The New Layman's Almanac

Author Essay

The New Layman’s Almanac is a medium-sized book written in the English language. It is a re-stylization of the almanacs and home guides that were a major force in early Canadian publishing. As a collection, its primary question is: What are the rules? Specifically, what in our culture is available for irony, and what needs to be protected? What is sacred and what is spiritually expendable? What benefits from formal packaging and what doesn’t?

Drawing on more modern publishing phenomenon with the same self-improvement kick (Wikipedia would be chief among them), the collection tries to cobble together the memories available to the author (memories both personal and shared) in order to study how the inheritances of his generation, inheritances material and intellectual, prepare an individual to find the logic in his or her life story. Plus, there’s some jokes. And, sadly, five or six poems in which somebody has to die.
— Jacob McArthur Mooney