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The accidental death of the bestselling author’s son-not to mention the violent murder of the writer’s father, and the subsequent shooting of the cook’s killer-had been big news. Da
In the After-Hours Restaurant got a warm reception and mostly good reviews-the author was often praised for a nowadays-atypical “restraint.” Maybe the oft-repeated restraint word was what bothered the writer, though it was meant as praise. Da
“You keep skirting the darker subjects,” Ketchum had told him. In the case of In the After-Hours Restaurant, would the nightly efforts of the gentle sous chef to teach himself his illustrious father’s trade constitute more of the same “writing around the periphery of things”-as Ketchum had unkindly put it? (Da
“His most subtle work,” one reviewer had written glowingly about In the After-Hours Restaurant. In Ketchum’s unsubtle vocabulary, the subtle word had never been uttered in praise.
“His most symbolic undertaking,” another critic had commented.
There was no telling what Ketchum might have said about the symbolic word, Da
And would the old logger have liked how Da
“Yes, it’s true-I continue to live in Canada, and will continue to live here,” Da
“No, it’s not true that I am ‘politically opposed,’ as you say, to living in the U.S.,” Da
“It’s too soon to say,” the writer was always saying-in response to how the attacks of September 11, and President Bush’s retaliation to those attacks, had affected the United States; in response to where the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were headed; in response to whether or not Canada would be dragged into a recession, or a depression. (Because the U.S. was fast approaching one, or both, wasn’t it? From the Canadian journalists, that was generally the implication.)
It was going on four years since Ketchum had called the United States “an empire in decline;” what might the old logger have called the country now? In Canada, the questions Da
Wasn’t it true that the United States was “hopelessly overextended, militarily”? Wasn’t the federal government “wallowing under massive debt”? And would the writer care to comment on America ’s “belligerent, warmongering nature”? Wasn’t the bestselling author’s “former country,” as the Canadian journalist referred to the United States, “in decay”?
For how much longer, Da
After all, Da
What Da
Those remarks would be repeated-especially that bit about the “bully patriots,” not to mention singling out “every dumber-than-dog-shit American voter.” The novelist Daniel Baciagalupo had indeed written and published eight novels under the nom de plume of Da
As for Da
On the refrigerator in his Toronto kitchen, Da