Intimations of Mortality: WO Mitchell's Who Has Seen the Wind

Don Precosky teaches English at the College of New Caledonia and is the
co-editor of Four Realities: Poets of Northern B.C.

Dick Harrison has done something only the best critics can: he has
written a book in which there is no waste. Every word is relevant, every
point is on topic and adds to our understanding of his subject. This is
true fat-free criticism. For such a short study, it does a remarkable
job of revealing that Who Has Seen the Wind contains more complexity
than it has been given credit for in many quarters.

Harrison reveals the main thrust of his book when he says that “Who
Has Seen the Wind met with immediate favourable response from popular
critics, but scholarly study of the novel was slow to develop and has
never equalled the attention given to other major Canadian novels.”
His twofold task is to validate the popular critics while showing the
complexities academic critics have missed. What he does, in effect, is
prove that the novel belongs in the Canadian canon and that it is also
part of the mainstream of prairie fiction, even though it is an idyllic
comedy and not a realistic tragedy. Along the way he explores many
aspects of the structure and philosophical content of the book. Finally,
he shows that Who Has Seen the Wind, far from being a minor regional
idyll, is really a “typically Canadian” work, because it mixes
tragedy with the comedy in such a way that “the comedy is sharpened by
an awareness of the tragic implications of the human condition.” Given
the space allowed, Harrison has done an excellent job.