Nothing but Blue Skies by Thomas McGuane

Abstract

Reviews 283 lack of coherence as a book by offering many fine poems that promise good things to come ifNewman continues to write poetry. I have less to say about Fred Candelaria’s Preludes & Fugues, a book that doubtlesswillappeal to many readers, but one Ifeel istoo interested in affected allusion, in wit—and in a kind ofcerebral sensibility that values discursiveness, formal fragmentation, and nature as an analogue for the mind hiding behind generality to avoid particulars about human situations. Manyofthese poems are epigrammaticwithoutbeing pithy or insightful, as in “buddhist nun”:“none but buddha/will ever/know your beauty.”Candelaria usually utilizes a rather generic imagery—and when it is more felt than de­ ployed for a philosophical point, the imagery can be too easy: “not a honey­ moon/more like vinegar than rain.”Such phrases and lines as “timeless perfec­ tion”and “drowned greeks/phoenicians/romans”tarnish the poetry. Wearied modernism hangs like barnacles from such poems as “sea sketches.” The only poem that held promise for me was “The Market,”but its consid­ eration of commodified sexuality was ruined by abstraction, tiresome rhyme, leering, and an unconvincing attitude on the part of a woman who knows herself to be a sex object. It is possible that a reader who values wit and an obviously learned intelli­ gence may find much more in Preludes & Fuguesthan I have. I hope so. CHRISTOPHER COKINOS Kansas State University Nothing but Blue Skies. By Thomas McGuane. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin/ Seymour Lawrence, 1992. 349 pages, $21.95.) Nothing but Blue Skies, Thomas McGuane’s new novel, offers a provocative and sweeping vision of the post-Reagan West, a landscape blighted by environ­ mental, economic, and spiritual frailties. Through his depiction of Frank Copenhaver, the book’s central character, McGuane seems intent on nothing less than a re-examination of the myth of the American West. McGuane skill­ fullymanipulates the conventional iconography, employing a disturbinglycom­ plete set of traditional western images: this is a book about land and livestock speculation, about fly-fishing and Montana rivers, about barroom brawls, about male camaraderie, about selling the family ranch—in short, about all forms of western cultural inheritance. Frank Copenhaver is an ex-hippie businessman whose wife and luck have deserted him, a man trying to understand the burden of his unusable past. He sees himselfas a “transitional figure”caught between generations and between value systems: he looks in one direction and sees obsolete cowboyswho “spend all their time reading magazines about themselves”;he looks in another direc­ tion and sees “We, Montana,”an absurd group of demagogic activists working 284 Western American Literature “to keep any water from leaving the state, through the erection of dams and diversions.” In his search for stability Frank finds himself peeping through windows (looking for some archetypal happyAmerica),drinking too much, and abusing friendships. McGuane effectively symbolizes Frank’s decline through the parallel decline of the Kid Royale Hotel, “one of the monuments of the Montana frontier”: Frank had purchased the aging building with the hope of restoring it, but ends up renting it out as a chicken farm. McGuane’s cultural critique is superb, but in reaching this level he leaves behind a narrative that is not entirely satisfactory. When reading McGuane, perhaps the dean of contemporary Montana writing, one expects a great deal: the biting wit, the incisive commentary, the outrageous climax, the lyrical reflection. While McGuane’ssignature stylistic movements are feltin Nothingbut Blue Skies, here they are only occasionally devastating, and too often the antici­ pated peaks don’t pay off (including a disappointing father-daughter fishing scene, and a silly pig-riding episode). The periodic moments of rhetorical brilliance and wicked humor leave the rest ofthe book sounding somewhatflat. Grand in scope and perception, uneven in execution, NothingbutBlue Skies again demonstrates McGuane’s considerable literary ability, leaving hopes for still greater achievement. NATHANIEL LEWIS Harvard University Mountain Windsong: A Novel ofthe Trail ofTears. ByRobertJ. Conley. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992. 220 pages, $19.95.) When Euro-Americans of the nineteenth century looked to the West, they dreamed ofopportunity, ifnot offulfilling their God-appointed destiny. That’s quite a contrast to the Cherokees, who, even before...