E-Book Overview
Ken Egan's objective, in this intellectually provocative and deeply perceptive survey of Montana's literary history, is to demonstrate the roots of the state's literature in its conflicted history and complex mixture of racial and ethnic traditions and, at the same time, to offer the possibility of thoughtful solutions to the West's daunting social and environmental dilemmas through the insights of some of the state's best writers. From the narratives of early explorers and ranchers, Native Americans, and settler women through the works of such major twentieth-century luminaries as A. B. Guthrie and Ivan Doig, Egan traces the evolution of Montanans' early fantastic dreams of economic, religious, and cultural success into failure and despair, violence and tragedy. Yet, side by side with these tales of woe are tales of endurance and even triumph, evidence of the strength and creative potential of the state's people.
E-Book Content
HOPE AND DREAD IN MONTANA LITERATURE
Western Literature Series
Hope and Dread in
university of nevada press
M
Montana Literature
KEN EGAN JR.
reno & las vegas
Western Literature Series University of Nevada Press, Reno, Nevada 89557 usa Copyright © 2003 by University of Nevada Press All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America Design by Kaelin Chappell Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Egan, Ken, 1956– Hope and dread in Montana literature / Ken Egan, Jr. p. cm. — (Western literature series) Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 0-87417-508-9 (alk. paper) 1. American literature—Montana—History and criticism. 2. Frontier and pioneer life in literature. 3. Montana—Intellectual life. 4. Montana—In literature. I. Title. II. Series. ps283.m9e37 2003 810.9'9786—dc21 2002011992 The paper used in this book meets the requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences— Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984. Binding materials were selected for strength and durability. First Printing 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 5 4 3 2 1 Portions of this book have previously appeared in Fifty Years after The Big Sky: New Perspectives on the Fiction and Films of A. B. Guthrie Jr., ed. William E. Farr and William W. Bevis (Helena: Montana Historical Society Press, 2001), 9–19, and Western Futures: Perspectives on the Humanities at the Millennium, ed. Stephen Tchudi (Reno: Nevada Humanities Committee, 2000), 17–30. I thank the editors of both volumes for granting permission to reprint those materials.
For Tess and Ken Egan Sr. and Millie and Mark Dutton Jr., who taught us to love the place
For all its aura of beginnings, the American West is haunted by endings. The West throughout the nation’s history has offered the gleaming dawn of a new national day, yet it also holds the sunset glow of terminus, and elegiac reflections upon endings in western life are inseparable from mythic visions of progress to come. . . . [O]ur nagging knowledge of the shrinking wilderness, the dwindling buffalo, the played-out mine, the vanished Indian, the last gunfighter, and the closed frontier itself without question tempers our vision of western promise. That knowledge, however, is not necessarily bad. To the mythic West at large it supplies a healthy realism to counter our naive yearning for the freedom that the West traditionally offers, and sparks a dialectic that can, at last, transcend the frontier’s closing and lead to a comprehensive vision embracing the nation, the region, and the people. —fred erisman, “Coming of Age in Montana”
Contents
Acknowledgments Introduction
xi xiii
pa r t i
w o r l d s t r a n s f o r m e d, 1 8 6 2 – 1 9 4 0
chapter 1
Vanishing Americans
chapter 2
Don’