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Reviews 175 tion ditches) inspire Hasselstrom’s reflections upon the relationship of human beings to the land from which they wrest their livelihood—in harmony with or in violation of nature. Hasselstrom’s method isempirical. She isconcerned with how the particu­ lar suggests the universal. When she says “South Dakota is the center of the universe,” Hasselstrom expresses no narrow provincialism, but instead empha­ sizes the value of her life on the ranch and the fact that, to an observant and thoughtful mind, universal truths are to be found in the particularized minutiae of an everyday life lived close to the soil, not solely in urban cultural centers and academe. Admitting—or boasting—of having “an insatiable desire for seeing metaphors in ordinary incidents,” Hasselstrom asserts that “if we leave the natural world too far behind” we will not have progressed to some new technological nirvana but will have lost something valuable, part of our humanity. Going Over East will enlighten non-ranchers about the rough, demanding, isolated, and precarious existence of independent cattle ranchers of the upper Great Plains. Hasselstrom is passionate about her prairie home; she gave up college teaching to work the family land. Her loving but tough-minded essays on ranch life are grounded in the prairie, but point to implications far beyond. The environmental message of these essays is emphatic, but the didactic and the aesthetic are usually well in balance. Going Over East reveals a practical, roll-up-the-sleeves rancher and writer who is still “trying to see beyond the horizon.” KATE ARNESON Augustana College Plain Folk: A Commonplace of the Great Plains. By Jim Hoy and Tom Isern. (Norman and London: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987. 200 pages, $17.95.) This book is an anthology made up of newspaper columns written by two members of the Great Plains Studies faculty at Emporia (Kansas) State Uni­ versity. The authors organize the columns into a series of essaysunder the broad divisions of Legends and Lore, Fellow Creatures of the Plains, Horse and Cattle Culture, Working, Playing, Farm and Ranch, Good Fences, Good Neighbors, and People and Places. The resulting work is good, a worthwhile contribution to our understanding of the Great Plains. The success of the book comes largely from an astute treatment of com­ monplace things (note the apt subtitle).Hoy and Isern effectively vivify plains life, especially rural life, through a series of chatty discourses on such diverse topics as Russian thistles, six-man football, cattle guards, rodeo stunts, pest contests, mailboxes, and Corps of Engineer legends. They even include a dis­ 176 Western American Literature cussion of and recipes for Rocky Mountain Oysters. (If you are not familiar with this succulent dish you are probably not a true man or woman of the plains.) Some of the topics dealt with may appear to be excessively mundane, but it should be remembered that no tool or technique used for survival or for entertainment is without significance in the study of culture. Thus Hoy and Isern give particular emphasis to farming equipment and methods in order to establish what they refer to as “integrity of region.” Of course the informal tone of these brief essays makes them attractive. But overall the book’s effect is substantial. Facts and legends are here so well presented that we are reminded of the poetry of material objects and the pungency of ordinary human experience. GEORGE F. DAY University of Northern Iowa At the Field’s End: Interviews with Twenty Pacific Northwest Writers. By Nicholas O’Connell. (Seattle: Madrona Publishers, 1987. 322 pages, $12.95.) O’Connell’s collection of interviews is a welcome addition to a slowly evolving body of knowledge about the literature of the Northwest. To readers who have just found this rich accumulation of poems, short stories, and non­ fiction, these interviews provide a useful introduction. Preceding each inter­ view, O’Connell furnishes a succinct cameo biography, including a listing of awards and works. To scholars, the collection adds direct commentary on the nature of the writings and genesis of ideas, a likely source of information to help build a criticism and history of the literature of the Pacific Northwest. O’Connell designed...

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