The File on Arthur Moss

Steve Pitt is a Toronto-based freelance writer and an award-winning journalist. He has written many young adult and children's books, including Day of the Flying Fox: The True Story of World War II Pilot Charley Fox.

In this novel, set in the 1970s, Arthur Moss is a Canadian journalist
sent to cover the American war effort in Vietnam. There, Moss is forced
to associate with a sleazy military public relations officer named D.C.
Reisbeck, and he becomes infatuated with a French-Canadian actress,
Jemmie Ramboulin.

For Canadians who want to see their worst paranoias about American
culture reinforced, this book is a keeper. Moss does not like American
politics, the American way of dressing, or American accents. For him,
Americans cannot even eat properly with a knife and fork. His
relationship with Jemmie becomes an allegory for what happens to
Canadians who succumb to the false idols of Americanism. When he first
meets her, Jemmie is a serious Canadian artist making an NFB documentary
about a selfless Canadian priest who runs an orphanage in Saigon. By the
end of the decade, she is a typical Hollywood sell-out doing bad films
for good money, and is possibly even involved with Reisbeck.

When Moss discovers that the Americans have been building a file on
him, his shock and outrage are hard to believe, considering his opinion
of American government and the fact that he has been writing
anti-American articles for over a decade.

This novel is well crafted, but ultimately has nothing new to say about
Canadians or Americans. In merely pointing out negatives about
Americans, he fails to define Canadians. Like most Canadian writers,
Fetherling does not know much about Canadians. He just knows what he
does not like.