A call for re-emergence of Midwestern culture
In Nebraska, nearly all the state’s most heralded literary figures — Willa Cather, John Neihardt and more — begrudged what they viewed, in the words of author Mari Sandoz, as the “intellectual and cultural dictatorship they foisted upon us the day the first malcontent crossed the Alleghenies.” The complaints boil down to a simple question: What makes literature out here any less important than back there?
The lay reader may be surprised to find there are tangible roots to the denigration of Midwestern literary and historical regionalism, and Jon K. Lauck, founder of the Midwestern History Association, has dutifully mapped them out in his new book, “From Warm Center to Ragged Edge: The Erosion of Midwestern Literary and Historical Regionalism, 19201965.” As the country reawakens following the recent presidential election to this so-called forgotten territory, Lauck’s final plea for “a bit more fire in the regionalist belly” couldn’t be better timed.
The Midwest had lost its claim as the nation’s moral center by the 1930s. Following the release of several now-canonical works, including Sinclair Lewis’ “Main Street” and Sherwood Anderson’s “Winesburg, Ohio,” critic Carl Van Doren published an essay in The Nation positing what came to be known as “The Revolt from the Village” thesis. Van Doren praised these writers for speaking truth to the “cult of the village” and exposing the hinterland’s “abundant feast of scandal.” Though all of these authors would later reject his argument, Van Doren’s thesis, bolstered by megaphone intellectuals like H.L. Mencken, persisted. Never mind that it ignored writers like Hamlin Garland, whose work reflected a more sanguine or simply less rebellious relationship to the region.
“In addition to leaving a residue of disdain behind that continues to obscure the view of the rural Midwest,” Lauck writes, “privileging the cultural rebels and expatriates compels a privileging of urbanism and rural dislocation and a discounting of regional attachments.”
Lauck focuses the second half of his book on the fading study of Midwestern history, and though similarly well researched, it bears a more insider feel, trudging through the rise and fall of various Midwestern historical associations to reflect the field’s shifting attitudes. Without the cameos of popular figures like F. Scott Fitzgerald, the text decelerates in these last chapters but never quite stalls.
Though Lauck hasn’t written a polemical text — he also serves as a senior adviser to U.S. Sen. John Thune, R-S.D. — a conservative point of view seems to inform “From Warm Center to Ragged Edge.” In examining Van Doren’s village revolt thesis, Lauck unfortunately spends little time questioning the merit of the original argument. Defending “Main Street,” Lewis said: “If I didn’t love Main Street, why would I write of it so hotly?” Certainly, Lauck could have acknowledged some of the unfortunate truths that inspired “Main Street” and other works without contradicting himself. Brain drain was — and is — a serious issue in rural states; it is partially that limited marketplace of ideas that inspired the so-called village revolt. And while Lauck argues that a new Midwestern history must make room for previously ignored voices, notably AfricanAmericans and Latinos, he makes no similar mention of women or refugees or the LGBTQ community.
Nevertheless, “From Warm Center to Ragged Edge” offers a compelling analysis of a region that has been disparaged by coastal culture. It’s a stirring argument for a second wave of both Midwestern literary and historical regionalism. In the words of the great Kansasborn poet William Stafford, “It is good to welcome any region you live in or come to or think of, for that is where life happens to be — right where you are.”