(Roughly) Daily

Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada

Yann Martel, well-known author of Life of Pi (and perhaps less well known, resident of Saskatoon), wrote the book that launched his career on a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts.  (“I was 27 years old and the money was manna from heaven. I made those $18,000 last a year and a half– and compared to the income tax I have paid since then, an exponential return on Canadian taxpayers’ investment, I assure you.”)

In March of 2007, Martel found himself in the Parliamentary Gallery for a tribute to the Council…

The Prime Minister did not speak during our brief tribute, certainly not. I don’t think he even looked up. The snarling business of Question Period having just ended, he was shuffling papers. I tried to bring him close to me with my eyes.Who is this man? What makes him tick? No doubt he is busy. No doubt he is deluded by that busyness. No doubt being Prime Minister fills his entire consideration and froths his sense of busied importance to the very brim. And no doubt he sounds and governs like one who cares little for the arts. But he must have moments of stillness. And so this is what I propose to do: not to educate—that would be arrogant, less than that—to make suggestions to his stillness. For as long as Stephen Harper is Prime Minister of Canada, I vow to send him every two weeks, mailed on a Monday, a book that has been known to expand stillness. That book will be inscribed and will be accompanied by a letter I will have written. I will faithfully report on every new book, every inscription, every letter, and any response I might get from the Prime Minister, on this website.

And so he has– at the time of this posting, he has sent the PM 100 books, along with 100 extraordinary “introductions” in the form of the transmittal letters he’s enclosed…  all of which are available at What is Stephen Harper Reading?

Read it and reap.

As we find and expand our own stillness, we might recall that it was on this date in 1778 that François-Marie Arouet– aka Voltaire (author of Book #7, Candide, on P.M. Harper’s list)– returned to Paris after 28 years in exile (first in Potsdam, with Frederick the Great of Prussia, then in Switzerland); on this first day home, the Father of the Enlightenment received over 300 intellectuals and admirers.

“Doubt is not an agreeable condition, but certainty is an absurd one.”
– Letter to Frederick, 1767

Houdon’s Bust of Voltaire