This week we are exploring the glorious state of Montana! A. B. Guthrie wasn’t actually born in Montana, but moved there at the age of 6 months and was named the 4th Most Influential Montanan of the past century. I have yet to read his writing, but since Montana is one of my very favorite states, I look forward to it. A big “thank you” to my friend Eve for introducing me to this week’s literary countryman.
photo credit: DON PUGH PERTH WESTERN AUSTRALIA
First, an overview of his popular The Big Sky:
What “The Big Sky” is: An unflinching account not only of the hardships and dangers of the 1830-1845 mountain man era, but also a glimpse into the meaning of our own existence here – the reasons why we come, the reasons why we stay. True to Guthrie’s bid for honesty, the answers aren’t always pretty.
Guthrie’s Boone Caudill is the quintessential anti-hero, a mean, moody misanthrope who heads West to escape his troubled past as well as to seek adventure and freedom. Ultimately, though, trouble follows Boone – because, after all, the one thing he can’t run away from is himself.
The theme, Guthrie wrote, is “that each man kills the thing he loves.
“If it had any originality at all, it was only that a band of men, the fur-hunters, killed the life they loved and killed it with a thoughtless prodigality perhaps unmatched.”
Hardly the stuff of romanticism. Not only did Guthrie tell an accurate tale – although, as Bill Bevis points out in his book, “Ten Tough Trips,” most mountain men headed west for the money, not for the isolation – but he wrote in the vernacular of the time and place, in language that, as Bevis said, can be eloquent.
“So the language itself, used seriously and beautifully, assures Guthrie’s neighbors and successors that the West can generate art,” Bevis wrote. “We need not imitate British speech or French manners. We can speak in our own voice.”
Thusly did Guthrie point the way for generations of Western writers to do what literature is supposed to do: Tell the truth, and tell it with beauty and grace.
He followed The Big Sky with The Way West, which won the Pulitzer. Here’s an excerpt:
“Evans had heard about the Platte. He had pictured it in his mind. He thought he knew what he was going to see, but now that his horse stood on the summit, he couldn’t believe. He couldn’t believe that flat could be so flat or that distance ran so far or that the sky lifted so dizzy-deep or that the world stood so empty. He saw old Rock chase a badger into a hole, saw a bunch of antelope drifting, saw the river sluiced and the woods rising on its islands and the sand in a great gray waste, but it was something he couldn’t put a name to that held him. He thought he had never seen the world before. He never had known distance until now. He had lived shut off by trees and hills and had thought the world was a doll’s world and distance just three hollers away and the sky no higher than a rifle shot.
Curious about what states we’ve done so far and which ones are on deck?
Photo by marxchivistFirst, from Melanie Jones:
Alabama: To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee (check out my To Kill A Mockingbird Sample Kit!) Michigan: The Virgin Suicides by Jeffery Eugenides Alaska: The Man Who Swam With Beavers by Nancy Lord Arizona: The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver North Dakota: Peace Like a River by Leif Enger Vermont: The Secret History by Donna Tartt Hawaii: Heads by Harry by Lois-ann Yamanaka Georgia: Leaving Atlanta by Tayari Jones And I went out on my own for…
Florida: Their Eyes Were Watching God by Nora Zeale Hurston Minnesota: In the Lake of the Woods by Tim O’Brien Wisconsin: When Madeline Was Young by Jane Hamilton Louisiana: Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells (Jones’ pick) and The Awakening by Kate Chopin (my pick) Colorado: Plainsong by Kent Haruf Maryland: Anything by Anne Tyler Georgia: Awakening by Kate Chopin Ohio: The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison Arkansas: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou Virginia: John Grisham Idaho: Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson North Carolina: Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons Tennesee: Run by Ann Patchett New Jersey: Anything by Janet Ivanovich Texas: Anything by Elmer Kelton Connecticut: The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx
Wondering where your state is? Coming soon… In the meantime, weigh in on future picks!
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A reader passed along another Montana writer…
Ivan Doig! She recommended Dancing at the Rascal Fair in particular…
Any novel by Ivan Doig is worth reading. But I’d recommend the best recent novel by a Montana writer is Everything by Kevin Canty.