Wise Man’s Gold by Elsa Gidlow (review)

Reviews 245 notable, he does not mention the new studies of Darrett Rutman, John Demos, and Philip Greven who have done much to challenge monolithic pictures of the Puritans that earlier historians created. Nor does Slotkin seem aware of the work of Morgan on Roger Williams, Ola Winslow on John Eliot, and Alden Vaughan’s book, New England Frontier: Puritans and Indians 1620-1675; all of these authors present the Puritans as being more sympathetic to Indians than Slotkin suggests. And the author might have tempered his discussions of witchcraft in New England had he used the findings of Chadwick Hansen and Robert Middlekauff on the subject. The example of Slotkin’s skewed view of the Puritans illustrates a major problem of the internalist. Too often historians of ideas and literary critics jump from the ideas of one work to those in another without considering the milieu of those works or ideas. By failing to use the findings of social and cultural historians who deal with his ideas, Slotkin overlooks materials that disagree with his point of view. In addition, studies of American violence by Richard Maxwell Brown, Robert Dykstra, and W. Eugene Hollon suggest that Slotkin overemphasizes the amount of violence on the frontier. Regeneration Through Violence seems, in part, the product of some popular thinking and actions of the last decade: increasing sympathy for Indians, back-to-the-land movements, distrust of the rational because it often leads to programming, and the search for the roots of violence in white, Christian acquisitiveness. The answers to these problems, the author and others imply, lie in a new spiritual unity of men and the land — something like that attributed to Native Americans. The vision of Slotkin is, in part, that of a disillusioned young man of the 1960s and 1970s. While adding much to an understanding of our frontier experiences, Slotkin also stirs in large doses of some of the yeasty discontents of our time. The volume under review is a major book of controversial interpreta­ tions. It is sometimes too general, overstated, and simplistic but always provocative and stimulating. The book should be read and reread even if one does not agree with the contentions of the author. It deserves the close attention of all students interested in the study of western American lit­ erature. RICHARD W. ETULAIN, Idaho State University Wise Man’s Gold. By Elsa Gidlow. (Mill Valley, California: Druid Heights Press, 132 pp.) One has to admire any writer of a poetic drama, but for my taste, at least, Miss Gidlow’s poetry is more effective than her drama. 246 Western American Literature Her poetry, particularly in descriptive or philosophic passages, is attractive: The leaf comes to the light with a thunder silent to our ears. The exploring root, stronger than gunpowder to explode the rock endlessly conquers. Likewise, her descriptions of the philosophic center of the poem, the conflict between freedom and the restraint necessary to develop land into farms or, in Sutter’s case, a mill, reads well: This: Victory, not to require it; our men being reborn in courage; their men rotting with guilt and greed; ours, the unhomed, building, on a filled-in swamp of betrayal the new city, our city with walls of love around it. In the drama Lightner, the poet, represents this freedom; Sutter represents the drive to develop the land that requires smaller, less significant men to lose freedom in order that the farms be staffed. When these abstractions interact in the drama, however, the play becomes less effective. It is very hard to keep characters with strong abstract values attached to them, from sounding like prigs when they are required to maintain both their absolute value and specific characters. Thus Lightner, the poet, when he is shot says: “Don’t mind, Brodea, it’s the left side; I can hold a pen.” An abstraction of a poet might sound like that; no real person could possibly. In researching the period of the play, the California gold rush, the author has been meticulous. And in assigning values to the various groups historically assembled, she has been successful, but in developing a drama, less so. MARY WASHINGTON, Utah State...