Dreams in Dry Places by Roger Bruhn (review)

268 WesternAmerican Literature evoked the heart of the land and its people with her careful insights, and Wallace Stegner recreated the harsh yet often beautiful world of his youth inWolfWillow. These books are masterpieces; they do not focus on the “I”but on people and a way of life that is gone or on the verge of change and, as such, worthy of recording. Although Heart-Diamond, a memoir by Kathy L. Greenwood, has a glowing introduction by Elmer Kelton, it fails to give us anything more than a portrait of the writer, and a not very interesting one at that. Greenwood was born and raised on the Heart-Diamond Ranch in south­ eastern New Mexico, 20 sections of high desert between Carlsbad and Artesia— fertile soil for a writer of ability and intuitive insight. Her book, the title of which refers to the ranch brand, left me with the feeling that she has been removed from her roots and under the stultifying influence of academia too long. Her memoir appears to be simply the repeti­ tion of a farewell made years ago and without regrets, despite protesting too much to the contrary in an entire chapter. All of this is particularly regrettable since Hart Greenwood, the author’s father, who remains a one-dimensional figure in the book, is an original, still talked about with relish by those who knew him; and the land, that vast mystery of brilliant sky and harsh light, where beauty and terror intermingle, where people are made or broken on the forge of the desert, remains, awaiting a ringing and passionate voice. JANE CANDIA COLEMAN Rodeo, New Mexico Dreams in Dry Places. By Roger Bruhn. (Lincoln; University of Nebraska Press, 1990. 145 pages, $40.00.) The exquisite opening for this book ofNebraska architectural photographs is a Panhandle landscape which suggests the photographer’s dream in a dry place. It is a photograph closer to Edward Weston’s vision of the West than Wright Morris’s, though the title comes from the latter. A thin straight line of highway cuts through this dream, suggesting connections to a world where the land is not central. In fact, many of Bruhn’s photographs do not present the dry landscape as a context, and the dream presented is often marked by what Nebraska’s other great novelist called “the respect for respectability.” The Turnerian vision is suggested in the few early buildings presented. The rest, not surprisingly, are Eastern derivatives. Yet, Bruhn’s vision of Nebraska’s towns and cities is much richer than Cather’s, and his work can be read in more than one way. For example, the fine Reviews 269 craftsmanship of the Hasting’s Chautaqua Pavilion photograph—the careful composition, the control of light, and the well-printed details—make it a pleasure to read, while also evoking the dignity of the structure’s purpose, though the dumpsters now present suggest Sunday School picnics rather than lectures. In this photograph and others, the dryness struggled against is not literal but metaphorical. Mostbuildings are presented asmonuments, grand or simple attempts to bring culture to a barren land. Bruhn imaginatively presents echoes between the more elaborate, urban public structures and private mansions and the rural houses, halls, and barns that through simple decorative features create buildings that shelter against more than winter storms. Poet Ted Kooser in his introduction observes that this collection “honors and in many instances reveres its subject.” Although true, Bruhn’s generally direct approach, especially to building exteriors, also limits the book’s emo­ tional range. He states in the preface that the use of black and white can evoke the archetypal and eternal, but at the same time it can also abstract, decontextualize, and evoke a formalist photographic tradition. Thus the photographer’s vision of this dry land at times seems overly serene. Nevertheless, Bruhn and the buildings he has photographed deserve to be honored for the sense of culture they have created. REGINALD DYCK University of Washington Life in the Upper Country. The Diary ofEvelyn E. Amos. (Boise, Idaho: cold-drill books, 1990. 122 pages, $12.95.) While reading this journal I kept asking myself, to whom is Ms. Amos...