SOURCE: "Constructing a Canada," in Hugh MacLennan, McClelland and Stewart Limited, 1970, pp. 10-17.

In the following excerpt, Lucas remarks on the main themes of MacLennan's fiction.

MacLennan served a long apprenticeship to his trade. He never woke to find himself famous. His was a long, slow climb beset by graduate studies, newspaper work, and the chalk-and-blackboard-chore of teaching at Lower Canada College (1935–1945)—as well as by his failure to publish his first three works of fiction: an international novel, So All Their Praises, completed at Princeton (1933), Man Should Rejoice (1937), another international novel, and Augustus (1939), a radio play. The tale of these works is a sad one, and the compounding of the inherent difficulties and loneliness of writing with such want of success must have almost crushed MacLennan's resolve. A publisher had taken the first book, but the poor man's almost immediate insolvency gave his young author little chance...