Wherever I Travel I'm Too

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.

I Work Every Day - Or At Least I Force Myself Into Office Or Room. I May Get Nothing Done, But You Don't Earn Bonuses Without Putting In Time. Nothing May Come For Three Months, But You Don't Earn The Fourth Without It.

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.

Beauty, Like Male Ballet Dancers, Makes Some Men Afraid.