A review by jennyshank
Best of the West: New Stories from the Wide Side of the Missouri by
4.0
http://www.dallasnews.com/entertainment/books/20111223-book-review-west-of-98-and-best-of-the-west-2011.ece
Book review: West of 98 and Best of the West 2011
By JENNY SHANK Special Contributor, The Dallas Morning News
Published: 23 December 2011 07:01 PM
“Westerners have been reminded … that we are interesting in some of the same ways that cavemen or headhunters are interesting,” writes Montana novelist Russell Rowland in West of 98, one of two new anthologies published by the University of Texas Press. But what’s clear from these collections, one of fiction and the other of essays, is that Westerners are curiosities to ourselves as much as we are to outsiders.
The 20 stories in the fiction collection, Best of the West 2011, display a wide range of styles and structures, with a few common themes recurring — the primacy of characters’ interaction with gorgeous, yet treacherous, Western landscapes; their penchant for road trips; and their frequent bouts of criminal behavior.
K.L. Cook vividly imagines a boy’s encounter with legendary outlaws in Depression-era Texas in the moving “Bonnie and Clyde in the Backyard.” Meth addicts steal the identities of unsuspecting Nebraskans in Judy Doenges’ “Melinda.” A bereaved couple unknowingly enjoys a moment of respite amid the ongoing drug war in Nuevo Laredo in Peter LaSalle’s elegant “Lunch Across the Bridge,” while an Oklahoma couple reignites old sparks when they play chicken with oncoming traffic in Aaron Gwyn’s startling “Drive.”
In Ron Carlson’s “Escape from Prison,” an embezzling banker retreats to his Colorado cabin after his malfeasance is discovered. The narrator of Claire Vaye Watkins’ clever, epistolary “The Last Thing We Need” reveals a shooting that has haunted him his entire life. In Shawn Vestal’s innovative “Opposition In All Things,” Rulon Warren returns from World War I to the Idaho Mormon community where he grew up and is possessed by the spirit of a gun-toting pioneer forebear, who urges him to go down with his gun blasting.
The essayists featured in West of 98, which the novelist Rowland edited with Lynn Stegner, are of a more law-abiding sort than the characters in Best of the West. Fans of contemporary Western American literature will recognize most of the authors — the editors gathered contributions from many of the most eloquent writers in the region.
They approach the question of what it means to be a Westerner from a variety of angles — geological, environmental, personal and political, to name a few. Some essayists pick an unexpected aspect of the topic to approach, such as in Louise Erdrich’s lyrical tribute to prairie grass (“Big Grass”) and Walter Kirn’s cranky fist shake toward cruel Montana winds (“Livingston Blows”).
West of 98 contains several fist-shaking essays, most of them lamenting environmental degradation. It’s the same as it ever was, writes Patricia Nelson Limerick: “Mourning the devastation of ecosystems, the loss of free-flowing rivers, the homogenization of once distinctive communities, and the constriction of a legendary freedom, Westerners have established themselves as the master practitioners of eulogy and elegy.”
But there are just as many funny essays, particularly those that confront Western stereotypes. Tom Miller moved from the East Coast to Tucson in his 20s and made a living out of selling colorful stories to The New York Times. What “editors valued most was stories [that] evoked the Old West with dirt roads, dusty boots, and barbed wire.” Miller hung a sign over his typewriter: “Remember: Cowboys amble, businessmen stride, mariachis stroll.”
Montana-based Jim Harrison notes in “Geopiety,” “If the mountains were actually ennobling I would have noticed it by now.” In “On Language: A Short Meditation,” Kim Barnes misses the way she and her Idaho-by-way-of-Oklahoma family used to talk: “My people’s language was crick and ain’t and every g dropped from ing.” And Colorado novelist Laura Pritchett confesses, “I do not like to gut fish,” in “Cowboy up, Cupcake? No Thanks,” her rousing call for an expansion of the types of characters featured in the literature of the West.
Pritchett might enjoy Alyssa Knickerbocker’s tender and charming story, “Same As It Was When You Left” about a 13-year-old girl in Washington state who witnesses her family dissolve. It’s a fresh take on the age-old theme of losing a parent, with nary a Western stereotype to be found.
The strong new voices in Best of the West 2011, alongside perennial favorites such as Carlson, Antonya Nelson and Rick Bass, whose work appears in both collections, prove there’s no need to write an elegy for the literature of the region.
Jenny Shank was the Books Editor of New West and her first novel, The Ringer, was a finalist for this year’s Reading the West Award.
West of 98
Living and Writing the New American West
Edited by Lynn Stegner and Russell Rowland
(University of Texas Press, $21.95)
Best of the West 2011
New Stories from the Wide Side of the Missouri
Edited by James Thomas and D. Seth Horton, foreword by Ana Castillo
(University of Texas Press, $21.95)
Book review: West of 98 and Best of the West 2011
By JENNY SHANK Special Contributor, The Dallas Morning News
Published: 23 December 2011 07:01 PM
“Westerners have been reminded … that we are interesting in some of the same ways that cavemen or headhunters are interesting,” writes Montana novelist Russell Rowland in West of 98, one of two new anthologies published by the University of Texas Press. But what’s clear from these collections, one of fiction and the other of essays, is that Westerners are curiosities to ourselves as much as we are to outsiders.
The 20 stories in the fiction collection, Best of the West 2011, display a wide range of styles and structures, with a few common themes recurring — the primacy of characters’ interaction with gorgeous, yet treacherous, Western landscapes; their penchant for road trips; and their frequent bouts of criminal behavior.
K.L. Cook vividly imagines a boy’s encounter with legendary outlaws in Depression-era Texas in the moving “Bonnie and Clyde in the Backyard.” Meth addicts steal the identities of unsuspecting Nebraskans in Judy Doenges’ “Melinda.” A bereaved couple unknowingly enjoys a moment of respite amid the ongoing drug war in Nuevo Laredo in Peter LaSalle’s elegant “Lunch Across the Bridge,” while an Oklahoma couple reignites old sparks when they play chicken with oncoming traffic in Aaron Gwyn’s startling “Drive.”
In Ron Carlson’s “Escape from Prison,” an embezzling banker retreats to his Colorado cabin after his malfeasance is discovered. The narrator of Claire Vaye Watkins’ clever, epistolary “The Last Thing We Need” reveals a shooting that has haunted him his entire life. In Shawn Vestal’s innovative “Opposition In All Things,” Rulon Warren returns from World War I to the Idaho Mormon community where he grew up and is possessed by the spirit of a gun-toting pioneer forebear, who urges him to go down with his gun blasting.
The essayists featured in West of 98, which the novelist Rowland edited with Lynn Stegner, are of a more law-abiding sort than the characters in Best of the West. Fans of contemporary Western American literature will recognize most of the authors — the editors gathered contributions from many of the most eloquent writers in the region.
They approach the question of what it means to be a Westerner from a variety of angles — geological, environmental, personal and political, to name a few. Some essayists pick an unexpected aspect of the topic to approach, such as in Louise Erdrich’s lyrical tribute to prairie grass (“Big Grass”) and Walter Kirn’s cranky fist shake toward cruel Montana winds (“Livingston Blows”).
West of 98 contains several fist-shaking essays, most of them lamenting environmental degradation. It’s the same as it ever was, writes Patricia Nelson Limerick: “Mourning the devastation of ecosystems, the loss of free-flowing rivers, the homogenization of once distinctive communities, and the constriction of a legendary freedom, Westerners have established themselves as the master practitioners of eulogy and elegy.”
But there are just as many funny essays, particularly those that confront Western stereotypes. Tom Miller moved from the East Coast to Tucson in his 20s and made a living out of selling colorful stories to The New York Times. What “editors valued most was stories [that] evoked the Old West with dirt roads, dusty boots, and barbed wire.” Miller hung a sign over his typewriter: “Remember: Cowboys amble, businessmen stride, mariachis stroll.”
Montana-based Jim Harrison notes in “Geopiety,” “If the mountains were actually ennobling I would have noticed it by now.” In “On Language: A Short Meditation,” Kim Barnes misses the way she and her Idaho-by-way-of-Oklahoma family used to talk: “My people’s language was crick and ain’t and every g dropped from ing.” And Colorado novelist Laura Pritchett confesses, “I do not like to gut fish,” in “Cowboy up, Cupcake? No Thanks,” her rousing call for an expansion of the types of characters featured in the literature of the West.
Pritchett might enjoy Alyssa Knickerbocker’s tender and charming story, “Same As It Was When You Left” about a 13-year-old girl in Washington state who witnesses her family dissolve. It’s a fresh take on the age-old theme of losing a parent, with nary a Western stereotype to be found.
The strong new voices in Best of the West 2011, alongside perennial favorites such as Carlson, Antonya Nelson and Rick Bass, whose work appears in both collections, prove there’s no need to write an elegy for the literature of the region.
Jenny Shank was the Books Editor of New West and her first novel, The Ringer, was a finalist for this year’s Reading the West Award.
West of 98
Living and Writing the New American West
Edited by Lynn Stegner and Russell Rowland
(University of Texas Press, $21.95)
Best of the West 2011
New Stories from the Wide Side of the Missouri
Edited by James Thomas and D. Seth Horton, foreword by Ana Castillo
(University of Texas Press, $21.95)