A Brush with the West by Dale Burk (review)

280 Western American Literature The final volume of the set, Riders of Judgment, is introduced by Priscilla Oaks. After an unfortunate, but understandable, slip in identify­ ing Conquering Horse’s protagonist as “No Man” instead of “No Name,” Ms. Oaks finishes strong in her discussion of Riders of Judgment. She demonstrates very effectively and specifically the artistry of Frederick Manfred. The introduction is strangely organized, but it is a fine piece of critical analysis. Max Westbrook introduces This is the Year. This is one of the most important of the Manfred novels, made even more important by Manfred’s return to the scene in Green Earth, and Westbrook’s fine introduction is appropriate. Westbrook provides a summing of the novel, stressing the important aspects, and concentrating on the dichotomy in Pier — the good and the bad, the hero and the Satan. Both Gregg Press and Priscilla Oaks should be commended for provid­ ing a permanent Manfred. DELBERT E. WYLDER Murray State University A Brush with the West. By Dale Burk, with an Introduction by Vivian Paladin. (Missoula, M T: Mountain Press, 1980. 135 + xvi pages, $19.95.) Beginning this book, Dale Burk denies any pretension of being “a real or imagined expert” on the “practice and business of art in the American West.” His sole qualification for his undertaking is “a profound and genuine admiration for those whose artistic skills capture the essence of this land we love.” Both of these factors — Burk’s lack of expertise and his admiration for western artists — are quite evident in his book. It is, indeed, the work of a fan. A Brush with the West provides a broad overview of the making of western American art in the Northern Rocky Mountain region (despite his suggestion that he is treating the entire region, Burk says nothing of conse­ quence about Canadian art: only a passing reference to Paul Kane). Burk focuses his attention on the process of art in the West, retelling (yet again) the western experiences of Catlin, Bodmer, Russell, Remington and others briefly before using the latter two — the duly-canonized western artists — as springboard into his primary discussion: artistic activity in the Northern Rockies since the 1940s. In treating modern western art, Burk deals always with the relation of artifact to its society — via considerations of artists, collectors, curators, and markets. Thus his primary emphasis is on personali­ ties, not paintings. Reviews 281 This is, it seems, the book’s fatal flaw. However appreciative, Burk simply never gets past society and personality to look at art. Given his interest in the process of art in the West and in its social place in the region, certainly, Burk’s purpose was not to evaluate artists nor their paintings (in fact the numerous illustrations and plates seem curiously out of synch with the text); he is writing, after all, about the “practice and business of art.” But even here Burk does not show especial insight — he is content to quote an expert reverently or recount an artist’s anecdote rather than define and illuminate his material through analysis. Here, then, is where Burk’s inexpert admiration is woefully evident: in his rush to admire and affirm the strength of western art (and strong it is, without doubt), he is unable to define its formal strengths or delineate its exact relation to the region’s society. Burk describes those painters active during the period he surveys and recounts factors affecting their markets, but in so doing does not penetrate the super­ ficial. His appreciative enthusiasms produce, ultimately, a book true to its title — in it the reader finds only the slightest brush with western art. ROBERT THACKER University of Vermont Home Ground. By Cecelia Holland. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1981. 371 pages, $13.95.) Cecelia Holland’s twelfth novel, Home Ground, is set in California in the 1970s, where lingering vestiges of the 1960s’ professed faith in utopiabuilding compete with the self-obsessed alienation of the me-generation. Rose McKenna, Holland’s likeable heroine, sets one of the novel’s major themes when she says of her long-time live-in mate, “ ‘He’s past thirty, and he acts like a twelve-year...