A Great Plains Reader ed. by Diane D. Quantic, P. Jane Hafen (review)

1 2 4 W e s t e r n A m e r ic a n L i t e r a t u r e S p r in g 2 0 0 4 A Qreat Plains Reader. Ed. Diane D. Quantic and P. Jane Hafen. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2003. 730 pages, $70.00/$35.00. Reviewed by Robert L. Berner Oshkosh, Wisconsin In their introduction, Quantic and Hafen define their book’s structure as essentially chronological: the psychological impact of the Great Plains experi­ ence, the original Indian inhabitants and the first white travelers, the first white settlers, later immigrants to the region, and, finally, present-day changes in the order of Plains society. The editors are clearly determined to impose a sensible organization on what will strike many readers as a rather miscella­ neous collection. The truth of the matter is that A Great Plains Reader reveals the inevitable problem which editors of a regionally defined anthology must solve. What is a Great Plains writer? Is it a matter of birth and upbringing? Of residence? Of subject matter? Is a writer who was bom and grew up on the Plains and then left it never to return and never to write about it a Great Plains writer simply because of personal origins? Is an article on a subject which is more national than regional a piece of Great Plains writing simply because its author lived on the Plains? Consider, for example, the essay which Zitkala-Sa wrote in the early 1920s to condemn the reservation system of that era and the denial of citizenship to Indians; it seems to have been included, if not for the polemic intentions of the editors, only because the author lived and wrote on the Plains. Perhaps that’s reason enough, but if so, we must admit that by that criterion Loren Eiseley’s book on Charles Darwin is a piece ofGreat Plains writ­ ing because Eiseley was bom, grew up, and was initially educated in Nebraska. Quantic and Hafen seem to be most nearly on their subject in their selec­ tion ofpieces written to get at not only the true experience of the Great Plains but the whole question ofhow that truth is determined. For example, when we juxtapose Mark Twain’s hilarious account from Roughing It of the carnivorous buffalo bull that chased Bemis up a tree with Ron Hansen’s collection of episodes in the Blizzard of 1888, which often are so horrible that they seem as implausible as Twain’s story, a considerable light is thrown on the fact that the truth about the Plains is often as unlikely and as difficult to believe as the tall tales about them. In any case, the editors’ wide range of selections help us understand that the whole truth of the region has not been told. The Plains are changing, and their particular combination of the variables ofsociety and the enduring physical reality can be seen in Linda Hasselstrom’s homage to the post office as a Great Plains social institution and Paul Gruchow’s scientific explanation of how wind made inevitable the development of Plains grasses twenty-five million years ago. The Great Plains, Quantic and Hafen tell us in their introduction, are a place where nomadism is as inevitable as the inhabitants’ yearning for roots and where no one can endure a sometimes murderous environment with­ out learning “the hard lessons of failure” and maintaining “a kind of perverse B o o k R e v ie w s 1 2 5 optimism” (xxi). If their anthology often seems rather a grab-bag of materials, some of it of doubtful significance, this note of hope and dismay is sounded often in their selections. The general reader who knows little or nothing about the Plains will discover the region’s complexity by reading the selections, and those who know the subject from experience or study will discover a wide range of insights and of subjects for further investigation. A final note: We must hope that the book goes into a subsequent edition so that the editors will be able to correct what seems, at least to this...