SNEAK PEEK #7: The Blurb!

In publishing, there's nothing like a good blurb.

They're not so much reviews as recommendations. So it matters who you have blurb something. The person blurbing is saying "You must read this." And if you're a fan of the blurber, that recommendation means something.

As such, we were thrilled when director Guy Maddin agreed to blurb Imagining Winnipeg.

"L.B. Foote's Winnipeg is a boomtown of staggering abundance and meanest privation. His city teems with a mad sense of community—everywhere people, people and more people, throngs of new citizens forever gathering, spilling over, lining up; everyone held rapt and almost intoxicated by grand ceremony, fevered ritual or political upheaval. So much giddy newness plopped down on top of the nations that came before and on the timeless, pristine, soon-to-be-bedevilled plains. Foote honours human, city and prairie alike with his peculiar and ennobling eye." — Guy Maddin, director of My Winnipeg.

Those of you familiar with UMP's books may have noticed that we published a book on Maddin's work, entitled Playing with Memories: Essays on Guy Maddin in 2009.

The collection was edited by David Church, a PhD student at Indiana University, and while it featured many of Maddin's contemporaries and collaborators, Maddin himself wasn't directly involved.

So it's nice to come full circle, first with a book on "the aesthetics and politics behind Maddin's work" and second with a book on the aesthetics and politics behind Foote's work, as blurbed by Maddin.

 I think it's also a great reminder of the influence Foote's images have had - and hopefully will continue to have - on generations of artists.

Ariel Gordon
UMP Promotions/Editorial Assistant