Coyote Kills John Wayne: Postmodernism and Contemporary Fictions of the Transcultural Frontier by Carlton Smith (review)

That being said, this is a fine book, written with clarity and rhythm, and it is a valuable book for anyone teaching Western or Frontier literatures. Historically far-reaching in its scope, it also will be of interest to 19th- and 20th-century Americanists. Carlton Smith. Coyote KiUsJohn Wayne: Postmodernism and Contemporary Fictions ofthe TransculturalFrontier. Reencounters with Colonialism: New Perspectives on the Americas. Hanover: University Press ofNew England, 2000. I67p. Jennifer Lemberg Graduate Center. CUNY In this strikingly titled book, Carlton Smith sets out to examine the idea of the frontier as it appears in texts which subvert or resist mainstream representations ofthe American west. Including both the "imaginary" and the "actual" frontier in his definition ofthe term, and viewing itas a contested and colonized space, Smith considers works from as wide a spectrum as Sergio Leone's Clint Eastwood westerns to Leslie Marmon Silko'sAlmanac oftheDead. He draws on postmodern and postcolonial theory in order to look at what happens when the "Other," typically absented from colonial frontier histories, surfaces or speaks. Smith bases his choice of texts on the argument that they are in themselves examples ofthe postmodern. All ofthe texts, he suggests, in some way direct our attention to the constructed nature ofthe "problematic history ofthe Americas," as is evidenced by their attention to the way narratives, and histories, are created (9). In each of the chapters, dealing widi Vollman, Silko, Thomas King, Sergio Leone's Clint Eastwood films, Erdrich, andThomas McGuane, respectively, Smith recounts the particular colonial notions ofthe frontier which haunt the individual text. He then points to the specific ways in which these ideas are undone or rewritten : Silko by complicating Western notions ofprogressive time, for example, in her use ofexperimental narrative structure as well as her inclusion ofthe Ghost Dance in her novel, and Thomas King by "intervening in the semiotic realm" in his use of oral tradition and his attention to the "liberative potential" in oral culture's ability to disrupt fixed, written narratives. Using Bhaba to help us read Erdrich, Lacan to understand die relationships between exploration, desire, and die self in Vollman, and Lyotard to elucidate the cold war landscapes in Leone's films, Smith usefully employs the work ofpostmodern theorists to help the reader see the ways in which the "the tropes offrontier discourse" are transformed in order to challenge colonial narratives ofdomination (9). 128 * ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW 4- SPRING 2001 Postmodernism, as Smith rightfully acknowledges, has sometimes been seen as antithetical to the project ofmulticulturalism, a "heavy-handed appropriation of the Other by the European" (6). However, Smith suggests that these movements converge in their interest in "questions about transcultural identities and their relationship to the historic construction of the frontier" (13). Arguing that postmodern and "marginalized" texts "speak perform the same lexicon," Smith is convincing on the usefulness ofconsidering such texts together (6). As he points out in the book, the very ideas of"borders" and "frontiers" are in themselves constructions , and in their attempt to explain the "shifting territory" of the frontier or of the epistemology by which we understand the world, students of both the frontier and postmodernism might well be seen as engaged in similar projects. It is therefore interesting to note the smooth pairing of the works of authors writing "from the margins," such as King, Erdrich, and Silko, with those such as the Leone films or McGuane's novels. Each is concerned with undoing received ideas about history, language, and the legacy of colonialism, and Smith's attention to both concrete historical circumstances and the way they have been reported , as well as a given author's place in those circumstances, makes the connections between these very different works seem evident. Vollman's vision of the ethnographer doomed to fail in his encounter with the Other, "in spite of motives ," because ofan "incessant preoccupation with the self," therefore seems at home along with Erdrich's critique of colonial definitions of Native American identity. Smith pays careful attention to issues ofgender and class; importantly, he also addresses the use ofhumor, certainly a central element in the works ofKing and Erdrich. By the book's end the reader gains a strong sense ofthe link...