Country Life and the Western Writer

The novel I’m reading is set in Montana in the eighties. Since I’m writing a book set in Montana, I thought I’d better take a look at what’s out there in the way of depicting modern Montana.  This one raised my hopes because it was new, it was set in the last 30 years, it had nothing to do with ranching, and was written by a young writer. Here is a list of what surprised me about the book:

 

•The protagonist is an emotionally immature man, irresponsible with alcohol, women, and his job.

•The woman/love interest has emotional issues that involve wanting lots of sex.

•The protagonist’s father was silent rancher who did not accept him.

•His mother died when he was young.

•There is a anti-government-scary-nonconformist-nutter who hides out in the wilderness, living off the land.

•There are several long descriptions of alcohol-induced benders.

•The prose is often spare and features sentences missing subjects [ex: Stooping to find her hand on his thigh.]

•Moose, bear, the seasons and the weather make frequent cameos.

The above list surprised me in its utter unsurprisingness. How can this be? I thought. Must a current novel, set in current times, include what I’ve come to think of as The Iconography? Oh dear. I might be in trouble.

I’ve lived enough places in my lifetime to not seriously identify with any. As such, I am not offended when the arts or the media misrepresent my home. I do understand, however, why the people in North Dakota, for example, might be tad upset with the Cohen brothers’ film Fargo. I understand  a reader’s impulse, even if I don’t think it’s quite fair, to police authors, flipping the book over and demanding from the author’s bio: well, did she grow up here? What does he know about it?

Really, this is a form of regional bullying. Yet I think it matters, the stories we tell ourselves, or write ourselves or read, about the places where we live. I’ve lived out “here” all my adult life. I’ve never gotten shitfaced and had sex with a derelict and then destroyed property. I am not saying I want to read about my own experience; just as often I want to read to get out of my own experience. Yet I think a problem arises when what we read about a place is overly faithful to its own myth.  The west was won. It’s been tamed. That doesn’t mean it is without story, drama, tension, or trouble.

As I’ve stated elsewhere, my family and I are currently displaced due to a kitchen remodel. We’ve rented a house fifteen minutes out of town, on a gravel road, on somebody’s farm. Anyone who comes by has said without fail, My God. How gorgeous. What a view. And it is quite a view.

 

Yet as one lives one’s life under this grandiose gaze, one finally becomes blind to it. You simply don’t notice. Generally this is thought of as a bad thing. We talk about staying awake, smelling the roses. Notice! The universe deserves notice! And it does; I’m not arguing otherwise. But I am saying:  the house is in the middle of a farm. On a dirt road. Because a lot of people want to live under this grandiose gaze, a lot of people drive by, and with them comes this slow-moving funnel of dust. There are not now, nor have there ever been, any trees because there is very little ground water and the wind blows. At night you can see all of Belgrade, Montana, shimmering like a mothership.

I’ve got kids. In camp. My husband works. In town. The dog. Laundry. Groceries. Meals. It’s quiet out here. Everyone in the family has played more solitaire in the past two weeks than ever before. One cannot walk anywhere. People don’t drop by. I know this is unpopular. One is not supposed to be bored.

Thou Shalt Not Disparage the View.

Still. The view doesn’t always matter. It can’t, can it?

By the same token, in my daily life—in Montana—I don’t know many emotionally immature drunks. I don’t ride horses, I don’t fish and I don’t ski. Plenty of times, upon hearing this guilty confession, I am asked, What are you doing out here?

Writing. I find plenty of stories, every single one of them with a different shape. I don’t want to keep telling the same story any more than I want to keep reading the same story. I think the southern writer faces the same challenge if she wants to tell story that doesn’t involve a town gimp or incest or kudzu.

People in Montana volunteer in the schools. We grocery shop. We raise kids. We remodel our houses. This may not be the stuff of exciting fiction.

Then again, it may be.

Lots of people would give a body part to leave off the 3 hours commute, bad air and unhappy life situation they’re in. I like where I live. And, call me greedy, but I want to join the conversation. I want a seat at that long, rough-hewn log table. I, with my puny little voice, am elbowing between the machos like Cormac McCarthy, Larry McMurtry, even Annie Proulx.  Thomas Savage! He’ll offer me a seat.

Oh, this is risky, sitting here. I feel awfully small. I might be wrong and nobody wants to read a western novel without the Iconography. If that’s the case, I guess I’m in trouble.

But wait a minute, guys. Surely there’s more to this story.