MOTHS FLY OUT -- SOME OF THEM "SOCIALLY TABOO."

When I started looking for items about Ivan Doig, I was a bit shocked that when I opened cupboards and drawers, moths flew out.  They had left holes.  So I sent out some email queries, but the only one who bothered to respond was Ken Egan, the executive director of the Montana Humanities program and Richard S. Wheeler, whose wife Sue Hart -- when living -- was an expert on Montana authors.  The more we talked and named names, the deeper into the quagmire we got.  Lists were a decade old and incomplete, whole categories of writers had been left out, the “map” of writers was only finished on the west side of Rockies, no thought had been given to the new medias (ebooks, long-form blogs, photo picture books, audible books) and it was hard to name people like professors of literature or reviewers who were actually searching and winnowing.  

Watch out -- here comes a list:

Sterling Holy White Mountain.  I taught both his parents. 

1.  One source said, “Montana writers are a group who were prominent at the end of the 20^th century.”  Evidently in 2001, they all packed up and moved to Portland.  That may actually be true.  Earlier, an editor at Falcon and then Pequot had said that he only had to put on the cover of a book that is was about Montana, and it would sell like flapjacks.

2.  Because Montana is "cowboysandIndians" country, it seems to be unconsciously assigned to youngsters, though the actual content of these books is often hardly for kids.  It’s something like the fascination classy businesswomen in Great Falls and over-the-hill male historians have for 19^th century bordellos.  Though something happened that  caused Jay Moynahan to break up his collection of “Soiled Dove” stories.  He’s in Spokane, but he has imitators and fans in Montana.  "Book lovers" are forever urging children to write short, shallow, admiring little essays about Montana writers.

Patricia Nell Warren daughter of the Conrad-Kohrs ranch in Deer Lodge. 

3.  An excellent writer and publisher, Patricia Nell Warren, could not be more a part of Montana history since she was born in Deer Lodge, part of the Grant-Kohrs ranch family, but she has been excluded because she writes about gays -- very well indeed.  “The Fancy Dancer” is beloved by many straights.  Prissy Montana must be related to those women who won't let their husbands move here.

Peter Rutledge Koch, another historic son of Montana, censored by the U of M

4.  Similarly, “Montana Gothic”, an underground favorite, has been left out, along with the author, Dirck Van Sickle.  (That really IS his name.)  Peter Rutledge Koch, his good friend, also goes unrecognized though he is one of the finest hand press printers in California and collaborated with Debra Earling on the fabulously elegant “The Lost Journals of Sacajawea.”  She’s on the list of authors but he is not.  

5.  As nearly as I can tell, there is no list of pictorial authors, despite the Montana concentration on geography, geology, and travels in wilderness, packed with photos.  (Bob Scriver composed three about his sculpture and artifacts:  “The Blackfeet: Artists of the Northern Plains,” “An Honest Try,” and “No More Buffalo.”)  

Kipp and Kapilow -- did you sing something? 

6.  No videos are considered to be “written.”  Neither Hollywood nor Montana video essays are seen as texts.  Maybe this is because of the parting-out of the humanities into various disciplines, which means some fall between categories.  Where to put the libretto that Darrell Kipp wrote for an “opera” about the coming of Lewis and Clark?  Something similar happens to journals and letters of all sorts. 

Barbara Richard, survivor 

7.  Incredibly painful books about child sexual abuse are allowed to quietly disappear.  Barbara Richard’s agonized books about her ferociously deranged father are more relevant today than ever (he was only fueled by alcohol -- not meth) and maybe one of the contributing factors to ongoing abuse is that we turn away from books like Barbara’s.

8.  In general, partly because the white historical books are about people we descended from and are related to, there’s been a sanitizing of many things so as not to embarrass anyone, which throws a saintly aura over rascals like Charlie Russell and makes too many Montana books into accounts both sentimental and smug.  (They DO sell!)  This is fertile ground for politicians of every stripe and those who have no defenders are not immune from demonizing.

Ward Churchill -- not from Montana and not an Indian either. 

9.  The politics of Native American history, stories, and powerful opinions -- not to mention money, water and schools -- has been pretty much sequestered according to political goals.  Genetic NA’s don’t always get to the educational level that publishers want to deal with and, anyway, publishers don’t like trouble because it doesn’t make money, so they soon lose interest.  Universities have had the same problem, so Ward Churchill was a big sign of liberal justice, until the winds changed and he became a wicked opportunist who was fired.  (I haven’t heard how the lawsuit over that ended.  If it has.)

But there is a secondary literary camp that is generally built around attacking other whites over the proper approach to Indian life and thought.  Much of it is based on French post- this or that, often insufficiently digested -- just part of the rhetorics of ressentiment and suspicion.  And a third camp, both material and literary, could be unjustly called “Germans trying to be Indians.”  Sometimes middle Euros go so far as to marry American Indians, creating some remarkable families, as Adolph Hungry Wolf has.   Or the Bruchacs. 

Adolf Hungry Wolf,  father of Blackfoot, dweller in Blackfoot Country 

10. Another phenomenon that has helped to drop me from the list of Montana writers (both as list-fodder and as a person self-identified with “Montanans”) is the greatly increased consciousness of ecological categories instead of political categories like state-boundaries.  I’ve lived and worked on both sides of the 49^th parallel and consider myself as belonging to the East Slope of the Rockies, the High Prairie, the old Blackfeet range -- from Edmonton to Yellowstone, from the Rockies to the Black Hills.  

But the dilemma is not unlike that of tribal people.  The folks who read and write, who are educated enough to know what they are doing and make the necessary contacts with agents, editors and publisher, are likely to be in the larger towns.  (There are no cities -- over a million people -- in Montana.  The whole state of Montana has a population just shy of a million.)  Many people live outdoor lives that are not conducive to coming home to write in the evening.  They already get up before dawn to do the chores.  Nevertheless Kari Linn Dell managed a decent book about her life and finds that the “horizontal” community of mostly female Romance writers is so hungry for content that they quickly embrace her with support. But her next story is set in Texas. 

Kari Lynn Dell on branding day 

The internet makes a difference if you have learned the skills and are within range of a relay tower or dial-up.  The Romance writers aren’t sure what to think about “Fifty Shades of Gray” though judging by the covers they are in favor of flirting with porn.  (Men who never wear their shirts.)  But others advertise that they are “clean” romances, like Christian romances or Amish romances, enormously popular.  There’s a genre of female-rangers-who-solve-mysteries, a little like Peter Bowen’s Metis books but with less cussing.  Publishers seem to like all these ladies’ books.

Female Montana Writers 

I’m not paying attention to publishers.  I’m not trying to publish, I don’t care whether I’m trying to write books.  I just put in my stint of blogging every morning.  In another ten years, if I’m still alive, I’ll see who’s paying attention and what they did about it.  Doig made a good living.  I don’t know how much he wrote what he wanted to write, which is my goal.

Jim Whilt, Poet of the Rockies.  He was still around when I first came.