The Studhorse Man

M. Wayne Cunningham is a past executive director of the Saskatchewan
Arts Board and the former director of Academic and Career Programs at
East Kootenay Community College.

An acknowledged classic of Canadian literature, The Studhorse Man is as
outrageously entertaining today as it was when it was published in 1969,
the same year it won the Governor General’s Award for Fiction. As one
of a number of reprints over the years, this edition contains an
illuminating introduction by University of Calgary English professor and
author Aritha Van Herk.

On one level, Kroetsch’s book can be easily read as the picaresque,
rollicking odyssey of the eccentric 51-year-old Hazard Lepage and his
rare last-of-its-breed stallion named Poseidon. Together they romp
around Alberta offering their services—he to a wanton widow, a lady
landowner, a female artist, and a priest’s housekeeper; his horse to
equally receptive mares in heat. Their raucous journey, as reported by
Hazard’s nephew (later tagged “legally insane” and uncovered as a
jilted suitor for Hazard’s fiancée), is a catalogue of amorous
misadventures and outlandish scenes, such as Poseidon roaming freely in
Hazard’s house, and Hazard pleasuring a lady so intent on conceiving
that for “two days and two nights,” he says, “there was no let up.
She lent a helping hand and I did my best.” But for all the fun in the
book, there is no happy ending. Hazard does not ride off into the
sunset; rather he is killed, and the manner of his passing leaves the
reader with a sense of shock and disbelief.

At a deeper level, as Van Herk points out in her perceptive analysis,
“Myth serves throughout as both elaborate backdrop and delicious
subterfuge.” She goes on to substantiate her observation. She finds,
for example, that Hazard’s travels through fire and ice are “to be
celebrated for both their transformative and carnivalesque qualities.”
She outlines the comparisons between the horses of Hazard Lepage’s day
and the automobiles of modern Alberta and notes the similarities in the
services Poseidon offers and the ones Hazard provides. She proclaims
Alberta to be the ideal setting for Hazard and Poseidon’s
“hyperbolic quest narrative,” both physical and spiritual, and she
concludes that for many Albertans who have been exposed to The Studhorse
Man over the years, “Hazard rides inside our blood.”

Readers searching for either a pleasurable diversion or an intellectual
challenge will find their needs amply met by The Studhorse Man.