FROM THE ARCHIVE: Some of us like nothing better than the rain and the pounding surf. We’re here, savouring rustic elegance on the edge of the world—at the Wickaninnish Inn.

Author Yann Martel discusses Pi, writing and a life of the mind.

The age of sound bites, of entertainment masking political opinion-making, of beauty over substance, seems so entrenched now as to be moot. What James L. Brooks was alarmed about in Broadcast News, in which the ability to shed crocodile tears while taping an interview was more important by far than being up to date on any judicial inquiry, seems almost laughably mellow now.