Sick?
NORMAN LEVINE'S account of a return journey to his native Canada in 1956 makes Miller's Air- Conditioned Nightmare read like an USIS hand- out. The author sails across the Atlantic from the UK, makes his way to -Vancouver and turns again east, back all the way to the pubs in Ken- sington Church Street. Once in Canada nothing is missed, from the goon who explodes huge balloons of bubblegum next to the author as he eats his nasty, cold, fatty meal in Edmonton to the baby-faced salesmen spewing rye in the transcontinental Viscount 15,000 feet above the Rockies. Flashbacks from his own life and character studies of key acquaintances result in a depth analysis of post-war Canada, split, as everyone knows; between the traditional British connection and the new American overlordship. In this shambles none are nastier than the British immigrants, many treasuring an image of a Tatlerised England of between the wars. So far, so good; for Mr. Levine's treatment gives one a tomographic word picture of the great schizoid Dominion. But Levine has lived in Cornwall and London since 1949. St. Ives is pretty nasty, too : 'the open sewer pipe by the Anglican church.' And even in Waterloo Station the buffet smelt like 'someone being sick.' What about Gwithian or Porthcurno? Hence, perhaps, the conclusion about Canada: 'it was all part of an experiment that could not come off. It was foolish to believe that you can take the throwouts, the rejects, the human kickabouts from Europe and tell them : Here you have a second chance.' For in spite-of the beautiful Rockies, or even St. Ives itself in the summer, where almost every prospect pleases, the real trouble isn't with Canadians alone, but, alas,
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