The Developing Art of Tony Hillerman

J A N R O U S H Utah State University The DevelopingArt of Tony Hillerman For almost a decade now Tony Hillerman has ensnared readers with his fast-paced and tightly plotted mysteries about crime on the reservations of the Southwest. Using desolate backdrops of sandswept, sparsely populated land, he weaves stories of m urder and intrigue which fuse the traditional W estern of Zane Grey and Louis L’Am our with the m odern W estern of detective fiction m ade pop u lar by Dashiell H am m ett and Raymond Chandler to create a new genre: anthropologi­ cal mystery. T hough H illerm an’s tradem ark is making life on the Navajo Reser­ vation so vivid with anthropological detail that his readers think they have been subm erged in Navajo culture, he nevertheless insists that what he is writing is, after all, entertainm ent. “My readers,” he says, “are buying a mystery, not a tome of anthropology.... The nam e of the game is telling stories: no educational digressions allowed” (TalkingMysteries, 39). Entertainm ent it may be, but over the years he has honed his craft into art, and it is primarily through his characters that H illerm an’s real developm ent as a writer may be seen. Through the creation of his two main protagonists, Navajo detectives Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee, and their female counterparts, his art evolves from entertainm ent to a m or­ ally significant statem ent of a way of life: the establishm ent of hozho— harm ony— for the Navajo people. Hillerm an tells the story of discussing the works of Native American novelists like Leslie Silko, Jam es Welch, and N. Scott Momaday with a Navajo librarian. ‘T hey are artists,” he said. “I am a storyteller.” And the librarian replied: “Yes. We read them and their books are beautiful. We say, ‘Yes, this is us. This is reality.’ But it leaves us sad, with no hope. We read ofJim Chee and Joe Leaphorn, and O ld Man Tso and M argaret Cigaret, and the Tsossies and Begays and again we say, ‘Yes, this is us. But now we win.’ Like the stories our 100 Western American Literature grandm other used to tell us, they make us feel good about being Navajos” (TM, 43). It is through the portrayal of such characters, operat­ ing in a landscape im bued with hozho, that Hillerm an is simultaneously able to fuse what it is to be Navajo with his goal of entertainm ent. In the process of doing so, his writing develops depth and complexity. Significant to a discussion of H illerm an’s fiction is the difference in form between the novel and the rom ance thatJohn Chase outlines in The American Novel and Its Traditions. The major difference between the novel and the rom ance, as Chase sees it, lies in the way each views reality, a reality expressed through character as well as through action and plot. The novel, he says, renders reality closely and in comprehensive detail. It takes a group of people and sets them going about the business of life. We come to see these people in their real complexity of temperament and motive. . . . Character is more important than action and plot and probably the tragic or comic actions of the narrative will have the primary purpose of enhancing our knowledge of and feeling for an important character, a group of characters, or a way of life [my italics]. The events that occur will usually be plausible, given the circumstances, and if the novelist includes a violent or sensational occurrence in his plot, he will introduce it only into [already pre­ pared for] scenes. (12) In contrast, the rom ance, Chase says, feels free to render reality in less volume and detail. It tends to prefer action to character, and action will be freer in a romance than in a novel, encountering ... less resistance from reality.... The characters, probably rather two-dimensional types, will not be com­ plexly related to each other or to society or to the past. . . . [W] here the novelist would arouse our interest in a character by exploring his...