WHEN AN eviscerating review of a novel by H. G. Wellsappeared in the pages of the New Statesman, the portly and petulantauthor woke the magazine`s editor, Kingsley Martin, at dawn by throwing stonesthrough his bedroom window. Wells then wrote to the unfortunate man, beginninghis letter with "Dear Judas Martin" and threatening dire consequences.Wells was a writer of world renown, a successful and wealthy man of letters,but also a crass and vulgar bully. Would such a thing, then, occur in Canada ifan establishment author received a hostile review? Certainly not, for the worldof contemporary Canadian letters moves in a different, less overtly bellicosemanner. Yet for all that, the metaphorical rocks hurled around might makeWells`s efforts look like an idle and innocuous tossing of pebbles. Any study of literary criticism in Canadais in reality a study of Canada itself. The invisible hand of cultivated,contrived, and ultimately fraudulent 11 niceness"has been at work within the arts community of this country for a very long timeindeed. Writers in particular have come to perceive a positive review or agovernment grant as an entitlement rather than a prize or rare gift. Somerset Maugham said pertinently that"People ask you for criticism, but they only want praise." And tothink that there was not a drop of Canadian blood anywhere in the man`s body.Some Toronto publishers have gone so far recently as to ask the editors of Quill & Quire magazineto expunge any actual opinions of their books from the trade journal`s pages,and to provide only a description of content. Such an act would be tantamountto selfcastration, and it speaks volumes about those who dared to make thesuggestion. Selfinterest is not necessarily the public interest, and in thiscontext it is the exact opposite. This is not the place to discuss esoterictheories of reviewing and criticism, to slide the cannon and canon of Leavis,Frye, or the postmodernists onto the ramparts of the literary castle. What maybe said is that while the standard of Canadian writing has improved greatly inrecent years, and while Canadian writers are respected and often reveredthroughout the world, back home there are some extremely insular and neuroticindividuals engaged in the literary profession. The assumption seems to be thata Canadian writer`s work cannot be, must not be, criticized by a reviewer. Iwrite therefore I am; I write in Canada therefore I am entitled to immunity.This is indicative of insecurity, immaturity and, most pernicious of all,unadulterated arrogance. When the Globe and Mail featureda highly antipathetic review of a retrospective of work by the artist CharlesPachter, letters of complaint from the full-fed princes of Canadian literaturewere immediate and numerous. The issue here is not one of quality, but ofreasoning. If the book pages of the Globe were notorious for publishingexcoriating reviews for their own sake, if they were in the sole business ofblackening white sepulchres, that would be reason for offence. But this is mostcertainly not the case with the newspaper in question, and the letters ofresponse were not so much in reaction as in over-reaction. Concerning Books in Canada, similarly,there are readers and writers who believe that a bad review is somehow againstthe law and should be punished accordingly. When Douglas Glover wrote a farfrom immoderate criticism of Peopleof the Pines, a book about the Okacrisis, the authors (Geoffrey York and Loreen Pindera) wrote back with a fullpage of defensive manoeuvres. Although they quibbled with one or two statementsof fact, the thrust of their riposte was that Glover did not"understand" the subject of their book and was therefore unqualifiedto pass comment. This displays not only a fundamental misapprehension of thenature of reviewing but also a solipsistic madness. It simply will not do. Areview is one person`s opinion; that person does not have to be an authority onthe issue, simply a thorough, objective, and honest judge. If we are big enoughto pick up the ball and run with it, we are big enough to be tackled, andsometimes tackled hard. This is not to say that we must neverreply to a review. The trite advice that the best policy is a stoicalindifference drips with smug banality. Personal vendettas should not find abattlefield in review pages, and clear misquotations or errors of fact deserveauthorial replies. But screams of incredulity and chagrin from bruised writersare redolent of the infantile tantrum of the crybaby and the spoilt child. Andlet us not fool ourselves for a moment Canadian writers have been spoilt formany years. The British dramatist Christopher Hamptonwrote from experience when he remarked that "Asking a working writer whathe thinks about critics is like asking a lamppost how it feels aboutdogs." Hampton could have gone on to say that canine and street-lighting deviceare not so much enemies as part of a symbiotic and necessary partnership, evenin Canada.