Actually, When It Comes To Knocking The

I Don't Hold With Shamans, Witch Doctors, Or Psychiatrists. Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Or Even Dickens, Understood More About The Human Condition Than Ever Occurred To Any Of You. You Overrated Bunch Of Charlatans Deal With The Grammar Of Human Problems, And The Writers I've Mentioned With The Essence.

In, 1950, At The Age, 19 I Dropped Out Of St. George William College In Montreal, As It Then Was, And Sailed For England On The Franconia. Foolishly, No Arrogantly, Believing I Could Put Canada And Its Picayune Problems Behind Me, Never Dreaming It Would Become The Raw Material Of Most Of My Fiction And Non-fiction. Or That I Would Care So Deeply About Its Surviving Intact.

I Had, Like Any Other Young Novelist, Started Out By Believing The Difficult Thing Was To Get Published And That, Once You Managed That, Well, Your Financial Problems Were Over. I Discovered, Like Any Other Serious Novelist, That Actually They Had Only Just Begun.

The Process Hasn't Changed, But The Writer Has Developed. I Still Get Up Every Morning And Go To Work.

This Is An Age Of Scientific Wonders. You Miss Somebody So You Pick Up The Phone To Say Hello. Three Minutes For Sixty-five Cents. Nobody Goes Broke.