Frontier Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be

The John R. Milton Writers’ Conference theme was “frontier nostalgia.” You don’t have to be a westerner to be nostalgic for a West that never was. You could be German.

In Kent Meyers’s novel, The Work of Wolves, Willi, a young German steeped in Native American lore, comes to South Dakota to learn more from real Indians. He admits to Ted (a real Indian) that in Germany there are Indianer clubs. Ted can’t quite believe it, asking if there really are “a bunch of Germans whose hobby is bein Indian?” Willi admits he’s in one of these clubs, which is how he learned to speak Lakota. In a funny twist, Ted admits that he’s part of a super-secret reservation society. “We get together and dance polkas. We got accordions. We wear leather pants and drink beer out’ve those big glasses, what’re they called, steins? It’s called the Germaner Society. We’re hobby Germans.” Willi feels a little foolish. The scene ends with Ted saying: “You oughta see what the Frencher Club does.”

Kent read from that scene and a few others at the keynote reading Oct. 29 at the conference at the University of South Dakota in Vermillion. The novel’s being read widely for the “One State, One Book” program in S.D.

It’s just one writer’s take on the theme. Canadian Sean Johnston’s novel offers a new look at Jack Shaefer’s Shane. Darcy Lipp-Acord of Weston, Wyo., writes about her nostalgia for the South Dakota places settled by her ancestors while she celebrates her new life on the contemporary Wyoming frontier north of Gillette. Vince Gotera settled in the U.S. from west to east. He lives and teaches at Northern Iowa University in Cedar Falls. He grew up in San Francisco, but his family comes from the Philippines. His chapbook Ghost Wars explores U.S. imperialism from his vantage point as a third-generation soldier. In her reading Saturday afternoon, USD prof (and WYO native) Lee Ann Roripaugh read nature-oriented poetry and also explored her Japanese roots. 

The conference offered an academic track along with the literary one. One of the most interesting sessions explored the HBO series Deadwood. I learned from USD Ph.D. candidate Brian Twenter that the show may not be as revisionist as people think, especially when it comes to the portrayal of Indians. In its first two seasons, viewers see two Native Americans. One if a severed head, brought to Deadwood for a $50 bounty. The other is a warrior who fights one of the settlers and is killed brutally, his face smashed beyond recognition. While series creator David Milch offers a frank portrait of the outlaw frontier settlement, and the dialogue is sprinkled liberally with four- and ten-letter words, he still seems to regard Indians as faceless, headless ciphers.

On Saturday afternoon, I read two fiction pieces. One, which I sarcastically titled “How the West Was Won,” focuses on hyperactive immigrants along the Oregon Trail circa 1857. The other, “Call Me Robert,” is a new 2,500-word story about an aging cowboy who gets a chance to be in a revisionist documentary about the West. The cowboy turns the tables on the hip young film makers – one from L.A. and the other from Sweden – during a cattle branding. The audience of about 40 laughed in the right places. And I found a few spots in the text that need work.

That evening, as I listened to Kent read about Lakota-speaking Germans and Indianer clubs, I thought about my fictional creations. It’s odd to note how many outsiders come West to give their spin to our histories. I don’t mind that, really, having traveled to exotic spots such as Florida and Maine and Arizona to interpret them through my western-tinged sensibilities. I’m a product of the urban West, and have my own twisted sense of the region’s nostalgia. That was one of the great things about the Milton conference. A collection of observances of the West by writers who are from here or who have devoted a portion of their creative lives to the region. My next step is to read through the stack of books I bought. First one will be The Work of Wolves. I need to find out more about Ted’s Frencher Club.

--Michael Shay, Nov. 1, 2005