John C. Van Dyke. The Desert by Peter Wild, and D’Arcy McNickle by James Ruppert, and Kenneth Rexroth by Lee Bartlett, and Edward Dorn by William McPheron, and Ernest Haycox by Richard W. Etulain

Abstract

Reviews 163 John C. VanDyke. The Desert. ByPeter Wild (Boise State University: Western Writers Series, No. 82, 1988. 52 pages, $2.95.) D’Arcy McNickle. By James Ruppert. (Boise State University: Western Writers Series, No. 83, 1988. 55 pages, $2.95.) Kenneth Rexroth. By Lee Bartlett. (Boise State University: Western Writers Series, No. 84, 1988. 50 pages, $2.95.) Edward Dorn. By William McPheron. (Boise State University: Western Writers Series, No. 85, 1988. 53 pages, $2.95.) Ernest Haycox. By Richard W. Etulain. (Boise State University: Western Writers Series, No. 86, 1988. 49 pages, $2.95.) The most recent in the Western Writers Series, these five monographs exemplify the series’strengths and weaknesses. Because of the fifty-page limit, one can hardly expect more than a quick biography, a somewhat superficial analysis of the canon, and a placement in the western literary hierarchy. Strong personalities seldom emerge from these works. Yet critics who care that feeling and thinking people wrote the works in question will find ways to reveal their subjects. They will also succinctly analyze works, revealing the breadth and depth of human discovery, the unique angle of vision that informs the author’sworks. When I read these booklets, I want to know something about the subjects aspeople, and Arny Skov’scover designs are interesting head sketches:a young, well-mustached, slender—even delicate—Van Dyke in Victorian suit is pro­ filed against saguaro cactus and buttes; Ed Dorn, baggy-eyed and stern, looks every bit the hero of a B stock Western and is sandwiched between two gunfighters ; McNickle looks like a bemused, transplanted Walter Mitty against meadow, pines, and mountains; Haycox, with ever so slight a grin, stares forward across two lead stagecoach horses; Rexroth has no western picture, just a frontal sketch of a professorial man in sport shirt and coat—but his dancing eyes, Mephistopheles grin, and wiry hair make him the only one of the five who appears to be any fun. Most of these impressions are borne out in the five books. Of the five, Van Dyke and Haycox are the best, though each for different reasons. One is quickly enamored of Van Dyke for the person he was and the vision of the desert he had, and Wild for revealing him with passionate objec­ tivity. It isobvious that he appreciates Van Dyke—istruly curious about him— and his first few sentences force the reader to confront Van Dyke’s intentions: During the late spring of 1899, a strange figure made his way east­ ward through windy San Gorgonio Pass and disappeared into the thousands of square miles of desert beyond. He didn’t know where he was going, his horses carried only Spartan supplies, and, to top off his prospects, he was seriously ill. The few men who watched him leave civilization shook their heads. (5) 164 Western American Literature Wild quickly places The Desert (1901), the groundbreaking book lauding for the first time the vast, arid, shunned desert, in the tradition of John Wesley Powell and Captain Clarence E. Dutton, and as a forerunner to works of Mary Austin and George Wharton James, Edwin Corle, Joseph Wood Krutch, and Edward Abbey. But what Wild does next makes the monograph successful. He simply asks, “What kind of a man was John C. Van Dyke?” He agrees that one can appre­ ciate The Desert without knowing Van Dyke. But “to concern ourselves with the central issue of his intelligence and esthetic life, what was the relationship between his most celebrated book and Van Dyke’s views of art and nature? With such questions, we are searching not only for the matrix of The Desert but for the shapes of the whole man. It turns out that they are largely one in the same” (11). Wild spends fourteen pages discussingVan Dyke’sDutch and Scotch-Irish heritage, indicating how “The refinement of his books results from conflicts in his background” (23). He shows how “romantic Van Dyke was a hardbitten realist when it came to the violence of nature’s lottery” (33). The search, whether in art, landscape, or life, is for unity, and Wild effectively argues that Van Dyke’s highest expression of unity...