SOURCE: “Tiles in the Canadian Mosaic,” in Los Angeles Times Book Review, January 14, 1990, p. 2.

In the following essay, Rubin offers a positive review of Adult Entertainment.

“The fictions of John Metcalf and John Mills, though often set in the Canadian academic world [that] these authors know well and satirize with anarchic humor, are informed by memories of growing up in England, which remains a final frame of reference for their work,” notes Prof. David Stouck in his guide, Major Canadian Authors (2nd edition). “These writers, however,” he generously allows, “all make a significant contribution to the mosaic of Canadian literature.”

Of the many ways of evaluating authors and literature, the quest to determine who or what is most truly representative of a given national or ethnic group is surely among the most tiresome—and the most routinely applied. One can only hope that working writers spend less time...