Thousands Of Miles Of Wheat, Indifference, And

It Is No More Expected Of Most Producers To Read A Book Than It Is, Say, Of Ted Williams To Dust Off Home Plate.

When A Child Is Born, I Once Explained To The Kids, Some Dads Lay Down Bottles Of Wine For Them That Will Mature When They Grow Up Into Ungrateful Adults. Instead, What You're Going To Get From Me, As Each Of You Turns Sixteen, Is A Library Of The One Hundred Books That Gave Me The Most Pleasure When I Was A Know-nothing Adolescent.

A Novel May Take Anywhere From Two To Five Years To Write And, In The End, You Might Manage A Couple Of Thousand Dollars On It, No More.

Well, When I Was A Young Writer The People We Read Were Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Sartre, Camus, Celine, Malraux. And To Begin With, I Was A Bit Of A Copycat Writer And Very Derivative And Tried To Write A Novel Using Their Voices, Really.... I Keep It Out Of Print.

So Far As One Can Generalize, The Most Graciouis, Cultivated, And Innovative People In This Country Are French Canadians. Certainly They Have Given Us The Most Exciting Politicians Of Our Time: Trudeau, Lévesque. Without Them, Canada Would Be An Exceedingly Boring And Greatly Diminished Place.