True West: Myth & Mending In The American West / Betsy Gaines Quammen

Historian and author Betsy Gaines Quammen returns to the podcast to discuss her new book, True West: Myth and Mending on the Far Side of America, published by Torrey House Press. Building on her previous book, American Zion, Gaines Quammen follows the historical roots and trajectories of troubling political trends in the Western United States, decoupling the myths and material realities of the landscapes and the peoples and the more-than-human lives that occupy them.

The American West: what images, feelings, and archetypes live large in the mind about such a place? For me, for good or for ill, it’s these things: The grit of rugged individuals—white, male—seeking independence, liberty, freedom in all the wrong ways, in all the wrong places. The enduring hollow promises of Manifest Destiny. Wild, frothing rapids of untamed rivers and the canyons cut and carved by them, immaculate layers of deep Earth time made plain to see. The smell of sagebrush after much-needed rain. Forests, clearcut and intact alike. Soaring mountain ranges sawing the clear, wide skies into two, three, four. Elk stalked by wolves. Cattle stalked by wolves. Guns. Random shots fired. Mounted heads crowding the walls of the homes of stoic men. US flags. Don’t tread on me flags. Militia bumper stickers. Racist school mascots. Ghost towns. Mining towns. The reservations. Fields of crops grown to feed a nation. The rancid smell of manure. Public lands. Enclosed lands. Pastures and fences. Long drives. Ugly fucking trucks driven by uglier fucking men. White grievance politics writ large. Ugly, depressed towns. Large, manicured lawns and gardens. Generous, unguarded people.

I no longer live in Southern Idaho because I felt the need to leave. But I still miss the smell of rain in the high deserts. I miss the dry, cold winters, and how crisp the air feels in my lungs as the freeze of winter sets in. I miss a certain type of silence that you can only find there, when the wind calms, and you’re far enough away from anything that hums or bangs. The West is many things. It is stolen land, and the settler logic that underlies everything becomes apparent once you learn to see it. That’s true across the vast expanse of the Americas, but has a particularly crude manifestation there, one that belies how recently white settlers arrived, the myths we tell ourselves about that journey, and worse, the cultural amnesia that pervades everything. Settlements are unsettling places. 

When I finally sat down to prepare this episode, these are the thoughts that came up when I contemplated Gaines Quammen’s take on the subject. What is the West? What is True West? 

“True West explores myths of the West and how, if left unexamined, they distort the realities of the present and exacerbate polarizations. These misperceptions about land, politics, liberty, and self-determination threaten the wellbeing of western communities overrun by newcomers seeking a dream—and the country, unless America recognizes the dangers of building a national identity on illusion. Gaines Quammen interrogates it all by listening, carefully, to people from varying political and cultural perspectives as she seeks to reconcile the deep anger and broad misunderstandings that linger amid myths that define and impede the West and America.”

Bio:

Betsy Gaines Quammen is a historian and writer. She received a PhD from Montana State University where she studied religion, history and the philosophy of science. Her dissertation focused on Mormon history and the roots of armed public land conflicts occurring in the United States. She is fascinated at how religious views shape relationships to landscape. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, New York Daily News, and the History News Network. She is the author of American Zion: Cliven Bundy, God, and Public Lands in the West and True West: Myth and Mending on the Far Side of America. Betsy lives in Montana with her husband, writer David Quammen, three giant dogs, a sturdy cat, and a lanky rescue python.

Episode Notes:

Purchase a copy of True West from Bookshop.

Learn more about Betsy and her work at her website.

Music produced by Epik The Dawn.