Crossing Frontiers: Papers in American and Canadian Western Literature by Dick Harrison (review)

CROSSING FRONTIERS: PAPERS IN AMERICAN AND CANADIAN WESTERN LITERATURE BY DICK HARRISON (Edmonton: The University of Alberta Press, 1979) Delivered at the "Crossing Frontiers" conference on Canadian and American Western Literature, 1978, these papers, responses, and the summary conclusions constitute a major document in the comparative study of the two Wests. In his introduction, editor Dick Harrison notes: "The conference naturally discovered more questions than it answers, but the kinds of questions raised may point to where some of the answers are buried." Thus, the book is a starting point for such an exploration. Don Walker in "On the Supposed Frontier Between History and Fiction" emphasizes the need for historians to go beyond the quantitative to the imaginative realm; Howard R. Lamar in "The Unsettling of the American West: The Mobility of Defeat" and Lewis G. Thomas in "Prairie Settlement: Western Responses in History and Fiction, Social Structures in a Canadian Hinterland" both argue that social, economic, and political influences of metropolitan areas played significant roles in the persistence of a settled social structure; Robert Kroetsch in "The Fear of Women in Prairie Fiction: An Erotics of Space" traces a similar failure of sexuality in the prairie fiction of Willa Cather and Sinclair Ross; Leslie Fiedler in "Canada and the Invention of the Western: A Meditation on the Other Side of the Border" concentrates on mythic patterns of popular literature as touchstones of the psychic landscape of the continent; Eli Mandel in "The Border League: American 'West' and Canadian 'Region'" discusses the national mythologies evident in representative western poetry. As interesting are the responses — given by Delbert Wylder, Earl Pomeroy, Dandra Djwa, Jack Brenner, and W. H. New. The "Summing Up" section with Richard Etulain, Henry Kreisel, Rosemary Sullivan and Max Westbrook adds suggestions and projections. This collection is provocative, not only in its topic, but in the quality of style and thought which advances this study. SHELLEY ARMITAGE* ?SHELLEY ARMITAGE is a Ph .D. candidate in American Studies at the University of New Mexico. Her interests include American Humor and the American West. 150 VOL 34. NO. 2(SPRING 1980) ...