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sapere, SPEAKING VOLUMES A nice, very nice, look at literary London and New Y¥6.h Setting out to compare the manners and idiom of the literary life in London and New York, let me first admit to my vantage point. Though I've lived in Lon- don for almost 15 years, making occa- sional forays into New York, I remain a Canadian, that is to say, nice, very nice, but just possibly subject to our northern psranoia, a tendency to regard non- Canadian life through a wrong-ended telescope, as witness what is still my most cherished Toronto newspaper headline: 1960 Was A COOD YEAR FOR PLAY- WRIGHTS FROM OUTSIDE CANADA. On a recent trip home, I discovered that many a disgruntled Canadian lit- terateur still regarded London and New York as cities characterized by virulent anti-Canadianism, which is to say, we are not celebrated in these capitals because one is a anobby homosexual conspiracy and the other an iniquitous Jewish closed- shop. Concretely, this means a surly Presbyterian Toronto novelist saying to me, “My stuff isn’t published in New York not because I’m lousy, but because it’s set here. If I were willing to re-set my novels in New York and give all my characters Jewish names, they’d be fall- ing all over theruselves praising me.” T represent, as it were, the least mili- tant North American minority group. The two capitals is economic. Though the " present generation of British writers is largely drawn from the middle and work- “ing classes, there is still a lingering as- sumption that writers are gentlemen. Especially socialist writers. And so I'm for review copies; moreover he forks it ont in tax-free cash. Insult, On occasions] tripe to New York, often feel myself an innocent trsversing a battlefield. No editor you lunch with assured that when Kingsley Martin was >‘today has anything but scorn for the one still the editor of the New Statesman he stopped at the desk of a relatively new sub-editor to ask, “How are you doing?” To which the young editor is said to have replied, with ill-concealed discontent, that he found it difficult to support a family of four on £20 a week. “Good Lord,” you ate with yesterday, and the same seems true of one writer talking about another. Invective is vigorous, deeply personal and rich in expletives, running from the inside story of how the other man’s novel waa put together by editors te colorful anecdotes illustrating the an acknowledged expert, has pointed ou! A boy’s got to push his book in Lon doa too, but not by championing its virtues. On the contrary. He's expected 10 belitde it. And 20, you don’t let out that you have written a novel thet will make for a revolution in the conscious ness of your generation: instead you allow that last month being 2 bore, yor stayed home and committed this turgid little book, which everyone's going to hate. Rather than badger critics and lit. editors of your acquaintence, demanding attention in the name of friendship or past favore, you avoid them fore “re. publication months, for to do me would be frightfully pushy. For their part, editors and critice who have been long-standing friends make a point of handing out your book for review to de- clared enemies, if only to demonstrate that they, too, are above corruption. Before my last novel appeared in Lon- don, in 1963, an old friend, who had enjoyed reading the manuscript enor- mously, admitted that he had been sent the book for review. “I'm sure you under- stand,” he said, “that I will have to be rather hard on it. Lots of people know we're friends.” This is not to eay that some British authors are not nrane 4 +L