For some unfathomable reason, I have nursed for several years now a vague desire to know better the culture and literature of that quiet nation to our north known as "Canada." (You may have heard of it.) As I have been keen to tell anyone who would listen (poor souls), there seems to be a not insubstantial literature of Canadian conservatism that is authentically Canadian, a literature we Americans--including American conservatives--know little about, but perhaps ought.

If you're like most people, you don't really care. In fact, this category includes nearly all *conservative Canadians* I've ever met, which I've always found rather odd. But recently, the Canadian husband of a colleague heard me out on this topic and, revealing himself to be a Canuck of the non-self-loathing variety, promised to provide the names of some writers who would shine some light on the Canadian conservative tradition.

Last weekend, I received from him a novel titled "Barney's Version," by Mordecai Richler. I've not yet finished the book, but Richler might be thought of as a funnier, and more talented, Saul Bellow; or perhaps a more obscene, longer-winded, and much less conservative Joseph Epstein. At any rate, I would judge him well worth reading, should anyone out there share my unhealthy Canadian fascination.

Just one short passage to give you a flavor for Richler's writing. This from the protagonist, spouting vitriol about his rival, the postmodern writer and bore Terry McIver: "We have all read too much in literary journals about the unjustly neglected novelist, but seldom a word about the justly neglected, the scratch players, brandishing their little distinctions, a la Terry McIver. A translation into Icelandic, or an appearance at a Commonwealth arts festival in Auckland (featuring a few 'writers of pallor,' as the new nomenclature has it, as well as an affirmative-action melange of Maori, Inuit, and Amerindian good spellers). But, after all these years as a flunk, my old friend and latter-day nemesis has acquired a small but vociferous following, CanLit apparatchiks to the fore. . . ."