[The] charge of turgidness or parochialism which comes from misunderstanding MacLennan's novels cannot in all fairness be levelled at [the essays in The Other Side of Hugh MacLennan]. Indeed, what he seems best at is the light, the witty, and the exotic. The evocations of English eccentrics are delightful and precise, the recreations of the Halifax past acknowledge that it has all fled and gone, while even the high-table pieces on "Literature and Technology" or "Scotland's Fate: Canada's Lesson" admit that one should be concerned not so much with outdoing George Grant as with keeping the audience awake before the brandy arrives. (p. 57)
MacLennan's way of looking at the world, like that of James Reaney and D. H. Lawrence, has been shaped by apocalyptic Christianity. But whereas Lawrence fought the shaping and Reaney carefully sought external situations through which that shaping power might express itself, MacLennan has lived in uneasy truce with it all of his life. The terms of surrender have never been signed.
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