The Wind Blows Free by Frederick Manfred (review)

224 Western American Literature The Wind Blows Free. By Frederick Manfred. (Sioux Falls: The Center for Western Studies, 1979. $9.95.) Much of Frederick Manfred’s work is conspicuous for its titanic power in depicting men and action on an epic scale. An eloquent summation of this quality is Wallace Stegner’s description of Manfred as “a natural force, related to hurricanes, deluges, volcanic eruptions and the ponderous forma­ tion of continents.” Manfred’s latest book, however, reveals another aspect of this prolific and versatile writer. Much more gentle in tone and limited in scope than such works as Lord Grizzly, Milk of Wolves, and Wanderlust, The Wind Blows Free is the record of a trip taken in 1934 by Manfred, fresh out of college and recovering from an unrequited crush on a Calvin College co-ed. Though the work, which is subtitled “A Reminiscence,” is clearly autobiographical, it is written in the third person and reads very much like narrative fiction. In the American “On the Road” tradition that stretches from Whitman to Kerouac and beyond, the book chronicles five days of hitchhiking from Doon, in northwest Iowa, to Montana. It is Fred’s first trip to the West and he is eager to see the Badlands, the Black Hills, and Yellowstone Park. The narrative moves easily and quickly as the young protagonist encounters new places, people, and situations. But there is little high drama, tension or crisis. Even the economic conditions of the dust-ridden countryside do not figure significantly, though such topical details as twenty-five cent hamburgers and two-for-a-nickel doughnuts help to establish the Depression as setting. Unlike other works by Manfred, there is virtually no discussion of social or political issues. Instead, the story is almost entirely concerned with the inner feelings of the hitchhiking hero, who aspires to be a writer and whose closest friends are his three traveling companions: Leaves of Grass, Shakespeare, and the Bible. Since Fred appears to have no besetting neuroses and since he encounters no real physical danger, survival is not an issue. This is a peaceful book. The only real disharmony on the journey is mainly comic: the conflict­ ing personalities of Fred and Minerva Baxter. Minerva, one of Manfred’s most memorable characters, is a single lady who picks up the hitchhiker in order to have a driver for her old Essex. A writer of religious verse for calendars, she is the epitome of puritanism. Determined to be as joyless as possible toward life, Miss Minerva is convinced that Fred will try to rape her. As a guarantee that he will be caught if he does, she insists that a gas station attendant draw an outline of Fred’s six-foot nine-inch frame on the station wall. As the journey progresses she becomes increasingly possessive of Fred and even locks him in his cabin one night to prevent him from going to a dance. Minerva Baxter, of course, is the perfect foil for the life-loving Fred, who finds delight in the simplest pleasures of mind and body as he journeys toward his “Shining Mountains.” In the contest between these two opposites, Manfred dramatizes the classic Dionysus-Apollo struggle with delicacy and humor. Reviews 225 As he has so often before, Manfred here tells a good story and tells it well. His clear, spare, yet vividly imagistic style is refreshing after the plethora of flashy, baroque stuff that so many writers turn out today. And the book has “charm,” a quality one rarely associates with a work by Frederick Manfred. This one has it, however, as it evokes a simpler time. The sensitivity and innocence of the book’s central character, still a virgin at twenty-two, is a reminder that more than the price of hamburger has changed since 1934. GEORGE F. DAY, University of Northern Iowa History of the Westward Movement. By Frederick Merk. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1978. 617 pages. Bibliography. Index. $20.00.) During his many years at Harvard University, Frederick Merk was pupil, colleague, and successor to Frederick Jackson Turner, and this History of the Westward Movement is in large part his tribute to that long associa...