Vertical Man/Horizontal
World: Man and Landscape in Canadian Prairie Fiction (University of British Columbia
Press, 1973).
Ricou argues that man is intimidated
by the vastness which so surrounds him, and "he will almost certainly wish to meet
the challenge of this land, to say 'Look, look!' in whatever way he can, by raising a crop
or a monument, by interpreting his experience in paint or in words."
Ricou traces this recurrent theme in
prairie fiction from writers such as Frederick Philip Grove and Wallace Stegner, Edward
McCourt and W.O. Mitchell, to Margaret Laurence and Robert Kroetsch.
In tracing the relationship of man
and land from the earliest writers of prairie fiction to the most recent, Ricou shows how
the calm and benign relationship of man and land as exemplified, for instance, in the
fiction of Robert Stead and W.O. Mitchell has changed in recent novels to a more dramatic
confrontation. ["The novelists] find in [the landscape] an ideal mirror for the
dilemma (and often the strength) of existential man."
Critic Henry Kreisel once wrote:
"To conquer a piece of the continent, to put one's imprint upon virgin land, to say
'Here I am, for that I came', is as much a way of proving one's existence, as is
Descartes' cogito, ergo sum." Vertical Man/Horizontal World
is an affirmation of Kreisel's statement. Slowly and cumulatively Ricou traces the
image of man leaving his mark on the empty, sometimes nightmarish land of the Canadian
prairie. "How do we fit our time and our place?" is a question posed by
all the writers Ricou examines. "The answer," he says, "at this point
in the evolution of the evolution of Canadian prairie fiction, delivered with
conviction...is: abruptly and uneasily, but brazenly and delightedly."
