Voices of a Place by Gerald Haslam (review)

Reviews 167 Voices of a Place. By Gerald Haslam. (Walnut Creek, California: Devil Moun­ tain Books, 1987. 100 pages, $7.95.) Since Europeans set foot on this continent, the subjects of literary pro­ vincialism and regionalism have been issues. Writers have been forced to look eastward, toward sophistication, and of course, the centers of publishing, for acceptance. Now that the western region, according to James D. Houston, “is at a higher level of awareness about the interlocking and interdependent work­ ings of the world,” what will happen to the notion of the unsophisticated provincial writer? Now that the continent, from sea to sea and islands beyond, is aware of itself, what new literary frontiers will emerge? Who will “make it new,” as Idaho native, Ezra Pound insisted? Gerald Haslam’s slim volume of essays explores adeptly the notion of California as literature. He explores the state’sfour geo-literaryregions through discussions of politics, levels of education, language, country music, and even the strange vigilante activities of the Posse Comitatus. He discusses these issues and the people he knows with sympathy and a generous, understanding heart. In his essay “Reflections on California’s Regionalism,” he states: “. . . it is likely that they have been duped by the absurd, if hoary, belief that some­ how eastern American experience is national, while everything else is ‘only’ regional.” Whenever western writers have voiced this concern—from Vardis Fisher onward—they have been brushed aside and labeled paranoid. Haslam’s essays make me feel more secure in my own perceptions as a western writer. Too bad Fisher died too soon to read them. Haslam not only writes fascinating regional fiction, but as these essays prove, he knows why he does. He has put his own work and the work of other regionalists into a challenging perspective. “And that is where all great art must begin, with the actual experiences of people.” PENELOPE REEDY The Redneck Review of Literature Fairfield, Idaho Unassigned Territory. ByKemNunn. (New York: Delacorte Press, 1987. 336 pages, $16.95.) Unassigned Territory is animated by the energy of the baked, empty spaces of the interior. It pushes further into a realm of indeterminability, illu­ sion, paranoia than did Nunn’s first novel, Tapping the Source (1984). Here the author’s use of the desert will remind many readers of Joan Didion, but an equally kindred California analog is the tricksy world of Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49. In Unassigned Territory, Nunn’s point-of-view characters are a visiting elder in an off-beat religious sect, a young minister mainly interested in avoid­ ...