YOUR ASSESSMENT of "Imprint" ("Literature in the Air," Summer) was generous, by and large, but revealed some innocence regarding my so-called interview with Gay Talese. First of all, nobody interviews Talese - we just watch. I guess you didn't know how amply his keenness for masturbation was documented in Thy Neighbor's Wife.

Secondly, my asking him if Unto the Sons was a bid to win back respect (after the controversy surrounding that earlier, stickier volume) may have seemed a tired question to self-proclaimed serious book lovers like you, but not, I think, to viewers unfamiliar with Gay Talese. Such a question is the essence of broadcasting, an element of "Imprint" that sometimes goes unappreciated by the serious Canadians who don't like us. Our ambition is not to become the ET of literature, exactly (a Letterman for letters, maybe), but we do want to embrace an audience beyond the hookworms. In this sense, the future may hold even more tired questions for you and your ilk.

Thirdly, I think you're mistaken to swallow whole Talese's version of the "bosomy" life depicted in Italian movies; Fellini hails from the North, yes (my booboo), but De Sica, Rossellini, Zampa, Lizzani, Blasetti, Rossi, and Pietrangeli are all from Rome that's south, seen from Rimini - or way further south than that, and have all fed my imagination with pictures of an Italy far juicier than did Talese's barren pages. I don't know why my knowledge of Italian movies or geography should figure in your judgement of my literacy, but the real point is that, far from me asking unpointed questions, Talese sure bamboozled viewers like you with his mazy answers.

I was amused, too, to read your criticism of our sex panel. You say I failed to provide any literary context (namely Hardy, Lawrence, etc.). Silly me, I imagined our guests were the literary context: Nicholson Baker, a writer (working, that is, in the literary context); Susan Swan, whose GG nomination must be some sort of credential; the Harlequin editor, who would have been hard-pressed had I in fact asked her to deconstruct Stud Paradise against Hardy, Lawrence, etc.; and Jeff Kirby, whose explicit - ah, let's say it, gay - descriptions may have shocked you, but were not necessarily "non-literary" because of that.

I do find it hilarious that the moment sex rears its head, folks want some serious historical context, pronto. It may surprise you to hear this, but the sexual acts described so explicitly in these authors' works are the very same acts as those once described in Cleland, De Sade, Chorier, Bataille, and even Hardy and Lawrence. Call us libertines, but we on "Imprint" only wanted to have some fun celebrating libidinous stuff by some of today's writers, period - and in that context the only thing worth noting might have been what US Attorney General Ed Meese already concluded in his 1986 commission on pornography: books that would once have been considered outre are OK today because so few people read any more; now that erotic literature is safely back in the hands of the educated elite, pseudonymous writers like A. N. Roquelaure (a.k.a. Anne Rice) can come out as themselves without fear of prosecution.

So, possibly the only shocking aspect of what we did was that we did it on TV, and to make up for having had so much fun so unapologetically, we did air a panel of august critics later in the season to discuss Sally Tisdale's infamous article in Harper's regarding the new feminist appetite for porn. That discussion, I assure you, had context to spare.

Finally, I must say that your conclusion -"broadcastland needs more people with some background in literature" - is narrow, snobby, and insulting, at least as far as the programs in your article are concerned. If you're alluding to university degrees you'd do well to remember the caution the Wizard of Oz offers the Scarecrow regarding diplomas and brains. If on the other hand you mean ... oh, forget it -look, egghead, if you don't apologize to Stan Lipsey and all the other producers, writers, hosts, and researchers of "The Arts Tonight," "Writers & Company," "Morningside," and "Imprint" who have admirably conditioned their literary sensibilities to the imperatives of electronic

media, I shall have to ask you to step into the parking lot.

Daniel "Boot Boy" Richler Toronto

Editors' Note:

STEP INTO the parking lot? C'mon now, Books in Canada writers can't afford cars make it a subway station,eh? Seriously, folks, given Daniel Richler's evident concern for his intellectual image, how about a CanLit knowledge contest between "Imprint" and Books in Canada, stakes to be donated to a designated charity? Any time, and any place accessible by public transit, will suit us just fine.

DAYV JAMES-FRENCH, in his review of Judy Millar's The Rules of Partial Existence ("Connected Episodes," Summer) faults the book's title, Aritha van Herk's back cover "blurb," and Millar's introduction. He then quotes a few lines, without context, from the first story, "Elephant in Taxi," and dismisses the whole collection as "incomprehensible."

Seemingly judging a book by its cover (or first few pages) is unfair to BiC readers and the author. I have read the entire collection and found the stories rich, multilayered, and resonant. Yes, these are stories you have to work at. They are stimulating, challenging ... but incomprehensible? I don't think so.

Elizabeth Haynes

Calgary

THE LATE C. S. Lewis once refused an invitation from the TLS to savage a book by one of his philosophical opponents, because, as he neither liked nor understood the "kind" of book it was he knew that he could not do justice to any example of the kind. It would be nice to think that someday Michael Darling ("Lit(t)er-a(i)ry Crit-ic(k)-ism," May) might behave with Lewis's integrity.

On a happier note, when I was in Wellington, New Zealand, recently, some of the most interesting new poets there told me that Phyllis Webb was the highlight of the Wellington Writers Festival for them. They and their friends had purchased what books of hers were available and ordered others from Canada. Their admiration for one of our finest poets spoke well of their own poetics, I thought.

Douglas Barbour

Edmonton

THE TONE and content of the letter from Geoffrey York and Loreen Pindera (Summer) only confirms my earlier conclusion that they are the sort of journalists who rush to print their assumptions without checking their facts. To take their points in reverse order:

Contrary to York/Pindera's assumption, I am not only "a writer of fiction." I have worked as a reporter and editor on daily newspapers (including the Montreal Star) in four provinces. And I can spot a soft interviewer who plays pit-a-pat with his/her subject as well as anyone. As a reader of their book, People of the Pines, I have questions for York/Pindera. If "two or three" people know who killed Marcel Lemay, why didn't York/Pindera ask them? Who are they? Why aren't they talking? There is a kind of journalist who gets so entangled with his/her sources that he/she can't somehow risk offending them (this is a species of the hostage syndrome). Of course, I wouldn't call those people real journalists.

What we call Native culture is really a mixture of strands - oral traditions that have altered through contact with Europeans, borrowings from other native cultures, bits of anthropology that have been re-adopted by the natives, and white culture that has simply been adopted wholesale...

It puzzles me to find that they think we disagree.

As for my being an "armchair expert," I resent York/Pindera's smugly self-righteous and incorrect assumption (slipshod journalism again -all they had to do was call) that I lack firsthand knowledge of the Iroquois (their list of interviews and contacts sounds like one of those my-thing-is-longer- than-your- thing arguments). Most of what I think I know about the Iroquois I gleaned firsthand, though I have read some books as well. I grew up on a farm six miles from the Six Nations Reserve. My father and his father had deep and abiding contacts with the Iroquois. Whole families -Generals, Sowdens, and Jacobs used to spend weeks at a time camped on our farm, working in the strawberry patches. I played with their kids in the sandy laneways, later went to high school with some of them, worked with them in the fields, swam with them at the local gravel pit, even fought with them (one of Gaylord Powless's younger cousins used to put on gloves with me behind our tobacco kilns).

Nowadays, I drive over to the Reserve almost every time I come home and pass by the Upper Cayuga Longhouse and stop and visit if anyone is around. Arid my mother often babysits for a Mohawk friend of ours. Now, I didn't and don't interview any of these people. I don't treat them as objects of curiosity, as grist for my word processor or a possible doctoral I thesis. I know them as neighbours, acquaintances, and childhood friends. But maybe I have learned a thing or two just by being there.

Douglas GloverGansevoort, N.Y.

Elizabeth Brewster

Saskatoon

I ENJOYED George Elliott Clarke's review, in your summer issue, of my new collection of poems and stories, China Blues. I think it's generous of Clarke to use phrases like "wondrous command of lyric and image" and "brilliant." It certainly shows he's reading some of the 54 or so poems and four stories in China Blues, and that's good, reviewers don't always read as much as they should.

But I think he's just a tad over-preoccupied with "Chet Baker," etc. First of all, China Blues is a collection of poems and stories about urban experiences and different relationships. Secondly, I think I saw Chet Baker in a television documentary once. And there is no mention of Chet Baker in China Blues. Stan Getz? Well, maybe. Getz is a soulful player. But not Baker, and when it comes to Christopher Smart, I think we're reaching for the margins. Even Mary Cassatt or Monique Wittig would come a bit closer, or Fernand Braudel, or Keith Jarrett, or Mona Simpson, or Alice Walker.

If Clarke wants some names, then Andy Warhol, Joan Baez, and Willem de Kooning are right there in one poem; and David Bowie gets a poem to himself; Sinead O'Connor makes a slight appearance; there's a poem about Piet Mondrian's "Broadway Boogie Woogie"; and the discerning reader even gets a soupcon of Jack Nicholson, Mark Strand, and the Surgeon-General of the late '80s. That's what China Blues is, it's about life and culture. But Chet Baker isn't in there, there are no "L.L. Bean" Clothes, and Ezra Pound never makes an appearance. Totally different world, George; and "contemporary" or "cool" doesn't mean it isn't heartland and soulful.

David Donnell

Toronto

MOST READERS of Books in Canada are probably unaware that 1 have launched a legal action in federal court against the Canada Council, so 1 want to explain what is going on.

The Canada Council has a rule that bars self-published books from consideration for the Governor General's Awards. I'm mainly a self-publishing author. 1 protested to the council about their discriminatory rule, but they were unwilling to drop it, so 1 had no choice but to file a statement of claim in federal court seeking to abolish this rule.

The principal argument against the council is that they are "fettering their discretion" and are therefore violating their enabling legislation, the Canada Council Act of 1957.

Anyone who is familiar with the history of literature is well aware that many great books were originally published privately by their authors, so the Canada Council is going to look pretty stupid when we get to court.

The council has so far taken the position that they are autonomous and not subject to the authority of the federal court.

On Thursday, September 10, a hearing will take place in federal court (trial division) in Ottawa on a motion by the council to dismiss my statement of claim. Members of the press and public seeking further information, and anyone wishing to write a letter of support, may contact me at 1712 Avenue Road, P.O. Box 5454 1, North York, ON, M5M 4N5; telephone (416) 924-5670.

Crad Kilodney North York, Ont.

Douglas Barbour, in "Keep It Concrete" (Poets' Corner, May), thunders against those who "negate poetic proliferation." The target of this pious barbourian philippic is the "autocratic" Gary Geddes, who stands accused of nothing less than denying "more than 2,000 years of pattern and concrete poetry." It seems Geddes perpetrated this crime in his third edition of Twentieth Century Poetry and Poetics.

Defender of the faith Barbour is a little less than forthcoming about a possible source of his frenzied, overspoken anger.

It seems Mr. Barbour found himself pruned from the updated edition.

I can understand his anger at an obstacle to his own self-proliferation, but does he really consider himself the true and righteous and unique standard-bearer for the full two millennia he mentions?

Sheesh.

Jim Smith

Toronto