Stay Tacky, Niagara Falls

“It was on a chintzy patch of street in Niagara Falls called Clifton Hill that I was first alerted to the possibility that civilization was a mistake. There, in the shadow of an enormous sculpture of Frankenstein’s monster eating a branded Burger King Whopper sandwich, my underage mind muddied on enormous schooners of beer procured with a fake ID from an adjacent Boston Pizza, I watched two other drunk loafers come to blows in that messy, soused, all-Canadian way—where they sort of thrash each other and toss out soft punches, which roll off buttery cheeks gone red with drunkenness, the brawl resolving when one combatant attempts to jersey the other by pulling his shirt over his head like they’re in a hockey fight.”

John Semley – The Walrus – February 2020

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Did virtue and the think piece ruin criticism?

“Criticism at its best serves a vital function. The critic is a necessary intermediary or interlocutor, bringing professionalized expertise to the work of sense making, serving a public that, frankly, may have had better things to do than acquire a storehouse of esoteric knowledge and references. . . . But contemporary criticism takes place alongside (or, increasingly, in the long shadow of) a cultural environment heavily influenced by the critical-adjacent endeavour known as the think piece.”

John Semley – Literary Review of Canada – April 2018