Take This for the Pain: Essays on Writing and Life - Softcover

Boyd, Alex

9781997508151: Take This for the Pain: Essays on Writing and Life

Softcover

ISBN 10: 199750815X ISBN 13: 9781997508151

Verlag: Palimpsest Pr, 2026

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Pulling from twenty-five years of essays, articles, and reviews, Alex Boyd’s Take This for the Pain is a curious look at art and culture in a rapidly changing world. Boldly tackling topics ranging from faith to aging to work in factories and bookshops, Boyd’s work finds inspiration in the philosophies of writers like George Orwell, William Stafford, and Charlotte Bront?. If you’ve ever wondered about the value of poetry in the 21st century, or whether graffiti is a valid art form, Take This for the Pain reveals how art can reinforce selfhood and galvanize social change. Moreover, it includes a range of reviews that covers a number of overlooked, deeply worthy books that will prove interesting to any book lover.

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�ber die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Alex Boyd has written for publications such as The Globe and Mail and Taddle Creek magazine. He helped establish Best Canadian Essays, co-editing the first two collections of work selected from Canadian magazines. His poetry collections are Making Bones Walk (2007) winner of the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award, and more recently The Least Important Man (2012). In 2018 his first novel was published: Army of the Brave and Accidental, a retelling of The Odyssey reviewed as “timely, original and profound.”

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IN DEFENCE OF GRAFFITIMany simply assume that everyone hates graffiti, and websites advertise cleaning services to fight “vandals and their weapons of destruction – cans of spray paint and colored markers.” The use of the words “vandals,” and “weapons” struck me in particular. My dictionary defines a vandal as someone who willfully damages or destroys things, especially beautiful or valuable property. This doesn’t quite strike me as fair when applied to graffiti, which has the potential to be aesthetically pleasing, and may cover a neutral or unused surface. The Vandals were a member of the Germanic peoples living south of the Baltic who plundered Gaul, Spain, and North Africa, and even sacked Rome in AD 455, destroying many books and works of art. Again, not a perfect fit for messages between citizens tucked away in alleys or emblazoned on street corners. As a culture we make little or no official effort to preserve or at least photograph what "vandals" have done with their “weapons” before whitewashing it. The obvious lesson being that something must survive in order to gather historical value, but also that we choose what survives, and are in the habit of being shortsighted about preservation and leaving it to luck.

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