Hunger for the Wild: America's Obsession with the Untamed West
Spur Award, Western Writers of America, Finalist

A Kansas Notable Book

Just what was so wild about the Wild West?

Americans have had an enduring yet ambivalent obsession with the West as both a place and a state of mind. Now one of the most knowing observers of the Western scene offers a monumental cultural and historical analysis of how ideas of wildness have shaped the ways Euro-Americans have perceived, reacted to, and acted upon the West for nearly five hundred years. Bringing the sensibility of a poet to a sweeping discussion of place, Michael L. Johnson considers how that obsession originated, how it has determined attitudes toward and activities in the West, and how it has changed over the centuries.

Investigating views of Western wildness from pre-European times until the present, Johnson tells how explorers and settlers bent on exploiting the West brought with them Old World ideas, full of muddled and even bizarre contradictions, that have defined the region in its most fundamental aspects. And he shows how those contradictory ideas were woven into an ambivalent ideology of conquest that has given us today’s degraded wilderness areas, overtaxed water supplies, and sprawling suburbs.

Brimming with word-play, personal anecdotes, and telling vignettes, Hunger for the Wild provocatively addresses a cornucopia of Western personalities, phenomena, and events. Invoking a vast array of writers and thinkers—from Claude Levi-Strauss to Black Elk to Richard Etulain—Johnson casts his critical eye on conquistadors and cowboys and revisits myths of Noble Savage and “red devil” alike. His kaleidoscopic text examines Dust Bowl woes and Wild West shows, and whether contemplating the Disneyfied frontier or the Ralphlaurenized range, he takes readers on an intellectual romp through the wilds of the contemporary West, with its UFO fanatics and postregional cowgirls.

Emphasizing his call for seeing the West as “a place of roots as well as routes,” Johnson’s tour de force marks a major contribution to the deeper history of the region and points toward a more sustainable West for the future. It should interest not only Western historians but also art and film buffs, ecocritics, cross-cultural specialists, and rodeo fans—anyone fascinated by the wild, Western-style.

1101628269
Hunger for the Wild: America's Obsession with the Untamed West
Spur Award, Western Writers of America, Finalist

A Kansas Notable Book

Just what was so wild about the Wild West?

Americans have had an enduring yet ambivalent obsession with the West as both a place and a state of mind. Now one of the most knowing observers of the Western scene offers a monumental cultural and historical analysis of how ideas of wildness have shaped the ways Euro-Americans have perceived, reacted to, and acted upon the West for nearly five hundred years. Bringing the sensibility of a poet to a sweeping discussion of place, Michael L. Johnson considers how that obsession originated, how it has determined attitudes toward and activities in the West, and how it has changed over the centuries.

Investigating views of Western wildness from pre-European times until the present, Johnson tells how explorers and settlers bent on exploiting the West brought with them Old World ideas, full of muddled and even bizarre contradictions, that have defined the region in its most fundamental aspects. And he shows how those contradictory ideas were woven into an ambivalent ideology of conquest that has given us today’s degraded wilderness areas, overtaxed water supplies, and sprawling suburbs.

Brimming with word-play, personal anecdotes, and telling vignettes, Hunger for the Wild provocatively addresses a cornucopia of Western personalities, phenomena, and events. Invoking a vast array of writers and thinkers—from Claude Levi-Strauss to Black Elk to Richard Etulain—Johnson casts his critical eye on conquistadors and cowboys and revisits myths of Noble Savage and “red devil” alike. His kaleidoscopic text examines Dust Bowl woes and Wild West shows, and whether contemplating the Disneyfied frontier or the Ralphlaurenized range, he takes readers on an intellectual romp through the wilds of the contemporary West, with its UFO fanatics and postregional cowgirls.

Emphasizing his call for seeing the West as “a place of roots as well as routes,” Johnson’s tour de force marks a major contribution to the deeper history of the region and points toward a more sustainable West for the future. It should interest not only Western historians but also art and film buffs, ecocritics, cross-cultural specialists, and rodeo fans—anyone fascinated by the wild, Western-style.

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Hunger for the Wild: America's Obsession with the Untamed West

Hunger for the Wild: America's Obsession with the Untamed West

by Michael L. Johnson
Hunger for the Wild: America's Obsession with the Untamed West

Hunger for the Wild: America's Obsession with the Untamed West

by Michael L. Johnson

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Overview

Spur Award, Western Writers of America, Finalist

A Kansas Notable Book

Just what was so wild about the Wild West?

Americans have had an enduring yet ambivalent obsession with the West as both a place and a state of mind. Now one of the most knowing observers of the Western scene offers a monumental cultural and historical analysis of how ideas of wildness have shaped the ways Euro-Americans have perceived, reacted to, and acted upon the West for nearly five hundred years. Bringing the sensibility of a poet to a sweeping discussion of place, Michael L. Johnson considers how that obsession originated, how it has determined attitudes toward and activities in the West, and how it has changed over the centuries.

Investigating views of Western wildness from pre-European times until the present, Johnson tells how explorers and settlers bent on exploiting the West brought with them Old World ideas, full of muddled and even bizarre contradictions, that have defined the region in its most fundamental aspects. And he shows how those contradictory ideas were woven into an ambivalent ideology of conquest that has given us today’s degraded wilderness areas, overtaxed water supplies, and sprawling suburbs.

Brimming with word-play, personal anecdotes, and telling vignettes, Hunger for the Wild provocatively addresses a cornucopia of Western personalities, phenomena, and events. Invoking a vast array of writers and thinkers—from Claude Levi-Strauss to Black Elk to Richard Etulain—Johnson casts his critical eye on conquistadors and cowboys and revisits myths of Noble Savage and “red devil” alike. His kaleidoscopic text examines Dust Bowl woes and Wild West shows, and whether contemplating the Disneyfied frontier or the Ralphlaurenized range, he takes readers on an intellectual romp through the wilds of the contemporary West, with its UFO fanatics and postregional cowgirls.

Emphasizing his call for seeing the West as “a place of roots as well as routes,” Johnson’s tour de force marks a major contribution to the deeper history of the region and points toward a more sustainable West for the future. It should interest not only Western historians but also art and film buffs, ecocritics, cross-cultural specialists, and rodeo fans—anyone fascinated by the wild, Western-style.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780700615018
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
Publication date: 03/14/2007
Pages: 552
Product dimensions: 6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x (d)

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Preface: A Conference in Reno

Introduction: A Wilde Wesste

Part One: A Brief History of WIld

-The Prehuman West

-Native Nature

Part Two: From the 1530s to the 1840s: The West as Waste and Promised Land

-Prelude and Overview

-Conquistadors and Colonizers: The -Spanish Encounter with Unbridled Wilderness

-The Antipode of Paradise: William Bradford and the Hatred of Wilderness

-Ravage through the Garden: The WIld according the Boone, Lewis and Clark, and Crockett

-Mountain Men and Other Explorers: The Vanguard of Western Exploitation

-Inventing the Indian: The Noble Savage

-Trails and Trials: The Inroads of Commerce

Part Three: From the 1840s to the 1890s: The West as Frontier

-Prelude and Overview

-Settlement and Its Discontents

-To California Go: The Thar in Them Thar Hills

-Reinventing the Indian: The Red Devil

-An Animal Holocaust: Wildlife Management in the Old West

-In without Knocking; The Cowboy as Wild Man

-Romancing the Gun: Outlaws and Man-Killers in Helldorado

-(En)closing the Frontier

Part Four: From the 1890s to the 1960s: The West as Region

-Prelude and Overview

-Ending the Indian: Civilization (f)or Extinction

-Thou Art Lost and Gone Forever: Postfrontier Anxiety and the Recall of the Wild

-Long Live the Weeds and the Wilderness Yet: Preserving the West

-Wild West Shows, Rodeos, and Dude Ranches: Wildness as Specious Spectacle, Ritual Reenactment, and Tenderfoot Travesty

-Dust Bowl: The Great American Desert with a Vengeance

-Re-imagining the Wildness: Modern Mediations

-Tripping the Light Dialectic: More Modern Mediations

-Derricks, Dams, Bombs, and Such: A Walk on the Dark Side of the West

-Sprawling into Western Emptiness: The Metropolitan Frontier, Suburban Borderlands, Misbegotten Middle Landscapes

Part Five: From the 1960s to the Present: The West as Postregion

-Prelude and Overview

-A Sewer Runs through It

-Where the Wild Things Aren’t: The Last of the Breed

-McWilderness: Disneyfying the Frontier

-The Computer in the Cabin: Unsettling the Nouveau West

-Wild(e) Style: Ralphlaurenizing the Range

-Once in the Saddle I Used to Go Gay: Redoing the Rodeo

-Las Vegas: Ambiguous Oasis

-Weird Weird West: Roswell and Other Landing Sites

-The Last Best Craze: Madness in Montana

-Little Hassle on the Prairie: The Issue of Wise (Non)use

-Beyond John Wayne: Bewildering Westerns and Wild Wild Texts

-Way Out Walden: Rewriting Western Nature

-The Wild Woman in the Outback: Postregional Cowgirls

-The Return of the Native: Reclaiming Identities

-Break on Through to the Other Side: The Postmodern Frontier Imperative

-Wildfire: A Taste of Authenticity

-Hunger for the Wild: Finding a True Western Heritage

-Fear and Loathing in Santa Fe: Meatspace or Virtual Reality?

-Conclusion: Some New Vision: Resolving the Western Paradox

Notes

Index

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