Western American Literature最新文献_第4页

Cascadia Field Guide: Art, Ecology, Poetry eds. by Elizabeth Bradfield, CMarie Fuhrman, and Derek Sheffield (review) 卡斯卡迪亚实地指南：Elizabeth Bradfield、CMarie Fuhrman 和 Derek Sheffield 编著的《艺术、生态、诗歌》（评论）

IF 0.2 3区文学

Western American Literature Pub Date : 2024-04-18 DOI: 10.1353/wal.2024.a924880

Nathan Anderson

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引用次数: 0

All Is Leaf: Essays and Transformations by John T. Price (review) 一切都是叶子：约翰-T.-普莱斯的散文与变革（评论）

IF 0.2 3区文学

Western American Literature Pub Date : 2024-04-18 DOI: 10.1353/wal.2024.a924891

David R. Solheim

{"title":"All Is Leaf: Essays and Transformations by John T. Price (review)","authors":"David R. Solheim","doi":"10.1353/wal.2024.a924891","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/wal.2024.a924891","url":null,"abstract":"In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:\u0000 Reviewed by: <ul> <li> All Is Leaf: Essays and Transformations by John T. Price </li> <li> David R. Solheim, emeritus </li> </ul> John T. Price, All Is Leaf: Essays and Transformations. Iowa City: U of Iowa P, 2022. 218 pp. Paper, $19.95; e-book, $19.95. With All Is Leaf: Essays and Transformations John T. Price has written a fine example of what should be called literary nonfiction. Price himself is the director of a creative nonfiction writing program and around the middle of this 200-page book presents an essay about his experience as a grad student and professor in that realm. His working definition of the area is \"fact-based nonfiction that uses creative writing techniques.\" He continues that the field may include \"such diverse historical forms as personal essays, memoirs, travel writing, nature writing, narrative nonfiction, lyric essays, speculative nonfiction, prehistoric cave drawings, . . . and multiple other subgenres\" (109). On the following page he suggests \"literary nonfiction\" as an alternative descriptor. I trust Price's presentation of factual information and reporting of data related to actuality, but in addition he ranges far from the observable world in his use of extended metaphors, hypothetical situations, and literary allusions. That stylistic range is part of what makes his writing both informative and entertaining. Price's readers who are well-read in traditional literature will gain extra enjoyment and value from his work. The book contains several very good essays on the writer and writing of nonfiction: \"My Archeological Dig Site\" (cited above), \"My Rock 'n' Roll Road Song,\" and \"My Essay on the Essay.\" Significant digression is one of Price's well-used techniques. He may begin writing about a conference on native prairie and digress into personal experience and even family issues; or he may begin what seems like a personal essay and digress into philosophical and ethical concerns; but by the end of each essay the reader discovers that both realms of experience and subject matter are an interrelated unified whole. [End Page 400] Another truly outstanding essay in this book is \"My Courtroom Drama,\" which presents two final cases of his father's law career in great detail and evokes empathy for most of the characters involved. Mid-essay Price recalls To Kill a Mockingbird as background for himself and his father, and that detail makes the final scene of the essay powerful as it evokes another image from the novel. Price is also given to the literary device of developing an extended central metaphor. Possibly the best essay in this collection, \"My Science Fiction Horror Story,\" treats his experience of a vacation weekend with his preteen son as if he were traveling with an alien being from beyond the ea","PeriodicalId":23875,"journal":{"name":"Western American Literature","volume":"224 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2024-04-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140616180","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

"Pink Eye Was All the Rage": Colonial Identity Sickness in Stephen Graham Jones's The Bird Is Gone:A Monograph Manifesto "红眼病盛行"：斯蒂芬-格雷厄姆-琼斯《鸟儿走了：专著宣言》中的殖民地身份病

IF 0.2 3区文学

Western American Literature Pub Date : 2024-04-18 DOI: 10.1353/wal.2024.a924877

Sara Spurgeon

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引用次数: 0

Outback and Out West: The Settler-Colonial Environmental Imaginary by Tom Lynch (review) 内陆和西部：汤姆-林奇（Tom Lynch）的《定居者-殖民者的环境想象》（评论

IF 0.2 3区文学

Western American Literature Pub Date : 2024-04-18 DOI: 10.1353/wal.2024.a924892

Alex Trimble Young

{"title":"Outback and Out West: The Settler-Colonial Environmental Imaginary by Tom Lynch (review)","authors":"Alex Trimble Young","doi":"10.1353/wal.2024.a924892","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/wal.2024.a924892","url":null,"abstract":"In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:\u0000 Reviewed by: <ul> <li> Outback and Out West: The Settler-Colonial Environmental Imaginary by Tom Lynch </li> <li> Alex Trimble Young </li> </ul> Tom Lynch, Outback and Out West: The Settler-Colonial Environmental Imaginary. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2022. 348 pp. Hardcover, $60; e-book, $60. The importation of Australian settler colonial theory into the US academy has occasioned a surge of scholarly exchange between the United States and Australia during the last two decades. This exchange has not, however—with a few happy exceptions—been accompanied by the widespread adaptation of the transnational comparative method that produced that theory. This state of affairs makes Tom Lynch's Outback and Out West: The Settler-Colonial Environmental Imaginary an especially welcome addition to transnational research on the literature of the US West, environmental humanities, and settler colonial studies. In this thoroughly researched comparative study of settler environmental writing in the two storied and arid regions named in his title, Lynch engages settler colonial studies not as a source of theoretical dogma but as a method for his challenging and original comparative close readings. Lynch's central argument hinges on the claim that settler literary representations of the ecologies of the Outback and the West are both inflected by the settler colonial imaginary, a fantasy forged in the violence of conquest that shapes even the most seemingly benign forms of settler environmental writing. Identifying this transnational connection, Lynch argues, destabilizes not only the nationalist allegories that imagine the Outback and the West as synecdoches for the exceptional status of the nation-states of which they are a part but also countercultural claims of so much environmental [End Page 402] writing, which, he convincingly argues, can be settler colonial even when they are explicitly antinationalist. Outback and Out West makes this nuanced argument by engaging the formal traditions of ecocriticism and bioregionalism, even as Lynch's settler colonial critique unsettles some of the key assumptions of those fields. Outback and Out West calls to mind the work of ecocritics like Scott Slovic in its organization, alternating between \"field notes,\" brief travelogues narrating Lynch's personal experiences exploring the two regions he analyzes, and thematically organized chapters of comparative literary criticism. While arguably undercutting the too-often imperious authority of disinterested cultural criticism, the field notes sections also tentatively unsettle their own implicit claim on authority. Much of the prose in these personal narratives reads like the work of the white naturalists of the last century, enthusiastically documenting ","PeriodicalId":23875,"journal":{"name":"Western American Literature","volume":"200 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2024-04-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140616285","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Unknown No More: Recovering Sanora Babb eds. by Joanne Dearcopp and Christine Hill Smith (review) 不再未知：Recovering Sanora Babb eds.

IF 0.2 3区文学

Western American Literature Pub Date : 2024-04-18 DOI: 10.1353/wal.2024.a924886

Caroline Straty Kraft

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引用次数: 0

58th Western Literature Association Conference 第 58 届西部文学协会会议

IF 0.2 3区文学

Western American Literature Pub Date : 2024-04-18 DOI: 10.1353/wal.2024.a924893

{"title":"58th Western Literature Association Conference","authors":"","doi":"10.1353/wal.2024.a924893","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/wal.2024.a924893","url":null,"abstract":"In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:\u0000 <ul> <li> 58th Western Literature Association Conference </li> </ul> Click for larger view View full resolution Hope in a Hogan © Ryan Singer, 2022 Speculative Territorializations of New West Literatures Tucson, Arizona | El Conquistador Hilton Resort October 2–5, 2024 As president of the Western Literature Association for 2024, I am thrilled to announce that the WLA Conference for next year will take place from October 2–5 in Tucson, Arizona. Situated on ancestral Tohono O'odham lands known as Cuk-Ṣon and nicknamed \"the Old Pueblo\" by subsequent settlers, we were able to secure the Hilton El Conquistador Tucson Resort as our conference venue. Located in the Sonoran Desert in the foothills of the spectacular Santa Catalina Mountains, this site amplifies any perceptions inspired by these layered geographic and spatial significations. Such associations speak to the meaning and status of the American West and its dynamic (re)inscription through the storytelling processes of writing, art, filmmaking, performativity, and song. As a means of synthesizing such qualities and ideas, this conference will be focused on the theme of Speculative Territorializations of New Western Literatures. The theme is offered to stimulate thought-provoking discussions and the exploration of new insights arising from the physical and mythic landscapes of the American West, including Pacific Island borderlands, reaching beyond Jean-François Lyotard's conception of the West Coast as \"Pacific wall.\" [End Page 405] Organized around this inclusive and expansive subject, the 2024 conference aims to inspire fresh intellectual and artistic engagement with a range of relevant texts, while extending ongoing experimentations in western literature and transcending the boundaries of literary genres and temporal contexts. This theme also seeks to provide a fertile ground for playful intellectual inquiry, reflecting the vibrant enthusiasm for diverse and forward-thinking speculative futures and artistic forms, which are central to current discussions about the West and the direction of western literature, art, film, and popular culture. WLA 2024 President Billy J. Stratton For more information see www.westernlit.org/wla-conference-2024. [End Page 406] Copyright © 2024 Western Literature Association ... ","PeriodicalId":23875,"journal":{"name":"Western American Literature","volume":"43 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2024-04-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140616295","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Dancing with Disaster: Environmental Histories, Narratives, and Ethics for Perilous Times by Kate Rigby (review) 与灾难共舞：凯特-里格比（Kate Rigby）所著的《危险时代的环境历史、叙事和伦理》（评论

IF 0.2 3区文学

Western American Literature Pub Date : 2024-04-18 DOI: 10.1353/wal.2024.a924888

Andy Meyer

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引用次数: 0

Reading Aridity in Western American Literature eds. by Jada Ach and Gary Reger (review) 阅读《美国西部文学中的干旱》，Jada Ach 和 Gary Reger 编辑（评论）

IF 0.2 3区文学

Western American Literature Pub Date : 2024-04-18 DOI: 10.1353/wal.2024.a924883

Rachel L. Carazo

{"title":"Reading Aridity in Western American Literature eds. by Jada Ach and Gary Reger (review)","authors":"Rachel L. Carazo","doi":"10.1353/wal.2024.a924883","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/wal.2024.a924883","url":null,"abstract":"In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:\u0000 Reviewed by: <ul> <li> Reading Aridity in Western American Literature eds. by Jada Ach and Gary Reger </li> <li> Rachel L. Carazo </li> </ul> Jada Ach and Gary Reger, eds., Reading Aridity in Western American Literature. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2020. 296 pp. Hardcover, $133; e-book, $45. Jada Ach and Gary Reger's edited volume, Reading Aridity in Western American Literature, aims to explore the desert's nuances in literary works to demonstrate how the cultural and social imagination about deserts needs drastic transformation. The volume achieves this aim of \"reexamining the diverse ways that arid landscapes have shaped both American and global environmental imaginaries from the nineteenth century to today\" (2). Moreover, rather than just examining \"the desert\" through a single perspective, each of the chapters provides a unique way of \"seeing\" that counteracts previous, barren ways of discussing and viewing the arid world. Both editors' backgrounds well-position them for leading the volume. Ach specializes in literature and linguistics, and Reger studies (ancient) deserts. They facilitate an interdisciplinary and innovative [End Page 381] approach to real and imagined deserts that invites readers to reconsider what deserts mean and how their multifaceted nature can be integrated into contemporary society. Their overarching argument is that deserts have not only been overlooked in fiction but also in nonfiction and ecocritical writings that neglect the \"many cases [of] mounting threats\" that affect the US Southwest (3). The volume is organized into three main sections. In the first part the overarching themes are identity and belonging. In Chapter One Amy T. Hamilton explores three novels—Leslie Marmon Silko's Almanac of the Dead (1991), Rudolfo Anaya's Alburquerque (1992), and Paolo Bacigalupi's The Water Knife (2015)—and discusses the inequality and exploitation inherent in (federal) desert water management regimes and politics, highlighting the problematic and often dystopian aspects that result from \"planned communities\" in arid environments with the aim of inspiring real-life change (35). In Chapter Two Quinn Grover reveals the paradoxes of \"community and individualism\" (46) in Elmer Kelton's The Time It Never Rained (1973): the paradigms of \"the Western\" do not neatly coincide with real environmental and communal devastation, yet the characters' natures and their claims to protect the community allow readers to ignore inconsistencies and the \"inherent tension between the arid western landscapes in which Westerns are set and the metanarratives of the West as frontier and individualist paradise\" (48). Thus Grover's examination reveals the dangers of imprecisely reading desert narratives and neglectin","PeriodicalId":23875,"journal":{"name":"Western American Literature","volume":"31 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2024-04-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140616284","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Young, Tough, Beautiful, and a Little Bit Crazy: The Forestry of Norman Maclean's Prose in USFS 1919: The Ranger, The Cook, and a Hole in the Sky 年轻、坚韧、美丽、有点疯狂：1919 年美国联邦林业局的诺曼-麦克林散文集》（The Forestry of Norman Maclean's Prose in USFS 1919）：护林员、厨师和天空中的一个洞

IF 0.2 3区文学

Western American Literature Pub Date : 2024-04-18 DOI: 10.1353/wal.2024.a924879

Thomas Kaye

{"title":"Young, Tough, Beautiful, and a Little Bit Crazy: The Forestry of Norman Maclean's Prose in USFS 1919: The Ranger, The Cook, and a Hole in the Sky","authors":"Thomas Kaye","doi":"10.1353/wal.2024.a924879","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/wal.2024.a924879","url":null,"abstract":"In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:\u0000 <ul> <li> Young, Tough, Beautiful, and a Little Bit CrazyThe Forestry of Norman Maclean's Prose in USFS 1919: The Ranger, The Cook, and a Hole in the Sky </li> <li> Thomas Kaye (bio) </li> </ul> <blockquote> \"It's a swell book. What I couldn't ever understand was what good the sword would do. It would have to stay edge up all the time because if it went over flat you could roll right over it and it wouldn't make any trouble.\" \"It's a symbol,\" Bill said. \"Sure,\" said Nick, \"but it isn't practical.\" —Ernest Hemingway, \"The Three-Day Blow,\" In Our Time </blockquote> This article will examine the \"world of the woods\" that has, for so long, been relegated to the furthest of backdrops in studies of Norman Maclean's writing (Maclean, \"An Incident\" 120). The novella USFS 1919: The Ranger, The Cook, and a Hole in the Sky will be the sole focus in this reading of Maclean's woods. It is a world best studied by analyzing the forestry of Maclean's prose. This term—\"the forestry of his prose\"—denotes both his writing about forestry and his craft of writing prose as an art akin to forestry. Forest ecologist Hamish Kimmins begins his definition of forestry by describing it as \"the art, science and practice of managing forested landscapes\" (49). By reading for the forestry of Maclean's prose, then, I will explore the art that has sprung from managing forested landscapes. In an interview with Studs Terkel in 1976 Maclean said of this world of the woods: \"everything was hand and horse . . . it was a world that was infinitely beautiful and very tough, and it's hard at times to tell the toughness from the beauty, it was a tough kind of beauty\" (00:03:07—00: 03:45). In this evocation of \"a world of hand [End Page 349] and horse\" Maclean's appreciation of skilled labor captures in miniature the complex relationship between beauty and utility that is at the heart of Maclean's forestry and a key concern of this article. With beauty and utility in mind, it should be noted that the forestry of Norman Maclean's prose does not necessarily involve descriptions of trees, but rather the hands-on business of working in the forest: a world of labor and social relationships. In contemporary ecocriticism it might seem jarring to discuss the beauty inherent in utilizing the woods. The statement Maclean makes in his speech \"An Incident\" that \"just watching a sawyer at work in the woods is . . . an art experience\" (120) could appear horrifying to someone suffering from what Aldo Leopold describes as \"one of the penalties of an ecological education . . . that one lives alone in a world of wounds\" (197). Surely the sawyer is inflicting another wound (just as surely as the tree has fallen)? Until recently, part of the problem has been, as David Fairer describes wh","PeriodicalId":23875,"journal":{"name":"Western American Literature","volume":"111 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2024-04-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140616128","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Steinbeck's Imaginarium: Essays on Writing, Fishing, and Other Critical Matters by Robert DeMott (review) 斯坦贝克的想象世界：罗伯特-德莫特（Robert DeMott）撰写的《关于写作、钓鱼及其他批评事项的论文》（评论

IF 0.2 3区文学

Western American Literature Pub Date : 2024-04-18 DOI: 10.1353/wal.2024.a924887

Jessica Colleen Pérez López

{"title":"Steinbeck's Imaginarium: Essays on Writing, Fishing, and Other Critical Matters by Robert DeMott (review)","authors":"Jessica Colleen Pérez López","doi":"10.1353/wal.2024.a924887","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/wal.2024.a924887","url":null,"abstract":"In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:\u0000 Reviewed by: <ul> <li> Steinbeck's Imaginarium: Essays on Writing, Fishing, and Other Critical Matters by Robert DeMott </li> <li> Jessica Colleen Pérez López </li> </ul> Robert DeMott, Steinbeck's Imaginarium: Essays on Writing, Fishing, and Other Critical Matters. Albuquerque: U of New Mexico P, 2022. 200 pp. Hardcover, $45; e-book $45. Robert DeMott's Steinbeck's Imaginarium: Essays on Writing, Fishing, and Other Critical Matters takes readers on the pinnacle of a journey achieved through his lifelong scholarly study of the author John Steinbeck; this book could be described as a memoir of literary criticism: a metalevel analysis of what can be gleaned through a dedicated inquiry into the oeuvre of a single author. Rich in details which could only be put together after multiple decades of Steinbeck scholarship and collaboration, Imaginarium offers something beyond the usual critical analysis by holistically investigating Steinbeck as a single author to offer an unexplored glimpse through little-known details interwoven throughout his novels to provide vital insight into the author's life and work. DeMott engages with Steinbeck through four distinct parts [End Page 392] in Imaginarium. He begins with the most personal (and in-depth) chapter, \"Half a Century with Steinbeck,\" to unpack his discovery of Steinbeck, and, in turn, the direction Steinbeck provided for his lifelong academic pursuits. Intriguingly, DeMott maps connections to western places like Central California, which, he argues, transform Steinbeck into a unique \"cultural or human geographer and his books examples of literary cartography\" (15). Next, \"The Place We Have Arrived\" looks at Steinbeck's continual experimentation to reach across disciplinary boundaries toward wider audiences. DeMott notes, \"Steinbeck expected we would talk back, breach boundaries, and become, in short, not merely consumers of culture, but its participants\" (50). According to DeMott, rather than just observe, Steinbeck felt himself pulled toward exploration of ecosystems with friend and scientist Ed Ricketts in their collaboration through The Log from the Sea of Cortez, which rippled into his subsequent works of fiction. Following DeMott's examination surrounding the interdisciplinary pursuits of Steinbeck, \"Private Narrative/Public Texts\" studies his addiction to writing with the tangled connections between his works of fiction and three marriages. While relationships provided unpredictability Steinbeck could not foresee, his writing provided stability that he could see and matured into unique visual abilities as DeMott observes: \"Steinbeck's critically acclaimed visual ability, however, his excellence in describing landscape, for instance, may have its source in [an] innate visual s","PeriodicalId":23875,"journal":{"name":"Western American Literature","volume":"22 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2024-04-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140616187","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0