Douglas Barbour's argument in "David Canaan: The Failing Heart," his recent analysis of Ernest Buckler's The Mountain and the Valley (SCL 1.1), receives support from several remarks that Ernest Buckler once made about the novel in a letter to Dudley H. Cloud of the Atlantic Monthly Press in 1951. This letter provides an illuminating glimpse of a writer's intentions and adds to a critical argument that opens the way to a new understanding of what Barbour refers to as "one of the best novels of the post-war period."
