Book Lunch: Alberto Toscano & Clint Burnham

Authors and critics Alberto Toscano (London) and Clint Burnham (Vancouver) talk about their new books, "A Test of Powers: Writings on Criticism and Literary Institutions" (by Franco Fortini, translated by Toscano: Seagull Books) and "Fredric Jameson and The Wolf of Wall Street" (Burnham: Bloomsbury Books).Toscano's translation brings us the work of a crucial figure in the Italian cultural and political scenes of the 1960s and 1970s, Fortini, a communist poet and critic who advocated for a "modular culture and language" that combined activism with an ecology of language. Toscano's translation marks the first appearance in English of much of Fortini's critical work, and joins his earlier translation of Dogs of the Sinai, Fortini's book on the Palestine-Israel conflict. Burnham's book, which draws on Toscano's work in cultural studies (the book he co-wrote with Jeff Kinkle, "Cartographies of the Absolute"), using the Marxist theories of Fredric Jameson to understand Martin Scorsese's 2013 film "The Wolf of Wall Street". In that film, Burnham argues, we have a critique of finance capitalism masquerading as a gangster film (or is it the other way around?).AUTHORSAlberto Toscano has edited and translated Franco Fortini's "The Dogs of the Sinai" , and translated Fortini's "A Test of Powers: Essays 1948-1968", for the Italian List at Seagull Books, which he edits. He is the author of "Fanaticism" (2010) and "Cartographies of the Absolute" (2015, with Jeff Kinkle). He is an editor of the journal "Historical Materialism", and teaches at Goldsmiths, University of London.Clint Burnham's recent books include "Pound @ Guantánamo" (poetry, 2016) and "Fredric Jameson and the Wolf of Wall Street" (criticism, 2016). His essays on contemporary art have appeared in The Globe and Mail, Artforum, Canadian Art, and Espace Art Actuel. He teaches in the department of English at Simon Fraser University.MODERATORAmy Kazymerchyk is the Curator of SFU Galleries' Audain Gallery.