Roger Lemelin, TIME'S correspondent in Quebec City, Que., finished his fourth book last month, just a little more than two years behind schedule. The schedule was something Lemelin imposed on himself in 1948 while he was working on his second book, a long (470 pages) novel, Les Plouffe (The Plouffe Family). His second child had just been born. So Lemelin told his friends: "For each new child, a new book."

Lemelin was keeping pretty close to that pace when his third child was expected in June 1950 and he was well along with a group of short stories entitled Fantasies on the Seven Deadly Sins. But nature intervened. This time his wife bore him a set of twins. So Lemelin had to set to work on his fourth, and what he considers his best, book: Pierre le Magnifique (a name he had given earlier to his first child).

At 33, Lemelin is a successful businessman, a chess champion, a former skiing champion and, in the judgment of many leading critics, French Canada's outstanding novelist. In addition, TIME's writers and researchers have found him to be a discriminating reporter, with a knack of transferring his vivid French style to colorful phrases in his self-taught English. In discussing TIME, for instance, he writes: "TIME is a magazine always faithful to its manner as a stone is faithful to its hardness. I like that. What is a TIME story? It is a common fact or human being which explodes in an unusual way toward universal interest."

Lemelin grew up in the dingy St.-Sauveur district of Quebec's Lower Town. He describes his mother as "the most beautiful girl in St.-Sauveur" and his father as "a wonderful man who bought me a rebuilt typewriter for $80, at installments of $5 a month." Lemelin's business acumen and his taste for literature showed themselves almost simultaneously. At 14, he organized a group of boys to shovel snow off doorsteps, at 5-c- each. In the process, he stumbled across a large building filled with books -- the provincial library -- and, upon inquiring, learned he could borrow two books a week. He recalls: "They were the first serious books I read. A universe of light was opened wide to my avid mind."

By 1936, Lemelin had won the junior ski-jumping championship of Quebec and had started to become a promising local boxer. While practicing for the Canadian skiing championships, however, he fell and broke his left ankle. A resulting infection helped keep him in the hospital eleven months.

Lemelin came home on crutches, adopted the slogan "Bite the apple where it is still good," developed a technique of bicycling with one foot and changed his swimming style so he could swim three miles a day. In 1941 Lemelin got a job as office manager of his uncle's lumber mill. When he had saved $200, he went to a well-known Quebec surgeon, who suggested an operation for his leg. Meanwhile, Lemelin had been writing a novel, Au Pied de la Pente Douce (The Town Below), which he submitted to the provincial literary contest. The novel didn't win. Lemelin was in low spirits when he went to the hospital to await the operation, until Albert Pelletier, one of the judges, came to see him. Pelletier called Lemelin the first genuine novelist of French Canada, said he would help get the book published.

Says Lemelin: "The doctor said I was singing on the operating table and discussing literary problems in my sleep."

Both the book and the operation proved successful. The book sold 20,000 copies in French, sold well again when it was translated into English.

Lemelin began to work for TIME in 1948. At the same time, he started to learn English by a systematic study of 150 irregular verbs and by putting unfamiliar words on cards, with French definitions on the back. The words he did not know went into one box; when he had learned them, he transferred them to a second box.

His first TIME story (on which he worked 18 hours) was about himself and his second book (TIME, Nov. 1, 1948). The following year, when a plane crash killed 23 persons at Sault au Cochon, Lemelin learned that Mrs. Albert Guay was on board, so he talked at length to her husband, whom he knew. When it was later discovered that Guay had had a bomb planted on the plane, Lemelin was ready with a full background story about the family (TIME, Oct. 3, 1949 et seq.).

Lemelin thinks reporting has helped his novels, says: "It has given me a human experience I would have found nowhere else. My mind goes inside a character more easily and my sense of observation is more acute ... A novel that is in you is like a child nourished by every moment of the day."

Cordially yours,

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