The Frontier Spirit and Progress by Frank H. Tucker (review)

Reviews 251 The Frontier Spirit and Progress. By Frank H. Tucker. (Chicago: NelsonHall Inc., 1980. 371 pages, $23.95.) Frank H. Tucker begins his study of the frontier spirit by recognizing the dangers facing modern civilization and our need for “innovative and dynamic solutions.” These solutions, he believes, can come from the best aspects of the frontier spirit. He defines “frontiers” (plural, not singular, as Walter Prescott Webb maintains) as “thresholds, borderline areas, of many kinds, between things mastered and other things not yet mastered. . . . The common elements of frontier mindedness . . . include activity, innovation, and hope” (p. 3). To see whether or not that frontier spirit is still alive today and to suggest its positive effects, he singles out four national “success stories” — those of the United States, Japan, Germany, and the Soviet Union — and examines evi­ dence of frontier spirit influence, particularly on the youth of those countries. He defines success (“progress”) in several ways, including gross national product per capita, production and exportation of durable goods, generation and consumption of energy, infant mortality rates, and book publication figures. Although acknowledging that other factors besides frontier spirit undoubtedly contribute toward success in the countries he studies, he points out that “one cannot explain their impressive economic and technical success adequately in terms of their territory and the extent of their natural resources” (p. 14). What follows is an impressive compendium of the frequency and manner in which frontier subjects are utilized in various media: junior high textbooks, fiction, science fiction, movies, TV dramas, comic books and magazines. Many of these accounts include brief plot summaries sufficient to give the reader a good notion of the ways frontier subjects are treated in these various countries. The sections on the United States contain no great surprises, but the surveys of the three other nations are often enlightening. This book is long on evidence but short on conclusions. Many of the conclusions are cited from secondary sources, then not pursued further. For instance, he refers to Wallace Stegner’scharge that urban people are skeptical of heroes and so tend to regard western literature as unreal and old fashioned; then he simply drops the subject (p. 52). Or, after presenting evidence that shows definite shifts in reader interests in Germany during the periods 1918-20 and 1936-40 he writes: “I leave it to the reader to consider the reasons for the shifts” (p. 189). For a more penetrating handling of evidence one should turn to Ray Allen Billington’s Land of Savagery, Land of Promise (1981). The most intriguing comparisons Tucker’s approach reveals are the contrast­ ing concepts of the individual and the relationship of individual self-interest (or self-sacrifice) to the good of society in the four countries studied. Why these differences exist and how they relate to the frontier spirit are questions that remain unexplored. Tucker’s broad definition of “frontiers” provides room for his rather intensive examination of science fiction from a frontier perspective, and these sections may be the most valuable parts of the book. One wonders, though, how thorough the survey is when Isaac Asimov is mentioned several times 252 Western American Literature only in passing and such women SF writers as Ursula Le Guin are ignored. Tucker’s devotion to the positive values of frontiers — “To have no frontier at all would be a consummate tragedy” (p. 56) — may lead him to see fron­ tiers where there aren’t any, or to accept as a frontier whatever someone (anyone?) calls a frontier. One is reminded of Robin Winks’s comparative studies of frontiers and his suggestion that some countries seem to have appro­ priated the frontier myth because they needed it. Possibly Webb (in The Great Frontier, 1951) was too restrictive when he limited the frontier to a geographic area of land in excess of the population; but at least his approach prompted a careful consideration of what truly constitutes a frontier, or in what ways frontiers differ from each other. Tucker’s concluding paragraph contains this admonition: “Be of good cheer about the menaces to individuality. In this regard, remember, things have been turning out well enough in the literature and the media...