Paul Wilson, the Canadian translator of such great and important works as Letters to Olga, by Václav Havel, and I Served the King of England, by Bohumil Hrabal, as well as Havel's seminal essay on East European dissidence, "The Power of the Powerless," has also been deeply involved in Canadian journalism for many years, and now he's part of what looks to be a great new project, a monthly called The Walrus.
I met Paul week before last, when he was in town for the 40th anniversary of the New York Review of Books, and he gave me a copy of the first issue. Looks great, design-wise, sort of a cross between Harper's (slim, few ads) and the New Yorker (lots of clever, small pen-and-ink drawings), and it promises to be a must-read for "Canadian opinion-makers," and you know that description fits me to a T, so I'm all over it, gonna be a charter subscriber!
You should be, too. Paul tells me the magazine's got backing guaranteed for five years, so it isn't going away anytime soon. (Listen to him talk about it on CBC Radio here or here.)
Plus, they've got a great graphic for their inaugural ad campaign:
Tusk, tusk.
