Seattlest Book Club: The Pretty Bad Sorta Difficult Time

April 20, 2007

To recap our past few weeks spent with Timothy Egan's The Worst Hard Time: the initial disaster set-up was working for us (collect all the characters, watch as they fail to heed dire warnings, shake heads as rain stops coming and wheat stops growing), but Seattlest Michael questioned whether people could really relate to the days of mud-houses and not eating and all that.

What we hadn't thought along the way was that Egan's book was hyperbolic. In fact, given the impossible to ignore connection of the Dust Bowl to recent worldwide events (Southeast Asian tsunami and Katrina to name two), we've been surprised so far that Egan has let us draw those conclusions on our own. But maybe he need not point that out to us, perhaps his readers are wise enough to puzzle that non-puzzle for ourselves. Perhaps the best route was to simply describe this event in all its gory detail. Well, not according to the New York Times' review:

The book is, for the most part, thrilling. But Egan trips himself up with redundant outrage and with iterations of superlatives: the High Plains are "the best grassland in the world" and also "the greatest grassland under the heavens." The bison is "the finest grass-eating creature on four legs," and it ate "the richest sod on earth." The author takes far too many stabs at explaining why anyone opted to stay in the Dust Bowl, instead of following the Joads, and he slips from inventive, wonder-filled descriptions of the landscape to pure bluster (the native grassland species were "a perfect fit for a big neighborhood of tough winds and unforgiving sun") and cowboy talk (a town "where dreams took flight on the last snort of a dying horse," people "who believed in tomorrow because it was all they had in the bank").

We feel the NYT was reaching for some criticism with that one. This is a disaster tale, people. The day the worst dust storm stampeded across the plains is historically referred to as "Black Sunday." We'll forgive Egan the occasional superlatives in exchange for the slow dramatic build-up they provide.

We also suspect he knows hyperbole when he sees it. Last week we made brief mention of Dalton Texan editor John McCarty, prompting Seattlest Michael to ask what is it with these Texans and their response to natural disaster. But we have to ask: what is it with these Presidents, and their response instead? From a brief profile of McCarty, we find this gem of a quote from Roosevelt:

"You and I know many farmers in many states are trying to make both ends meet on land not fit for agriculture," he said, "But if they want to do that, I take it, it's their funeral."

Which got us wondering: Roosevelt's callousness not withstanding (and his inability at that point in time to admit his administration's role in creating the situation in the first place), what responsibility do the people who live in a disaster-prone area bear? We're not talking Katrina here, we're just wondering the same thing we've always wondered about people who live in Florida: why in the hell do people still stay after each successive hurricane? Why does anyone stay? And what responsibility does the government have towards those who can't afford to do otherwise? McCarty with his hyperbole and bravado guiled a large number of people to stay, which certainly felt like the most purely and defiantly American thing to him at the time, but at what point is it wise to cut your losses and leave?

Source : http://www.seattlest.com/archives/2007/04/20/seattlest_book_club_the_pretty_bad_sorta_difficult_time.php