The novel is very much alive, indeed. In Toronto at the Sixth Annual International Festival of Authors (October 1985) I listened to novelists by the dozen.

The candle-buds opened their wide white flowers....Their scent spilled out into the air and took possession of the island.

This is our island. It's a good island. Until the grownups come to fetch us we'll have fun.

Marx, Darwin and Freud are the three most crashing bores of the Western World. Simplistic popularization of their ideas has thrust our world into a mental straitjacket from which we can only escape by the most anarchic violence.

Roger stooped, picked up a stone, aimed and threw it at Henry-threw it to miss. The stone, that token of preposterous time, bounced five yards to Henry's right and fell in the water. Roger gathered a handful of stones and began to throw them. Yet there was a space round Henry, perhaps six yards in diameter, into which he dare not throw. Here, invisible yet strong, was the taboo of the old life. Round the squatting child was the protection of parents and school and policemen and the law. Roger was conditioned by a civilization that knew nothing of him and was in ruins.

The mask was a thing on it's own, behind which Jack hid, liberated from shame and self-conciousness.

Philosophy and Religion-what are they when the wind blows and the water gets up in lumps?