Hunger for the Wild: America’s Obsession with the Untamed West by Michael L. Johnson (review)

W e s t e r n A m e r ic a n L it e r a t u r e S p r in g 2 0 0 8 Hunger for the Wild: America’s Obsession with the Untamed West. By Michael L. Johnson. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2007. 533 pages, $34-95. Reviewed by Nathan C. Crook Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, OH From the arrival of the earliest Native American inhabitants and European explorers to contemporary tourists, perceptions and misperceptions of the American West have been and continue to be shaped by various influences. Michael L. Johnson’s Hungerfor the Wild: America’s Obsession with the Untamed West traces the historical and cultural forces that have contributed to, and continue to impose meaning on, the western landscape. Johnson contends that early European immigrants arrived with precon­ ceived notions about the new land filtered through their worldviews and specific readings of the Bible. Their perceptions of the West morphed to suit their notion of culture. A dominant theme throughout the book is how EuroAmerican notions of civilization destroyed wilderness and replaced it with culture. This wild/tame dialectic continues today in the form of naming busi­ ness parks and housing developments after what they replace: Big Cottonwood Estates, Quail Crossings. Popular perceptions of the West as place and state of mind as well as cul­ tural construct are nothing new, having shaped the way Euro-Americans have interacted with the West for over five hundred years. Johnson organizes Hunger for the Wild into five distinct periods of human visitation and inhabitation char­ acterized by land use and popular perceptions. He draws his examples from a wide array of historical and contemporary figures. The Prehuman West, which existed prior to European exploration in the 1530s, details European notions of the land as pristine and uninhabited. The period identifying the West as Waste and Promised Land, 1530s— 1840s, is characterized by changing attitudes toward the land and land use from early Spanish explorers, Daniel Boone, Lewis and Clark, and various mountain men and early settlers, whose attitudes toward the natives served expansionist desires. The advent of the locomotive and trans­ continental railroad defines the West as Frontier of the 1840s-1890s, and the automobile and the anxiety over what had been lost ushered in the notion of the West as Region during the 1890s-1960s. Mirroring the national political and social upheaval of the 1960s, Johnson sees additional efforts to redefine the West of the ’60s to the present as Postregion, where social and political boundaries are best understood through the development of the computer and the access it provides. He ends on a hopeful note that humans in the West will cease seeking to make their mark on the landscape and find new ways to fit in. In Hunger for the Wild, Johnson contributes his voice to the ongoing dis­ cussion characterized by the writings of Frederick Jackson Turner, Leo Marx, Henry Nash Smith, Richard Slotkin, Patricia Nelson Limerick, and Lawrence B o o k R e v ie w s Buell. The book is engaging, informative, masterfully researched, and artisti­ cally crafted. It promises to be important to a broad audience of scholars, artists, and anyone interested in how culture is constructed in relationship to place as well as how a place can be re-envisioned to suit the needs of the culture. open thy effing ears (please). By Gerald Locklin. Long Beach, CA: Zerx Press, 2006. 20 pages, $5.00. long story short. By Mark Weber. Long Beach, CA: Zerx Press, 2006. 18 pages, $5.00. New Orleans, Chicago, and Points Elsewhere. By Gerald Locklin. Garden Grove, CA: R)V Press, 2006. 94 pages, $11.95. Reviewed by Jacoba Mendelkow Utah State University, Logan Let me be honest. I don’t like jazz. I don’t normally listen to it, and when I do, I get lost and confused. Maybe this is because I am too young to know what jazz is all about, maybe this is because I grew up listening to nothing but country and western music and, in so doing, missed the musical revolution of my gen­ eration. I missed...