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To recap our past few weeks spent with Timothy Egan's The Worst Hard Time: the initial disaster set-up was working for us (collect all the characters, watch as they fail to heed dire warnings, shake heads as rain stops coming and wheat stops growing), but Seattlest Michael questioned whether people could really relate to the days of mud-houses and not eating and all that.
What we hadn't thought along the way was that Egan's book was hyperbolic. In fact, given the impossible to ignore connection of the Dust Bowl to recent worldwide events (Southeast Asian tsunami and Katrina to name two), we've been surprised so far that Egan has let us draw those conclusions on our own. But maybe he need not point that out to us, perhaps his readers are wise enough to puzzle that non-puzzle for ourselves. Perhaps the best route was to simply describe this event in all its gory detail. Well, not according to the New York Times' review:
The book is, for the most part, thrilling. But Egan trips himself up with redundant outrage and with iterations of superlatives: the High Plains are "the best grassland in the world" and also "the greatest grassland under the heavens." The bison is "the finest grass-eating creature on four legs," and it ate "the richest sod on earth." The author takes far too many stabs at explaining why anyone opted to stay in the Dust Bowl, instead of following the Joads, and he slips from inventive, wonder-filled descriptions of the landscape to pure bluster (the native grassland species were "a perfect fit for a big neighborhood of tough winds and unforgiving sun") and cowboy talk (a town "where dreams took flight on the last snort of a dying horse," people "who believed in tomorrow because it was all they had in the bank").
We feel the NYT was reaching for some criticism with that one. This is a disaster tale, people. The day the worst dust storm stampeded across the plains is historically referred to as "Black Sunday." We'll forgive Egan the occasional superlatives in exchange for the slow dramatic build-up they provide.
We also suspect he knows hyperbole when he sees it. Last week we made brief mention of Dalton Texan editor John McCarty, prompting Seattlest Michael to ask what is it with these Texans and their response to natural disaster. But we have to ask: what is it with these Presidents, and their response instead? From a brief profile of McCarty, we find this gem of a quote from Roosevelt:
"You and I know many farmers in many states are trying to make both ends meet on land not fit for agriculture," he said, "But if they want to do that, I take it, it's their funeral."Which got us wondering: Roosevelt's callousness not withstanding (and his inability at that point in time to admit his administration's role in creating the situation in the first place), what responsibility do the people who live in a disaster-prone area bear? We're not talking Katrina here, we're just wondering the same thing we've always wondered about people who live in Florida: why in the hell do people still stay after each successive hurricane? Why does anyone stay? And what responsibility does the government have towards those who can't afford to do otherwise? McCarty with his hyperbole and bravado guiled a large number of people to stay, which certainly felt like the most purely and defiantly American thing to him at the time, but at what point is it wise to cut your losses and leave?
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The NYT may not be being terribly fair to Egan there: I took most of that hyperbole as being related to all the marketing to homesteaders and real estate speculators, illustrating the language of the time. There are plenty of other, soberer descriptions of what was going on.
I wondered why people stayed, too. The ones who got out got the fancy novel and movie treatment, but 2/3 of them just stayed put. I can't help but think it was related to 1) the idea that you weren't nobody if you didn't have your own land, and b) the fact that so many of these people were dirt-poor. They literally had nowhere else to go, and no way to get there.
And of course, the first few years, people kept thinking things would have to turn around.
I think a big part of the reluctance to leave is the emotional attachment so many of us have to "home"--especially a home you struggled hard to create.
When I was just out of college, my mother was in the last stages of a terminal illness that would soon take her life. This was her personal-size natural disaster. I tried to convince her to move in with me. It was the most rational choice; she needed someone to help her with the most basic human functions when the nurses weren't around and I could spend more time with her at the end than I would have been able to if I had to fight rush-hour traffic after work every day to drive to her house.
But she wouldn't leave. Even though she knew on some level that staying meant her quality of life would probably be reduced dramatically (it was), that her pain would be more extreme (it was), and her anxiety more persistent (it was), she did not want to leave her home.
In the end, she died in a hospital--not in her home or my apartment.
The Times has a history of wanting books to be something that they aren't--Egan is clearly attempting popular history here--he isn't, for better or worse, doing much deep thinking about what the disaster means, what it meant, or anything else...and that's ultimately sort of dissatisfying. Unlike a historian like Simon Schama or Alan Taylor or David Hackett Fischer, who'd do a little bit more deep investigation, and have more of a thesis, Egan is just a conduit, bringing this story to life.
I would've liked to see some more investigation, though, especially in the case of the hyping newspaperman. How much did he have invested in the town? Did other newspaper people make similarly outlandish claims? You're fairly shouting at these people to leave--like the girl in the horror movie who investigates that strange sound in the dark garage--but they don't, and people die--how much responsibilities do the newspapers bear for that?
In the end, you feel just as confused as the people who lived through the era, which may be Egan's intent...but other than being a cracking story, I'm not sure how much value the book has...It's really the non-fiction equivalent of a Louis L'amour novel (p.s. I LOVE Louis L'Amour)
That's an interesting point Seth. I'm torn on how much Egan has to spell his thesis out to his readers (to me, at least, its clear he has one). The Times had something to say about that as well: "Perhaps stung by critiques of ecocentrism in Lasso the Wind, his 1998 book about the New West, Egan here refrains from making overt parallels between the false environmental steps of the 30's and the false steps of today. But he does blame the government outright for setting the Dust Bowl's stage: clearing the land of bison to make way for cattle, offering incentives that lured settlers to plow, stimulating wartime demands and encouraging unsustainable practices."
Popular history, or narrative non-fiction, or whatever you want to call it--how much does it need to lean on the storytelling vs. the conclusion drawing? I absolutely LOVED Stephen Johnson's The Ghost Map right up until the final chapter when he abandoned his storyline (at its rightful ending) and veered off into what felt like technobabble about the current state of the world and maps and Google, and connectedness and...argh. I was happy drawing those conclusions myself based on his expertly recounted narratives of 19th century London. It was all in there, he didn't need to hit his readers over the head at the end, and for me the book fell a bit flat as a result.