The Process Hasn't Changed, But

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.

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.

The Revolution Eats Its Own. Capitalism Re-creates Itself.

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.

For The Record, Pot, Like The Reader's Digest , Is Not Necessarily Habit-forming, But Both Can Lead To Hard-core Addiction : Heroin, In One Case, Abridged Bad Books, In The Other. Either Way You Look At It, A Withdrawal From A Meaningful Life.