SOURCE: "Hugh MacLennan and Religion: The Precipice Revisited," in Journal of Canadian Studies/Revue d'études canadiennes, Vol. 14, No. 4, Winter, 1979–80, pp. 46-53.

In the essay below, Chambers discusses The Precipice as an examination of "developments in modern North American consciousness."

A few years ago, in the course of a review [in University of Toronto Quarterly (Summer 1971)] of critical opinion about Hugh MacLennan's novels, I summarized—perhaps cavalierly—the general response to The Precipice (1948): "a disaster on every count." That judgment was directed at the novel's techniques, particularly MacLennan's tendency to deploy character and incident in such a didactic way as to undermine the book's fictional impact. In that respect, I do not recant: The Precipice has flaws of procedure which appeared in MacLennan's fiction as early as Barometer Rising (1941) but which retreated somewhat in its magnificent successor, Two Solitudes (1945). In reacting negatively to the fictional techniques of The...