[However well Mr. Guthrie understands the three mountain men who are the principle characters of "The Big Sky"], his rendering of their thoughts and feelings is not very convincing. I doubt whether any contemporary rendering could be. It would be almost impossible not to ascribe to them, as Mr. Guthrie often seems to do, the thoughts and feelings about the early West of a present-day American. The fact that the two sets of thoughts and feelings may be similar only complicates the problem. As for his handling of the romance of Caudill and Teal Eye, it is, to say the least, anachronistic….

[The] landscape is the object and motivation of the emotional drive out of which Mr. Guthrie writes. At times, notably in the account of men marooned in a mountain pass in winter, he succeeds in communicating its reality…. The human characters here become mere figures in...