A Great Plains Reader

A Great Reader. Edited by Diane D. Quantic and P. Jane Hafen. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2003. Pp. xxii + 730, foreword, introduction, index of works. $70.00 cloth, $35.00 paper) As a fifteen-year resident of South Dakota, and as one who wrote a dissertation on Willa Gather, I believe that an anthology devoted to the Great in all its expanse and variety, is long overdue. Unfortunately, Diane D. Quantic and P. Jane Hafen's Great Reader is not that anthology. Despite its length, this volume simply does not do justice to the diverse issues and peoples of the Great and instead settles for reinforcing standard, outdated visions of a region that it never even clearly defines. According to the book's introduction,Toward a Definition of the Great Plains, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, and North Dakota, along with the southern portions of the Canadian provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan, form the core for any definition of the Great Plains (xvii). Yet Minnesota authors are included, most notably Garrison Keillor. The presence of pieces by Keillor is especially puzzling. The claim that he qualifies as a Great writer because although his prairie is geographically a bit east of the Great metaphorically it is familiar terrain for Great (650) comes off as a weak excuse to add a well-known humorist's work to the book. Given the nationwide popularity of Keillor's radio show, A Prairie Home Companion, one could claim that Keillor's literary terrain is metaphorically familiar to residents of a great many places, but this does not make him a Great writer any more than it makes him a New England writer. Instead of Keillor's work, why not include selections from the equally entertaining Roger Welsch, a Nebraskan? And if Minnesota is somehow on the eastern rim of the Great why not look west and encompass the near portions of Wyoming and Montana, which are equally Plains-like, so we can add in works by the well-known and often-anthologized Gretel Ehrlich? Her essay collection The Solace of Open Spaces (1986) beautifully describes Great people, land, and issues. She could also provide another female voice in the volume, which includes nearly twice as many male as female authors. It is disappointing that our Reader, however subtly or unintentionally, appears to be endorsing the longstanding stereotype of the west as somehow exclusively a white man's domain. Aside from selections by a number of Native American and a very few African American writers, pieces by persons of color are lacking. Yet the population of the Great has never been entirely homogeneous and has become increasingly less so in recent years. …

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