@inbook{10.3138/j.ctt15jjbp4.13, ISBN = {9780802064158}, URL = {http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3138/j.ctt15jjbp4.13}, abstract = {Because one of Margaret Laurence’s characters had Memorybank Movies about a little Manitoba town, and Robert Stead undertook painstaking research into the operation of a threshing machine, and Ralph Connor drew careful maps of North End Winnipeg, the casual reader might be excused for concluding that time and place are important, even defining elements in prairie fiction. But that reader must also acknowledge the blunt denial of a skilled writer like George Bowering, who warned that the ‘content’ of a novelist’s work is ‘no reality – all content is made-up or referential.’¹ Moreover, he must recognize that at the heart of}, author = {GERALD FRIESEN}, booktitle = {Eastern & Western Perspectives: Papers from the Joint Atlantic Canada/Western Canadian Studs. Conference}, pages = {183--196}, publisher = {University of Toronto Press}, title = {Three generations of fiction: an introduction to prairie cultural history}, year = {1981} }