Desert Passages: Encounters with the American Deserts by Patricia Nelson Limerick (review)

162 Western American Literature undertaken answers to these questions, as well as many others, to try to explain with more coherence and more depth that truly complex state and itsdivergent values—or “lifestyles,” as so many Californians and other people these days term values put into action. PATRICK D. MORROW Auburn University Desert Passages: Encounters with the American Deserts. By Patricia Nelson Limerick. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1985. 218 pages, $22.50 hardcover, $12.95 paper.) Except for fur trappers, most Americans in the early nineteenth century didn’t even consider moving near our deserts. The Great American Desert myth was definitely having its effect. Then in 1843-44 along came John C. Fremont, that “continental real-estate appraiser,” to tell Americans that west­ ern deserts might be “savage and revolting” environments, but that we could conquer them. Thus with Fremont and Manifest Destiny, Patricia Nelson Limerick begins a survey of Anglo-American attitudes towards our deserts. To cover such a large subject area, Limerick undertakes case studies of eight representative writers—Fremont, William Lewis Manly, Mark Twain, William Ellsworth Smythe, John Van Dyke, George Wharton James, Joseph Wood Krutch and Edward Abbey. At the outset, she acknowledges her method’s limitations. After Fremont, Limerick’s other nineteenth-century writers pretty much fall in line: Manly, Twain and Smythe saw little in the desert itself but bleak­ ness. At the turn of the century, however, desert appreciation blossomed when technology solved the problems of travel and water. Against a backdrop of material security, writers like Van Dyke, then later Krutch and Abbey, could begin lecturing their readers on the desert’s beauty, the attraction of its spa­ ciousness, and its delicate life cycles. But a more typical modern attitude toward the desert found expression in the writings of George Wharton James. A confused mixture of fondness for untouched deserts and enthusiasm for commercial development, James spoke like an early version of Arizona Highways. Limerick organizes her material well and has an easy, succinct style. Her concluding chapter perceptively notes how both reclamationists and preserva­ tionists claim John Wesley Powell as their hero. Still, she doesn’t explore this very far, nor does she probe very deeply into her eight writers’ minds. And though she mentions ecology, she excludes human beings from her definition of nature. Perhaps this exclusion complements her lack of passion for deserts and desert writers. Though one doesn’t expect an environmental crusade, Limer­ Reviews 163 ick’s book leaves one wondering why she undertook this study. Desert Passages is a fairly good introduction to its subject, but an individual wanting some­ thing more in-depth will have to look elsewhere. JIM ATON Southern Utah State College Inner Landscapes: The Theater of Sam Shepard. By Ron Mottram. (Colum­ bia: University of Missouri, 1984. 172 pages, $7.95.) “Within limits, all art is a kind of creative biography in which the author and his relation to the world are revealed,” writes Ron Mottram as he con­ cludes his eminently usable chronological study of the stage plays of Sam Shepard. Beginning with the earliest works and examining in turn the relative obscurity of the Off Off Broadway years, the growing influence of music upon Shepard, his departure to England in 1971, his return to America in 1974 and his subsequent development, Mottram argues for a more cohesive and unified reading than has been offered previously for the most perplexing voice in con­ temporary American theater. Rejecting the commonly held critical notion that Shepard appeals to the senses rather than to the mind, Mottram demon­ strates the complex language of culturally and theatrically coded signs which Shepard has evolved through the course of his career. This language has become the means, at once subtle and shocking, to explore an inner landscape which mirrors the simultaneous alienation and integration of the individual in American society. Mottram catches Shepard on the wing: “In Shepard, discontents and the desire to do something about them are approached more from a personal than a social perspective and are treated as psychological rather than political questions. Like a mythical cowboy hero, Shepard seems to opt for individual action and a willingness, if not a...