Feldman's Faves: March 9, 2026

GOOD MORNING EVERYONE

What a difference good weather makes!  It was so nice seeing people outside, walking on sidewalks without snow and smelling the smell of BBQs.  It’s been a rough winter, I can’t wait for Spring.

As you all know, I love my Peloton but I I am really  looking forward to be able to get outside on my bike again.  One of the early highlights of the season is the Mattamy Bike for Brain Health, which raises money for Baycrest. We close down the DVP and you can ride your bike  for 30k, 60k or 90k – a pretty fun time. Goodmans is organizing a team (as are all of the law firms). If you are interested in riding this year – the date is May 31 - you can connect with Michel Lederman who is running point for Goodmans.  Here is some information about the event - Mattamy Homes Bike for Brain Health

For the first time ever, I made it my mission to watch every single film that was nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars this year. It is a really tough call, but I am reasonably confident that it won’t be F1 or Marty Supreme. Curious to get people’s thoughts on their favourites.

No theme this week – just topics of interest.

VENETIAN VESPERS By: John Banville – I don’t know how to explain this book other than to say it is a CRAZY story. The person who suggested it told me it has “Jon Feldman’ energy. Having read it I can’t tell if this is a compliment or an insult.  I’ll assume the former….The writing style is extremely suspenseful, the topic is nuts, the characters are horrible people and simply insane the end (although telegraphed from the very beginning) is surprising. I absolutely loved it. Venetian Vespers is Booker Prize winning author John Banville’s latest novel (and just ordered The Sea – his book that actually won in 2025, which I hope to read this week), since I want to read more from him.  On its surface this story is about a marriage and a honeymoon in Venice that went REALLY wrong. But we enter into early 20^th century Venice, a world of depravity (apparently) as well as some extremely interesting and shady characters. You see the downfall of the narrator/protagonist as he tells of his crazy few days on that trip. As one reviewer notes, “In winter 1899, on the cusp of a new century, Evelyn Dolman and his wife, Laura, set off on a honeymoon to Venice, delayed for some months due to the unexpected death of Laura’s father, a super wealthy tycoon. Evelyn had been aware that his new bride and her father had some unresolved issue between them, but he is astonished to learn that the tycoon has left all his money to his other daughter. Laura still has a generous allowance, but Evelyn had anticipated fabulous wealth. ‘Generous’ is a major disappointment. Laura has been disappointing in other ways too – they have only had sex once, and that was long before they married. It’s doubtful if Evelyn still loves her – indeed, if he ever did. Telling his story in retrospect long afterwards, Evelyn foreshadows that the Venice trip will end with a woman dead and him embroiled in scandal, and his purpose now is to set the record straight…

Don’t for one moment feel sorry for him! If anyone earned a ticket to hell, it’s Evelyn. He takes unlikability to new levels, and instead becomes deliciously horrid – another narcissistic self-justifier to add to Banville’s illustrious list. He is so convinced that he was the victim of this story that he doesn’t seem to realise he’s condemning himself with every word he speaks. Banville is brilliant at putting this kind of moral ambiguity into his characters, and here he muddies the waters still further by leaving the reader unsure of Evelyn’s reliability as narrator – there’s a distinct whiff of madness around him, but did that happen before the events in Venice or is it a consequence of them? Banville writes like a dream, and his depiction of Venice is both vivid and funny. It’s winter, and therefore cold, wet, and grey. Forget beauty or romance – this Venice is a place of swampy miasmas, every building is dusty, decaying, crumbling, every inhabitant is sinister, be they Venetian or visitor. As Banville piles on the adjectives, Venice becomes a place of menace and mystery, and no one can be taken at face value. I felt strongly that Banville was playing with the swampy, fever-ridden Venice created in Mann’s Death in Venice, both in the depiction of the city and in the character of Evelyn, although his sexual obsessions are of a different nature. The palazzo that the honeymooners are staying in owes something, I felt, to Henry James and The Aspern Papers, along with the depiction of decayed aristocracy seeking money from gullible foreigners in return for allowing them to share in the faded glory of these once great buildings. Evelyn is a writer, one who wanted to shake the world, but is best known for a series of travel guides to lesser English towns. The list he gives of authors he wanted to surpass is revealing!

On their first night, Evelyn, frustrated by the lack of sex in the relationship, goes out and gets drunk, returns, and does something unforgivable that suddenly darkens the story and cements the reader’s dislike for him irrevocably, though he seems to feel he’s managing to justify himself. Next morning, he wakes up to find his wife has gone. From there on, the story takes on a kind of surreal air – Evelyn’s reaction to Laura’s disappearance is strange indeed. The night before he had met a man who claimed to have been at school with him, though Evelyn doesn’t remember him. This man, Frederick Fitzherbert, has a beautiful sister, Francesca, and Evelyn seems considerably more interested in her than in finding Laura. But are the Fitzherberts quite what they claim? Even Evelyn thinks they may be conning him in some way, but that doesn’t stop him from inviting them to come and stay in the palazzo. Meantime, he tells no one that Laura is missing, pretending she’s just popped out or has retreated to her room with a headache to explain her absence when anyone asks. I don’t want to go any deeper into the story, to avoid spoilers. Despite the dark episode I referred to, the overall tone is of light entertainment, where the initial foreshadowing of a woman’s death and a scandal has the reader looking at every woman who appears and wondering – is it her? While some parts of it are rather more obvious to the reader than to self-deluded Evelyn, the mystery kept me intrigued throughout – Banville gives enough for us to have the pleasure of trying to work out what’s going on, but holds back just enough to allow room for some surprises. And yet – is all explained at the end? Evelyn would say so, but this reader felt that the version he gives may not be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth…

I love these twisted, narcissistic narrators Banville does so brilliantly, I love his playful use of language and vocabulary, I love his exaggeratedly sinister and decaying depiction of Venice, and I love the way he is playing with previous Venetian literary classics. In short, I loved this book – wonderfully written and highly entertaining, but with enough darkness and depth to give it bite. I seem to have spent a lot of fictional time in Venice recently, and this trip is undoubtedly up there with the best.” This book moves at a really engaging and frenetic pace. This book will one day be a movie – I have to think.  Here’s a good review from the WSJ-https://www.wsj.com/arts-culture/books/venetian-vespers-review-a-labyrinth-of-canals-and-conspiracy-47a36050

The Next Big Idea  - Inside the Most Creative Friendship in History – It’s been over 60 years since the start of Beatlemania and yet John, Paul, George and Ringo are still top of mind to so many people. The TSO recently had a performance of their music, the AGO has an exhibit of Paul McCartney’s photos from the early Beatle years and Classic Albums Live recently performed the Blue Album at Massey – and that’s just recent 2026 events in Toronto. The friendship and the partnership of John and Paul has been studied and scrutinized for decades – arguably the most successful musical partnership of our time. So it’s really interesting to listen to this PODCAST that describes so many of the nuances and intricacies of their lives that made this collaboration so special. We learn about their shared tragedies (both lost their mothers at early ages), their apprenticeship (playing cover songs in horrible conditions just to get the experience) and their process of creation (that culminates, arguably at its peak, with the blend of their voices in Day in the Life).  Just so interesting. Here’s an excerpt from the PODCAST itself, “On the surface, Ian Leslie's book John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs is a dual biography of the greatest songwriting duo the world has ever seen. So not exactly standard Next Big Idea territory. But what’s remarkable about Ian's book, which I've been pressing on everyone I know, whether they're Beatlemaniacs or the opposite (i.e., Rolling Stones fans), is that through the narrative of this tender, tempestuous, radically inventive partnership — romance, really — genuinely big ideas emerge about creativity, vulnerability, and how to get by with a little help from your friends.” https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-next-big-idea/id1482067226?i=1000751730036

Thank you for your ongoing engagement and participation.

And remember to stay safe, stay healthy and to docket daily.

Jon