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Last year, my novel The Garneau Block was longlisted for the Giller Prize. This year, The Book of Stanley was not longlisted for the Giller Prize.

Last year, I was surprised. I did not even know there would be a longlist. This year, I waited for the longlist like a gazelle waiting to be attacked by a panther. That is, if panthers attack gazelles.

I am spending 32 hours this weekend in a seminar room with 170 other people, listening to a man called Robert McKee. If you saw Adaptation with Nicholas Cage as Charles Kaufman, you saw Robert McKee — or a facsimile played by Brian Cox. McKee is a stern man in the lecture hall. Interrupt him with a dopey remark or the uncalled-for answer to a rhetorical question, and he will call you down. Last night, he did just that to a woman who had paid $600 to hear him.

In the last posting, I mentioned that I would be on Sounds Like Canada today, that is Thursday. Well... the media are more sophisticated than my assumptions. My interview is being taped this morning, to run on a later date. The magic of the digital age! If I discover the later date, I'll dish it. But I'm sure you listen to Sounds Like Canada every day, anyway.

So far, I have never set any fiction in Toronto. While I have spent a lot of time in Canada's first city, I have never lived in Toronto. At least physically. I currently live in the virtual Toronto, as you can read. These are Toronto words I am writing.

On Thursday morning, I will be on Sounds Like Canada, with Shelagh Rogers. We're going to talk about my latest novel, The Book of Stanley. I don't know why I am so nervous, as she is only a human being, but I am somewhat terrified. She is one degree of separation away from everyone who is anyone in Canada. And as a relative nobody, I am keenly aware of her power.

Today, I published a NEWSPAPER COLUMN about the trials of the book tour. But it's only half-serious. Literature and circus are Canada's two great cultural exports. We understand, inherently, the importance of literature both to explain what it's like to be a human being and what it's like to be Canadian. Our other cultural industries have been unable to produce figures like Richler, Atwood and Ondaatje.

I have had three stops on the book tour so far — one in Edmonton, one in Banff, one in Calgary. I have used the same material. In Edmonton, we were in a bar and I didn't begin speaking until about 8:30. The drinkers in the crowd had already taken two drinks, and they were rowdy. In Banff, where The Book of Stanley takes place, I was in a public library, where raising one's voice feels like an ugly provocation. In Calgary, I was in a bookstore restaurant. While I spoke, staff crushed ice for smoothies and called out to one another: "Can I get a double espresso, short?" and "Oh my God, shut up?"