Is There a Midwestern Literature?

Abstract

THE MORE TRIED to bear down on the question, Is there a Mid western literature?, the more identified with the medium in James Thurber's famous cartoon of the seance in which the rapt clairvoyant tells her client, I can't get in touch with your uncle but there's a horse here that wants to say hello. Other attractions and distractions kept suggest ing themselves, ways of describing (and dismissing) Midwestern literature with, for instance, one or another list of clich?s commonly ascribed to the region. Could Midwestern literature be a homespun web of small towns, general stores, flat lands, immigrant ancestors, middle-class families and conservative tendencies? (Clich?s, to earn their weight in fool's gold, must possess a fraction of?certainly not a whole?truth.) And was plagued with the vague feeling that after all my brooding, I'd do little more than arrive at another characterizing, seemingly less clich?-ridden list of Midwestern literature's attributes.