Greg Gatenby is the Toronto impresario whose good works on behalf of Literature are legendary. Unhappily, his latest book is not one of them. The Wild is Always There (Knopf) is an anthology of comments by mostly dead, mostly famous, foreign writers on the subject of Canada. John Dos Passos thought that swimming in Newfoundland was "like a bath in champagne." Umberto Eco likes the Robarts Library in Toronto. Mark Twain complains about the weather. And so it goes. Many who are quoted hardly spent any time in Canada—Voltaire never visited at all; Albert Camus was here for about three hours; Jules Verne for less than a day—so it is hardly surprising that they have nothing interesting to say. What is surprising is that anyone would bother to collect these idle remarks and put them between hard covers. This kind of thing is best left to John Robert Colombo, who does it without so much pretension.
