seclusion, the differences of nationality and culture that isolation and cramped quarters seem to exaggerate. But the routine of loneliness or tranquility is punctuated by moments of near-panic – shipboard fires, furniture-smashing storms, even a brush with pirates in the Straits of Malacca.

At a turning point in his life, George Fetherling embarked on an adventure to sail round the world on one of the last of the tramp freighters. The four-month voyage carried him 30,000 nautical miles from Europe via the Panama Canal to the South Pacific and back by way of Singapore, Indonesia, the Indian Ocean, and Suez.

Written with dash, colour, and droll humour, Fetherling’s narrative is peopled by a rich cast of characters, from the Foreign Legionnaires of French Polynesia to the raskol gangs of Papua New Guinea. The author captures the reality of life aboard a working cargo ship – the boredom, the seclusion, the differences of nationality and culture that isolation and cramped quarters seem to exaggerate. But the routine of loneliness or tranquility is punctuated by moments of near-panic – shipboard fires, furniture-smashing storms, even a brush with pirates in the Straits of Malacca.

A travel narrative written over the course of ten years, One Russia, Two Chinas is about change and resistance to change in the postmodern world. In 1991, when the Soviet Union was about to morph into the Russian Federation, George Fetherling found himself in Moscow. He both marched with the workers in the last-ever Communist May Day parade and observed, at ground level, the new Russia’s love of the marketplace.

Fetherling then went overland to China. His entry point was Beijing, which at that moment was girding itself for the first anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. Later that same year he journeyed to Taiwan, then in its final days as a dictatorship. He returned there mid-decade when the "Other China" had become a democracy, in order to note the differences – and similarities.

This is old-fashioned travel writing, with vivid prose, bizarre characters, and crystallizing descriptions. But its also a valuable document that freezes some important world events for close inspection.

A travel narrative written over the course of ten years, One Russia, Two Chinas is about change and resistance to change in the postmodern world. In 1991, when the Soviet Union was about to morph into the Russian Federation, George Fetherling found himself in Moscow. He both marched with the workers in the last-ever Communist May Day parade and observed, at ground level, the new Russia’s love of the marketplace.

Fetherling then went overland to China. His entry point was Beijing, which at that moment was girding itself for the first anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. Later that same year he journeyed to Taiwan, then in its final days as a dictatorship. He returned there mid-decade when the "Other China" had become a democracy, in order to note the differences – and similarities.

This is old-fashioned travel writing, with vivid prose, bizarre characters, and crystallizing descriptions. But its also a valuable document that freezes some important world events for close inspection.

'Singer, An Elegy' is a long poem memorializing the author's father and, equally, the now-obsolete industrial culture that shaped him. 'Singer, An Elegy' has rhetorical lightning flashes but aspires to much greater straightforwardness than Fetherling's previous poetry. " 'Singer, An Elegy' possesses all the fine qualities of Fetherling's prose and in many ways gives them their freest rein. Eloquent passages and striking phrases allow a wide experience and erudition to operate here with often startling appropriateness." - The Globe & Mail