I WOULD LIKE to assure David Donnell, in response to his letter in the September issue, that I read China Blues wholly, twice, before writing my review in the summer issue. Some of the poems were good, most seemed flat. 'Nuff said.

I READ with interest Ted Ferguson's article "A Place of Their Own" (October). I walked with him through the streets of Cabbagetown, reviewed with him some of the stamps portraying dead Canadian writers, and followed his train of thought as he developed his case for a museum of Canadian literature.

Canada's living museum of its published heritage is the National Library of Canada. Established in 1953, the National Library has a mission to collect, preserve, and make known Canada's literary and musical heritage. With the largest collection of Canadiana in the world, exhibitions, cultural events, and promotion of our vibrant multicultural heritage are central to the Library's programs. In the past year, readings by Robertson Davies, Mordecai Richler, and Timothy Findley have drawn overflow houses; the film showing of Le Mouton Noir by the writer Jacques Godbout attracted a full house; an exhibition on Glenn Gould travelled in Canada and Japan; and many Canadian writers spent lively evenings with their audiences -- Stuart McLean, Nino Ricci, Maria Tippett, and Yves Navarre, to name but a few. On every occasion, a display is mounted and, in many cases, the papers and memorabilia of these writers are shown.

All Canadians and visitors are welcome to these free events. And we have evidence that increasing numbers are coming to recognize the National Library as their home, their museum of Canadian literature. In November, the Booker Prize winner, Michael Ondaatje, read from The English Patient, and this month the winners of the 1992 Governor General's Awards will read from their works. Do join us when you are in Ottawa.

Gwynneth Evans

National Library of Canada

Ottawa

ROBIN SKELTON, reviewing my novel Runner in the Dark ("Detecting Disruption," October), found the book's ending "intolerably ambiguous." I am not at all surprised. The novel was inadvertently sent out to reviewers (and some bookstores) minus its final chapter, and though my editor at Oberon Press made a valiant effort to notify everybody concerned, she was clearly not 100 per cent successful. I used a thriller format for Runner in the Dark and, as is the convention, I needed that last chapter to explain much of the preceding action, so I was surprised Mr. Skelton made as much sense of the novel as he did.

For a while I toyed with the notion of letting the error stand and selling the last chapter separately to hooked readers for large sums of money, but by the time you receive this letter a new, complete version of the novel will have been published.

John Mills

Vancouver

Editors' Note: We're sending the new version of Runner in the Dark to Robin Skelton, and we'll let him decide whether a re- review or some other comment is appropriate.

THIS WEEK I read George Galt's review of The Will of a Nation by George Radwanski and Julia Luttrell (October). Who is George Galt? Is he a Mulroney man? Here's where I am: I am a member of the Council of Canadians and am hoping to start a C.O.C. Chapter in the North Bay area.

You can see that, having heard and read Mel Hurtig's The Betrayal of Canada and Maude Barlow and Bruce Campbell's Take Back the Nation, I was excited to read The Will of a Nation this summer. While visiting relatives in Manitoba, I used my word processor to take notes -- 42 pages -- from my second reading. I found that it told the same story from another perspective.

George Galt writes that The Will of a Nation is "short on facts." I recommend that Galt read Hurtig and Barlow/ Campbell if he wants to find more facts to settle how history is being rewritten. Then he will appreciate "these dusted-off Liberal campaign speeches."

Donald R. Keating North Bay, Out.