I remember being told in high school, during a particularly dull unit on Puritan literature, that there was a time, not that far back, when fiction was still considered suspect. Reading was supposed to improve the reader somehow. It should be a true story, informing you of more about the world than you knew before; a history of some important place or figure; or at the very least, a vehicle for moral teachings.

This post originally appeared on March 12, 2014. In an attempt to encourage compliance with the CRTC's strict guidelines for Canadian content (known as CanCon), the government has provided a detailed list of recommended plotlines for Canadian pornographic films. (The Toast's previous coverage of Canadian anthropological matters can be found here and here.)

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A man bumps into a woman on the street. "Sorry!" says the woman. "No, no, it

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This post, and several others to appear in due course, are generously sponsored by a gentleman-scholar from County San Francisco, supportive of the production and assessment of nasty novels, dealing familiarly with gamblers, misandrists and flashy reprobates.  Jilly Gagnon last wrote for The Toast about The Surreal Housewives. I think every generation assumes, to some extent, that it is the first to invent real depravity. Yes, we have evidence that as far back…