The Mysterious West

Morris (American literature, Pennsylvania State Univ., Erie) conducted 15 interviews between 1988 and 1992 of authors writing primarily of the American West. The interviewees are all "postmodernist" and "postregionalist" in their perspectives, sharing an ambiguous and ambivalent attitude toward place and the mythos that represents it. Some of these writers still look to the past but reinterpret it, such as Ron Hansen, Molly Gloss, and Ivan Doig; others, like William Kittredge, seek to demythologize it. Among the writers interviewed are several female voices (Gloss, Gretel Ehrlich, and Mary Clearman Blew), who offer a new vision of the roles played by women in shaping the American West. All of them yield valuable insights into what direction the new Western literary tradition seems to be headed. Novelist Hillerman's volume, in contrast, is far less weighty. It contains 20 short stories, primarily mystery and detective fiction, such as Marcia Muller's "Forbidden Things" and Karen Kijewski's "Tule Fog," interspersed with an occasional fantastical tale. The fictional landscapes here range from the desolation, silence, and danger of Death Valley, and the small, dying towns of southern Colorado to the sophisticated originality and zaniness of Berkekey, California. Across these pages march university protesters, ranch hands, and Yurok Indians. Together, they give life to a multifaceted landscape that is currently undergoing redefinition, as Morris's volume of interviews amply demonstrates. There is no overlap between the writers in these two works. For this reason, owning both works would give a novice reader of Western literature a useful variety. For public library collections