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Among the Intellectualoids
Three Westerners
Western writers succumb to the Kultursmog and render themselves unreadable.
A recent visit to my local public library showed me Thomas McGuane’s lately published novel Driving on the Rim on the new books shelf. The dust jacket synopsis told me that it featured a typical McGuanesque male protagonist named I.B. “Berl” Pickett, an M.D. who struggles to comically balance personal and professional considerations in a fictional Montana town. After following McGuane’s career for thirty years and reading his entire fiction and nonfiction output of roughly twenty books, I put Driving on the Rim back on the shelf. I’ve had enough.
After two decades of living in the rural West and writing about its historical and cultural aspects, I now rarely read contemporary Western writers. I’ve discovered that it’s sufficient to just live here, enjoying the slower pace of life and the vast landscape without being told by the regional literary intelligentsia what to think about it. I used to read with enjoyment the likes of McGuane, Rick Bass, Ivan Doig, and the late Edward Abbey. No more.
The so-called “New West” has undergone great changes in the last few decades. Changing demographics have shifted its politics more to the left (though the recent 2010 mid-term elections changed some of that). It has a vocal environmental movement centered in its cities and college towns, and in the pages of High Country News and a host of internet blogs.
The region has certainly produced writers during that time. The main influence on them has been Wallace Stegner (1909-1994), a prolific author of fiction and nonfiction who transcended an undeserved critical regional label, attained a national reputation, and won a Pulitzer Prize in 1972 for the novel Angle of Repose. McGuane, Abbey, and Larry McMurtry, among others, were themselves Stegner Fellows in the writer’s eponymous prestigious writing program at Stanford. The irony is that the myths of the Old West — the Hollywood West, if you will — that Stegner detested, have been replaced by New West myths found in the work of these aforementioned writers, and scores more. Western writers, either the serious, or the “pulpy” kind, have always been in the myth business.
These writers are particularly adept at misleading gullible New York editors concerning the nature of daily life as lived in the contemporary American West. The winner of this prize is Annie Proulx, whose Brokeback Mountain strained credulity as to the real lives of backcountry sheepherders, who work alone, and are typically American Basques with roots in the Spanish Pyrenees. But throw in its overarching pro-gay theme, and Tina Brown, then manning (womaning?) the editorial helm at the New Yorker —where Proulx’s story first appeared in 1997 — ate it up, as did Hollywood, of course. It was a perfect marriage of the gay agenda with a mythic icon, the American cowboy. Proulx in the course of her career has produced three volumes of “Wyoming” stories about folks who all seem to live in trailers on remote ranches, as if everybody in the Cowboy State did. One trademark of these stories is her penchant for bizarre character names (Diamond, Verl, Wacky, Fiesta), lending them a dose of caricature, as their author promotes a sort of bad Flannery O’Connor Western Gothic. A memorable line from Brokeback Mountain is an expression of cowboy stoicism: “…if you can’t fix it, you’ve got to stand it.” Well, I fixed it; I don’t read Annie Proulx anymore.
McGuane has built his regional corpus by writing the same novel over and over. As a literary modus operandi, this is nothing new. In these half dozen books (Nobody’s Angel, Keep the Change, The Cadence of Grass, among others) the basic plot is simple: an aging male protagonist (like their author, they’re getting older with each book) loses his wife through divorce, loses the ranch or loses his job, etc. These setbacks bring on drink or drugs and resulting outrageous public slapstick behavior, thus alienating family and friends. Critics seem to be tiring of this narrative line, and it’s earned the author some opprobrium, despite his gifts as a stylist. The young McGuane had been hailed as a master of ironic black comedy (Saul Bellow called him “a language star”), and as literary devices go, this has served him well and inextricably linked him to an American West in flux as a milieu. The good old days are gone. The Marlboro Man is riding into the sunset, and good riddance. McGuane’s tragedy is that after early acclaim with The Bushwhacked Piano and Ninety Two in the Shade (Bellow so taken with the former), he’s spinning his pickup truck wheels with his decades-long-now series of Montana tragicomedies.
Unlike the sepia-toned landscape itself, the Western literary scene is green, and its foremost practitioner is Rick Bass. He’s prolific. Barely in his fifties, he’s written twenty two books, both fiction and nonfiction. Like writers of the 1930s who cheapened their work by infecting it with the political controversies of the time, Bass can’t seem to write anything without injecting in subtle ways his environmental biases. To begin with, his settings (the Montana Rockies; the rural South) lend themselves to this template. His characters are many times possessed of eccentric activist qualities, Bass’s style infused with South American magical realism à la Gabriel Garcia Marquez. In novellas such as Platte River and story collections such as The Hermit’s Story they live in a cave or explore old mines in the nude. In the latter’s title story am old man and a woman crash through the ice of a dry lakebed only to discover an Edenic world beneath. Bass’s nonfiction (The Ninemile Wolves, The Lost Grizzlies, et al.) is more directly doctrinaire, of course. In “Paradise Lost,” a 2005 piece in Orion magazine, the writer states his common theme: “And only now are we beginning to accept some of the basic truths… that species extinction is rampant, perhaps unstoppable; that clearcuts are expressions of raw madness; that global warming is a reality, and that the mass of our numbers, and our relentless routine of consumption, are accelerating it…”
And there you have it, the state of contemporary “Western” letters: male menopause, a phony, weird Western Gothic , and environmental hysteria. Then again, it’s a canon little different from the national scene, which likewise suffers from “a dearth of intellectual audacity and of aesthetic passion.” That last is from “The National Letters,” an essay found in H.L. Mencken’s Prejudices: Second Series (1920).
I wonder what the Sage of Baltimore would make of gay sheepherders?
About the Author
Bill Croke, formerly of Cody, Wyoming, is a writer in Salmon, Idaho.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (32) | Leave a comment
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Kitty| 1.3.12 @ 6:28AM
I guess that leaves the genre of good Western fiction wide open to new writers.
TrueBlue| 1.3.12 @ 11:42AM
Unfortunately all the publishers are leftist fanatics. The only choice for non-liberal writers these days (ones that don't already have a name for themselves) is to self-publish with e-books. Honestly I like that idea better anyway since it keeps the money out of the hands of useless publishing agencies and makes sure the author gets a greater share of the money.
With the number of people buying e-readers, or reading things on their tablet PCs, iPads, and various phones the market is only getting bigger.
sinanju| 1.3.12 @ 7:38PM
Alas!
I don't have the perspective that you do, not to mention the resources. Is it in fact a reasonable supposition that the leading "Western" authors are tailoring their output to their editors' prejudices?
Brendan Jennings| 1.3.12 @ 6:50AM
Although he's not a writer of "literature," C. J. Box's contemporary western novels featuring Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett are terrific reads, weaving acute character portraits with a sharp wit. All is not lost.
Kitty| 1.3.12 @ 9:22AM
I've read his first six books and have "Blue Heaven" waiting. I also enjoy William Kent Krueger's books, set in upper Minnesota, although his liberal politics tend to seep in a bit.
W| 1.3.12 @ 7:14AM
Elmer Kelton and Louis L'Lamour are good.
JLJordan| 1.3.12 @ 7:43AM
I wouldn't dignify those you describe by calling them w-r-i-t-e-r-s. I would call them what they are: paid p-r-o-p-a-g-a-n-d-i-s-t-s.
Martin Owens| 1.3.12 @ 8:23AM
Telling the squishies what they want to hear?
That dates back to Fenimore Cooper. Thank God he didn't have Hollywood to enable him...
Whitey O'Carr| 1.3.12 @ 9:13AM
You know the left assassinated the Cowboy when the image of the Cowboy can be used with impunity to promote it's doctrine. We need to respond in kind. I recommend a type of "All In The Family" to ridicule and diminish the efficacy of their moral persuasion. How about a show about a group of Irish Catholics (Liberated) who sit around figuring ways to scam everything off of everyone else? Oh wait, that's me mother's side of the family (LOL).
W| 1.3.12 @ 1:12PM
Whitey,
Are you talking about a show based on the Kennedys? Or the Daleys?
Happy New Year.
Stephen Trimble | 1.3.12 @ 10:42AM
Bill Croke is unnecessarily grumpy--and he isn't keeping up with where writing is going in the West. For a great intro to just about everybody doing interesting work, see the terrific new anthology edited by Lynn Stegner (yes, Wallace Stegner's daughter-in-law) and Russell Rowland: "West of 98" (http://www.utexas.edu/utpress/books/stewes.html).
Petronius| 1.3.12 @ 10:48AM
I'm not one for western fiction, but maybe we should call this stuff what it is; pandering. Looking through the prism of east coast PC, and being a commercial author not on any A list, do what you must to sell books in the cities. Ask Wm. Least Heat Moon. He'll tell you.
Interested Conservative| 1.3.12 @ 10:58AM
There's irony piled on irony here.
First, Stegner always strikes me as "New West" more than Western. Simply look into his history - a fairly mobile and common American upbringing, including a portion in Canada. Quite a bit of wandering about the west, but ultimately settling in Northern California. That alone is more "new" than "western".
Then, follow his protege's - for all the analysis of the "Hollywood" west, look at where these folks end up - they are essentially the superstructure of the new bi-coastal elite. Sure they often live in exotic and remote locales, some of the time, for the flavor/peace/remoteness, but modern travel and technology makes that almost a tourist lifestyle. Particularly when they take such advantage of it.
If anything has happened to "western" literature in the past few decades, it's basically tilted back east a bit. The pacific states have culturally separated themselves from the rest of the west, and the remainder have joined into the vast trans-Mississippi middle.
Naturalborn Texicanette| 1.3.12 @ 11:18AM
Westerns are one of my favorite genre. Having many family members involved in ranching, that background inspires my choices. Louis L'Amour is my favorite followed by fellow Texan, Elmer Kelton.
If you want to read a good western by a fantastic writer(s), there are none better than Kelton and L'Amour.
L'Amour has also written several other books, including "The Walking Drum" and "Last of the Breed." "Drum" is about the ancient world and "Breed" is about a more recent subject regarding our relationship with Russia..
Kelton writes about the ranching/cowboy past and the future as well as shown in "The Time It Never Rained."
I recommend BOTH .
Am very proud of my heritage, including my uncle who happens to be a national champion in working ranch horse local, regional, and national competitions.
sinanju| 1.3.12 @ 7:51PM
Back in the mid-to-late 1980's Louis L'amour's works were all over our cramped berthing spaces on the good old USS DALE. I ended up reading a ton of his works through simple default (that is, if you leave out all the "naughty" Westerns, such as "Longarm" which also had considerable currency).
As the last of the child Cold Warriors, I found that "Last of the Breed" left me cold. It had totally paint-by-numbers dialogue. The maestro was phoning it in.
What really cooked my noodle was the self-proclaimed "Yondering Man's" last work: "Haunted Mesa", his one stab at inter-dimensional science fiction. You could see that he was awkward in this new media but he learned fast. Would that he could have stayed with us a few years longer.
Bruce| 1.3.12 @ 12:43PM
Try C.J. Box for a healthier view of the West.
cicero| 1.3.12 @ 12:50PM
Some of the better non-fiction reads more like a good novel than the fiction. Over the past decade, or so, historians have finally given up on the revisionist mode, and started to just tell it like it was. We readers can then decide who was right and who was wrong. Usuallly, the conclusion is that both sides were merely acting like human beings, and pursuing their own best interests. I recommend "Empire of the Summer Moon", as a true page turner. (Sorry, I don't have the author.) It is the histoy of the Comanche, told without taking sides. Some of the events you will recognize from recent movies (Dances With Wolves - the kidnapping of the child who becomes the love interest of the trooper.) Although the events are not always pictured in their historical context, they are so vivid that Hollywood can't improve on them. Better than fiction.
Ron| 1.3.12 @ 2:42PM
May I suggest Tony Hillerman? His books have been centered on the Navajo Indian Reservation, and surrounding areas.
They are not "cowboy" fiction, but they do give a glimpse from the "bilagaana" writer of the Dine...
sean| 1.3.12 @ 4:05PM
Craig Lesley is pretty authentic, Kesey's Sometimes a Great Notion still rings true, even if logging in Oregon is pretty dismal these days. Also a good work on unions and the havoc they cause. Hank Stamper is the Man!
Naturalborn Texicanette| 1.3.12 @ 6:06PM
S.C. Gwynne - for "Empire of the Summer Moon."
Thanks for all the recommendations....I will be checking them out!!!
J.C.Eaton| 1.3.12 @ 6:28PM
Elmore Leonard's first stuff was all-Western. Still some of his best of a verrrrry good writer.
W| 1.3.12 @ 10:18PM
I thought Hombre and 3:10 to Yuma were his best.
Bob K.| 1.3.12 @ 7:21PM
The problem with McGuane is that while he can write fancy enough, he can't write well enough to keep you interested. Hillerman and Lamour, for instance, could. They knew how to tell a story. And that, after all, is what it is all about.
If you are dogged enough you can hang in there with one of McGuane's and finish it but if , for some reason or other, you have to set it down for a while it never seems worth the effort to pick it up again.
sinanju| 1.3.12 @ 7:36PM
"Gay cowboys eating pudding"?
Someone had to say it.
POST American| 1.3.12 @ 10:52PM
-----BTW, speaking of cowboys,
have we clued in to the demoralization ops
at work behind the whispery cowboy loner
figure---pushed, most effectively, by
Clint Eastwood.
You know, the thwarted 'Average Joe'
sitting there in the dark taking in the
stylized figure of the avenging loner
----who they can NEVER be ---but will
spend the rest of their squalid lives
secretly waiting for.
MUST be one of Tavistock's most effective
cultural subversion ops ---EVER.
In 2012, take deep NOTE that Eastwood
has been pumping out a steady stream of
craftily demoralizing works --for decades
---ALLLLL without comment from the
CON-servative establishment.
He also deliberately 'overlooked' every
ten year anniversary of the KOREAN
WAR for the last 40 years ---even though
he himself is a Korea era vet who got
out of going.
AS America is 'SIS'-tematically DIS--Abeled,
and the Globalist RED China sellout and
TREASON OP steps brazenly into the spotlight
-------------------------------TAKE HEED!
----------------------------------------TAKE HEED!
Dan Mathewson| 1.3.12 @ 11:40PM
It's a conspiracy!
Bob K.| 1.4.12 @ 12:45AM
You are right Dan! And a damned effective CONSPIRA-SEE at that! When you think about it you re-ALIZE that EVERY 10th year anniversary of the Korean War has been ignored by every President OF THIS NATION!!!
It is all becoming clear!!
That wasn't Lawrence Harvey in "The Manchurian Candidate!" It was Clint Eastwood made up to look like him!!!
POST American| 1.4.12 @ 5:35AM
---------------------FINAL WORD-----------------------
---------And SO IT IS
------no theorizing about it. . .
-------------HUAC-Nuremberg 2012----------------
sotto voce| 1.4.12 @ 4:03PM
My dear mother-in-law years ago gave me two books by Edna Ferber. They reposed, unread, in my library until recently. During a cleaning spree I dusted them off, opened them out of perfunctory curiosity, read a few pages and was astonished, delighted and instantly hooked. I devoured every word and belatedly discovered a writer whose themes, while not strictly or exclusively about the West masterfully evoke its expansiveness and the lure of endless possibility that attracted those east of the Mississippi during the early 1900s.
Anyone who searches out "One Basket" (short stories, out of print but available used or on Kindle) or "A Peculiar Treasure" (Ferber's autobiography) is in for a treat. Two wonderful stories (among many) from "One Basket" are "Our Very Best People" about a woman who travels West alone to take a job as a Harvey Girl, meets and marries a railroad brakeman and winds up living happily and prosperously on a rancho in New Mexico, and "Trees Die at the Top", about a spoiled and feckless family taking a cross-country train trip to visit the family's rich patriarch as he lays dying in California. Their comfortable trip mirrors and contrasts with the harsh journey of their brave forebears by wagon train to California two generations before, and shows why families, like trees, often die at the top.
Ferber was a master at delineating character and setting tone with a few well-chosen, unexpected and delightful words. She would have scorned the idea of writing to further a politically correct meme, or to pander to a publisher's or editor's sensibilities. Her novels "Showboat", "Cimarron" and "So Big" (all made into successful movies or theater productions) are next on my reading list.
POST American| 1.6.12 @ 3:26AM
----------------------FINAL WORD--------------------------
OBSERVE the trajectory, examine the
fruits, follow the tracks, study the background
----------------IT IS A CON'S ---PIRACY----------------
And NEVER forget ye 'ITs' ---wordplay IS, was
and will always be ---their in your face giveaway.
POST American| 1.6.12 @ 3:34AM
--------------POSTSCRIPT KEY ALERT!------------------
And as things now UNDENIABLY unfold across
America with the NDAA 1031 overturning the
Consitution and Bill of Rights -----NOTICE:
this year's 200th Anniversary of the defeat
of the forces of police state Globalism
i.e. Napoleon Bonapart at Moscow
-----has, like the Korea War Anniversary,
ALSO been totally 'overlooked'.
Nuremberg's coming, as sure as 2012 itself.
Gary Foster| 2.8.12 @ 6:39PM
Interesting. I quit reading these writers too. I used to be a huge Proulx fan but the last one was clearly written while the tank was empty.