101 Letters to a Prime Minister Read Free Page A

that he’s Prime Minister of Canada. But Stephen Harper must nonetheless have pockets of solitude and idleness during which he contemplates life. There must be occasions when his thinking goes from the instrumental—
how do I do this, how do I get that?
—to the fundamental—
why this, why that?
In other words, he must have moments of stillness. And since I deal in books, reading and writing them, and since books and stillness go well together, I decided, by means of good books, to make suggestions that would inspire stillness in Stephen Harper.
    Hence the months and years of reading, thinking, writing and mailing. The books are on a shelf in an office somewhere in Ottawa, I presume. The letters are in your hands.

    What was I expecting in return? That the Prime Minister would read and reply as fast as I was reading and writing to him? No, I wasn’t expecting such diligence. There will always be more books one would like to read than one will have time to read. And thank God for that. It will be a sad day, a sign of a shrunken Earth, when someone will claim to have read every book published. But I did expect that one day I would receive a response more substantial than the mechanical replies I ended up receiving. Isn’t that what democracy is about, the accountability of our leaders? As a citizen of the arts, I have a right to know what my Prime Minister thinks about reading, I have a right to know what books shaped him.
    Here, for example, are a few imagined replies that would have addressed the core of my inquiry:
    The haughty:
    Dear Mr. Martel
,
    Napoleon did not ride into battle with a book in his hands. Politics is action. I will perhaps consider your books when I have won all my political battles
.
    Yours truly
,
    Stephen Harper
    The principled:
    Dear Mr. Martel
,
    What I do in my moments of leisure is none of your business. Furthermore, I cannot accept your gifts because they possibly place me in a position of conflict of interest in relation to other Canadian writers. I have therefore instructed my staff to donate the books you have sent me to World Literacy of Canada
.
    Yours truly
,
    Stephen Harper
    The sly:
    Dear Mr. Martel
,
    I cannot thank you enough for the wonderful books you are sending me. So many hours of reading pleasure. I can’t get enough. Upon reading the Tolstoy, I was deeply struck at how fragile our grip upon life is. The Orwell had me trembling at the wickedness of the corrupt, the Agatha Christie panting with suspense, the Elizabeth Smart weeping with heartbreak, and so on with each book, a roller coaster of wild emotions. More, more, please. I’ve been managing a book every three days
.
    Your letters are also a source of delight—but if only they weren’
t
so short! If they were longer, more detailed, then I would truly be a contented Canadian reader
.
    Yours truly
,
    Stephen Harper
    P.S. I loved
Life of Pi.
But what was that strange island about? And what are you working on now?
    The practically honest:
    Dear Mr. Martel
,
    I don’t have time to read for leisure. I get what I need to know from briefing papers prepared by my staff. Occasionally I squeeze in a book on politics or economics. But after my time in office, many years from now I hope, then I will look at books of my choice
.
    Yours truly
,
    Stephen Harper
    The brutally honest:
    Dear Mr. Martel
,
    I don’t like reading novels or poetry or plays. It feels like a waste of time. If that bothers you, I don’t care
.
    Yours truly
,
    Stephen Harper
    The openly honest:
    Dear Mr. Martel
,
    I’ve never been much of a reader of novels and I’ve done fine that way. But last week I happened to be standing near the box where your books are stored and I had a free minute. I looked at them. Such a variety. It occurred to me that books are like tools. Some are ploughs, some are hammers, some are spirit levels. I’ve picked two books out of the box, the
Bhagavad Gita
and
Maus,
which I will try to read in my spare time. That will have to do