The Santa Fe and Taos Colonies: Age of the Muses, 1900–1942 by Arrell Morgan Gibson (review)

364 Western American Literature of the Golden State: a winemaker, an ecological activist, a psychic, a play­ wright, a petroleum journalist, a mayor, even the Dalai Lama. Throughout, Houston’s reportage is on the money. He finds, not surpris­ ingly, states within the state, value systems that seem continents apart coexist­ ing. California is “a region filled with paradoxes and riddles, a state which leads the nation in pornography, divorce, suicide, burglary and skateboard accidents, while simultaneously dominating it in the fields of micro-electronics, solar energy, accredited law schools, Nobel Prize winners, female mayors, Olympic medalists, library users, salad lettuce and dates, figs and nectarines.” Perhaps the most memorable of the individuals interviewed by Houston is the gifted Chicano dramatist Luis Valdez. “In a very fundamental way,” says Valdez, “we are still pioneers. East meets west here . . . and we are still pioneers at that.” Valdez also points out that the vast majority of Californians are not involved in the activities that arouse national attention, although possibilities seem much richer for everyone. “We’re all living our life here, and no single day is any more important than another, really, when you get down to it.” Valdez is one of the few California writers who is seeking to convey the “range and uniqueness” of California experience from within, and Houston, in a typically sharp observation, remarks, “Perhaps only a Yaqui with a lifetime supply of cigars would attempt such a thing.” Finally it is Houston’s own insight and reportorial skills that make this book special. His writing is smooth, almost casual, yet he reveals elements of the Golden State that will arrest readers. “You would have to be made of stone not to harbor some powerful feeling for whatever place on earth has left its imprint on your eyes and ears and nerve ends.” Fortunately, Houston is not made of stone and he has given us the finest book yet written on contemporary California. GERALD HASLAM Sonoma State University The Santa Fe and Taos Colonies: Age of the Muses, 1900-1942. By Arrell Morgan Gibson. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1983. 305 pages, $24.95.) Many books have been written about Santa Fe, the state capital of New Mexico, and the village of Taos, New Mexico, where an Indian pueblo is neighbor to a small community that artists have made a famous settlement since the turn of the century. Each of these towns, the larger and the smaller, has attracted visitors who find the architecture and life style a contrast to other state capitals and art communities in the United States. The books written about art colonies are usually the memoirs of residents in the areas or reports of local observers with an artistic background to draw upon. Professor Gibson has a distinguished career as an historian from the University of Oklahoma, and has used his training and research to produce an absorbing Reviews 365 volume which deals with sociological as well as historical dimensions in describing both Santa Fe and Taos. Although he is not a participant in the esthetic pursuits of art, music, and literature in the two colonies, he reports in faithful detail the objectives, performances, and consequences of life among painters, musicians, novelists, and poets in each of the communities he writes about. His product, therefore, can be read with the interest of a narrative as well as a critique of creative accomplishment. In an early chapter of his book, Professor Gibson stresses the background which the southwestern mountain colonies have with such eastern art groups as Woodstock in the foothills of New York state, the MacDowell colony in New Hampshire, New Hope in Delaware near Philadelphia, and Provincetown near Cape Cod. However, few of these artistic retreats can match the environ­ ment of the lengthy Spanish occupation of Santa Fe or the three-level com­ munity dwellings and underground kivas of the Pueblo Indians at Taos where the Indians in costume danced to become models for painters in Taos. The black mantillas of women and the colorful jackets of woodhaulers in Santa Fe provided diversion in the landscape as men guided caravans of burros trans­ porting wood for stoves and fireplaces in the city...