Robert Laxalt: The Voice of the Basques in American Literature by David Río

Abstract

BOOK R E VIE W S 3 2 9 its soundtrack identified in the opening credits as “based on American folk songs” (49); The Searchers and its fusion of self-consciously American classical music derived from Roy Harris, Aaron Copland, and the guitar-strumming Sons of the Pioneers; and as conclusion, Cheyenne Autumn (1964), for which Ford insisted on researching authentic Cheyenne songs and chants. He seemed increasingly to resist the trend toward a symphonic West, hence his scores were often “something of a battlefield” (17); one studio executive notes in a letter to a perhaps miffed Mr. Miller that “Mr. Ford leans to not too professional singing, and would like to utilize colored voices” (191). But in the final cut, Cheyenne songs appeared in only six minutes of soundtrack. Late in his career, it seems, “studios ... [had] turned a deaf ear” to Ford and his music (196). Robert Laxalt: The Voice of the Basques in American Literature. By David Rio. Translated by Kristin Addis. Foreword by William A. Douglass. Reno: Center for Basque Studies, University of Nevada, Reno, 2007. 190 pages, $24-95. Reviewed by Cheryll Glotfelty University of Nevada, Reno The study of western American literature has embraced multiculturalism in its choice of texts and critical approaches. However, one ethnic group contin­ ues to elude sustained critical attention: the Basques, who immigrated to the American West in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, taking up jobs low on the totem pole of desirability and status—to wit, sheepherding. Author Robert Laxalt gave Basques a voice in his classic work Sweet Promised Land (1957), a poignant story that opens with the memorable sentence, “My father was a sheepherder, and his home was the hills” (1). Sweet Promised Land inspired the first Western Basque Festival in Sparks, Nevada, in 1959, which in turn spawned similar Basque festivals popular throughout the West today. Laxalt, who died in 2001, published seventeen books, founded and directed the University of Nevada Press, and helped establish the Basque Studies Program at the University of Nevada, Reno. His books, set in Nevada and in the Basque country straddling France and Spain, explore themes of immigration, ethnic identity, family, community, place, and traditional Basque culture. Laxalt’s works received strong reviews often comparing him to Ernest Hemingway and John Steinbeck. Two of his books were nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, and one was named a notable book of the year by the American Library Association. Despite Laxalt’s literary achievements, he has been curiously absent from critical studies of American and western American literature. The critical dis­ covery of Laxalt and of Basque American literature is being spearheaded from Spain, thanks to the work of David Rio, a professor of North American litera­ ture at the Universidad del Pais Vasco (University of the Basque Country). 3 3 0 W e s t e r n A m e r ic a n L it e r a t u r e F a l l 2 0 0 8 Rio’s Robert Laxalt: La voz de los vascos en la literatura norteamericana (2002) is the first book-length study of Laxalt’s writing, recently translated into English and published in the United States to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of Sweet Promised Land. Only two of Laxalt’s books are available in Basque-language editions, and only a few have been translated into Spanish. Hence, Rio’s study is of necessity descriptive, offering plot summaries, literary analyses, and biographical infor­ mation. Particular strengths include Rio’s extensive research, which includes the Robert Laxalt papers at the University of Nevada, Reno; English-, Spanish-, and Basque-language articles and reviews; and interviews that Rio conducted in the 1990s with Laxalt, his family members, and close colleagues. Rio’s readings are sensitive and skillful, adept at interpreting motifs of initiation, contextualizing immigrant identity, and revealing the aesthetics of some of Laxalt’s more kaleidoscopic texts. At the same time, Rio’s willingness to be critical has to overcome his friendship with Laxalt, and his focus on the role played by Basques in Laxalt’s stories inevitably obscures other elements of Laxalt’s multi­ faceted work, including his critically acclaimed novel...