The Nicholas Hoare bookshop on Sussex Drive here in Ottawa was tonight the setting for yet another elitist literary snob-fest. From 6 to 8 p.m., five of the winners of the recent Governor General's Literary Awards managed to take time from their gruelling day-jobs of sitting at desks and thinking really hard to meet some members of the public and sign a few books with their lily-white, manicured and moisturized hands. (What sort of "public" can afford to take two hours off between work and returning home to care for their families? Head-in-the-clouds intellectuals, maybe, and a few lazy literature students, but certainly not the common masses.)

Dianne Warren, whose novel Cool Water was selected as the best English-language fiction book of the year, languidly toyed with the string of pearls around her neck as she spoke to a watery-eyed university student about her "devotion" to her "craft." Unsurprisingly, Warren did not admit to having hired minimum-wage research assistants - as has been reported by reliable sources - to dig up the small-town Saskatchewan gossip she then weaved into a tawdry, contrived mess of a book while ensconced in the well-padded nest of her Toronto penthouse.

Allan Casey, the non-fiction award winner for Lakeland: Journeys into the Soul of Canada mumbled something about "beauty," "nature," and "national character" in between stuffing great handfuls of the seafood buffet into his mouth. It is no doubt pleasurable to contemplate those things from the floor-to-ceiling windows of his three-storey "cottage," or the deck of his 48-foot sailboat.

The idea that these toffs are in any way connected to reality, or that their books could be found at all enjoyable or relevant by ordinary, hard-working Canadians, is preposterous. Warren, Casey, and the other award winners - for poetry, drama, children's literature and illustrations, and translation, in both official languages - are no doubt laughing all the way to the bank at the gullible fools who purchase their output.

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The (Cult)ure legal team feels obliged to point out that the above post was written with tongue very much in cheek, and was meant as a critical commentary on certain trends and viewpoints observed recently in Canadian and American media outlets. In actual fact, the books are excellent, the writers at the event were very down-to-earth and friendly, and the atmosphere was relaxed and congenial. No pearls or seafood buffets were in evidence. Dianne Warren and Allan Casey both live - modestly, by all accounts - in Saskatchewan, and do their own research.