... for the world..
Hath really neither joy, nor love nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle off light,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
Matthew Arnold -- Dover Beach

According to Larry McMurtry, most of the fiction written about the American West prior to 1950 depicts a world defined by “fans and admirers.” In other words, the writers, regardless of how ardent, were not natives. Zane Grey, Will James, Owen Wister and Mark Twain may have loved the West, but in McMurtry’s view, they were essentially visitors. In addition, much of the colorful imagery that readers associate with the early West came from illustrated fiction -- magazines filled with “dude ranch pulp tales” that were heavily dependent on the romantic illustrations of artists such as Frederick Remington, Charles Schreyvogel -- men who did more to capture the violence and beauty of a violent and colorful era than the graphic writing that accompanied it. Also, in the early part of the 20th century, photography and the cinema did more to capture memorable image of racing horses, mountain grandeur and Indian attacks than any writer. The time has come, says McMurtry, for the true sons and daughters of the contemporary West to speak.

McMurtry showcases 20 writers in this collection -- all natives of the West and all nurtured by a land that is undergoing turbulent and troubling change. However, the major themes that emerge from Still Wild are somber, and in some instances, evoke a strong sense of alienation, failed promises and lost opportunity. Despite a brilliant array of talent, the images that recur with alarming regularity in this anthology are desert heat, sterility, seemingly endless stretches of highways, defective cars, cheap motels and isolated farms. Many of the characters are travelers who are either wandering aimlessly, fleeing disaster or searching for “another chance.” There is also an undercurrent of latent violence -- racial tension, brooding men, women betrayed and an astonishing number of loaded guns.

One of the most pleasing stories, Jack Kerouac’s “The Mexican Girl,” seems at odds with this collection because of the narrator’s callow innocence. Despite the poverty, dead-end jobs and aimless lives of Kerouac’s characters, they live and struggle with a kind of good-natured purposelessness that seems naive today.

Certainly, there is a sharp contrast to Dagoberto Gilb’s embittered Mexican-American in “Romero’s Shirt,” who struggles to survive in an American subdivision despite a growing sense of disillusionment and paranoia (somebody stole his shirt from his front yard). The same is true of Dao Strum’s “Chickens,” in which an alienated man with a Vietnamese wife suddenly finds his tract-house neighborhood simmering with potential violence due to the alleged killing of a neighbor’s dog.
Native American prospects are equally bleak in Louise Erdrich’s “The Red Covertible,” in which a young Navajo vainly attempts to save a self-destructive brother, a Vietnam survivor, by encouraging him to renovate his car. Leslie Marmon Silko’s hauntingly beautiful “Lullaby,” chronicles the humiliating and painful disintegration of a traditional family in a world where Native American tradition has become an anachronism.

However, the most prominent characters in Still Wild are the rootless wanderers who drift like nomads through a world of trailer courts, garages, grungy towns and part-time employment. The father and son in “Glissando” live in a world of petty theft, bad checks, stolen cars and betrayal (including each other). The narrator of Richard Ford’s “Rock Springs” survives by “pretending to be something I am not” and seems doomed to the dead-end life of a con man and thief. At least, Diana Ossana’s “White-line Fever” concludes with the pregnant protagonist finding a tenuous haven and hopefully a place to raise her child. Max Apple’s “Gas Stations” laments the loss of the “personal touch” in the huge and impersonal “service complexes” that have replaced the old western garages.

And then there are the guns, firearms that seem inextricably bound to the history of the West. Dave Hickey’s “The Closed Season” deals with a young man poised on the brink of self-destruction. Born into a family of hunters and haunted by dreams of a suicidal father, the confused youth holds a loaded gun and considers his own choices. Some of the stories verge on nightmare. Ron Hansen’s “True Romance” deals with fantasies of alien invasion, the mutilation of cattle and isolation. William H. Gass’ “The Pederson Kid” has the terrifying atmosphere of Capote’s In Cold Blood -- but in this instance, as well as the Gass story, the most deadly menace originates from within beleaguered families.

Although McMurtry managed to include humor in this anthology, examples are few and decidedly dark. Thomas McGuane’s “Dogs” is a wonderful treatment of male midlife crisis in which the hero gets a face-lift, changes his personality and begins stealing his neighbor’s dogs in an attempt to “belong.” William Hauptman’s “Good Rocking Tonight” records the adventures of an aging gynecologist who joins his brother, an Elvis imitator, in a cross-country trek to find the brother’s childhood sweetheart. Then, there is Annie Proulx’s “Brokeback Mountain,” a story that I have reviewed previously in the author’s memorable short story collection, Close Range. Certainly, the tragi-comic love affair between two raw-boned cowboys doesn’t conform to many people’s idea of a timeless love, but it assuredly remains a bitter-sweet tribute to an enduring devotion under “adverse conditions.”

Oddly enough, the most memorable story in this collection is neither humorous or bleakly realistic. Rick Bass’ “Mahatma Joe” defies classification. Perhaps it comes nearest to being a folktale. Certainly, the characters are larger than life and move through a world of frozen rivers, full moons, naked swimmers and skating farmers (who plant gardens at night). Like some union of the Grimm fairytales and the fantasy world of Richard Brautigan in Watermelon Sugar, “Mahatma Joe” -- like “Brokeback Mountain” -- deserves a niche in any collection of the best short stories of this century.

The title of this collection, Still Wild, is a provocative one. If we are to judge the literary state of the West by this collection, it seems safe to conclude that the original inhabitants of the region have absconded -- caught the last stage coach out of town with John Wayne and Allen Ladd. What is left is a landscape that is both bleak and remote -- and stinks of carbon monoxide. The villages of the Navaho and Hopi have been replaced by trailer parks, tract housing, and grim little towns devoted to exploiting natural resources and tourism. Moving aimlessly in this petri dish of heat and pollution is a diverse collection of bacteria that is, in equal measure, perverse, paranoid, murderous, gifted with mimicry (the ability to take on protective coloring), sometimes helpless and always capable of murdering each other and themselves. Yes, the West is still wild, but it is also sinister, sterile and, on rare occasions .... comical.
(Carden is a writer and storyteller who lives in Sylva. His book, Mason Jars in the Flood, is available at area bookstores.)

 

Back to Top

The Smoky Mountain News