Thousands Of Miles Of Wheat,

Mr. Bernard Died On A Monday, At The Age Of Seventy-five, His Body Wasted. He Lay In State For Two Days In The Lobby Of The Bernard Gursky Tower And, As He Failed To Rise On The Third, He Was Duly Buried.

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.

Well, People Have Been Wondering What's Going To Happen To The Novel For Two Hundred Years; Its Death Has Been Announced Many Times. You Know, I Think The Novel Keeps Redefining The World We Live In. What You Should Look For In A Novel Is A Window Nobody Else Is Looking Out Of, That Nobody Else Can Look Through. What You Look For Is A Voice. You Pick Up A Novel By Someone Such As Faulkner Or Hemingway And You Just Read Three Pages And You Know Who Wrote It. And That's What One Should Demand Of A Novelist.

My Enduring Feeling About René Lévesque Is That If He Had Chosen To Hang Me, Even As He Tightened The Rope Round My Neck, He Would Have Complained About How Humiliating It Was For Him To Spring The Trapdoor. And Then, Once I Was Swinging In The Wind, He Would Blame My Ghost For Having Obliged Him To Murder, Thereby Imposing A Guilt Trip On A Sweet, Self-effacing, Downtrodden Francophone.

Edmonton Is Not The End Of The World But You Can Certainly See It From There.