It wouldn't work that way because you still have to read the text left to right, top to bottom. There's probably some reason for it, but I don't know. Curiously, it's the same format as the SSD1306 monochrome OLED display's framebuffer.
Check out my IoT graphics library here: https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx And my IoT UI/User Experience library here: https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix