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A Commonweal Notable Book of 2020
Finalist, Midwest Independent Book Award
Winner, Independent Publisher Awards Bronze Medal
What does the future hold for the Midwest? A vast stretch of fertile farmland bordering one of the largest concentrations of fresh water in the world, the Midwestern US seems ideally situated for the coming challenges of climate change. But it also sits at the epicenter of a massive economic collapse that many of its citizens are still struggling to overcome.
The question of what the Midwest is (and what it will become) is nothing new. As Phil Christman writes in this idiosyncratic new book, ambiguity might be the region’s defining characteristic. Taking a cue from Jefferson’s grid, the famous rectangular survey of the Old Northwest Territory that turned everything from Ohio to Wisconsin into square-mile lots, Christman breaks his exploration of Midwestern identity, past and present, into thirty-six brief, interconnected essays. The result is a sometimes sardonic, often uproarious, and consistently thought-provoking look at a misunderstood place and the people who call it home.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
May 1, 2024 -
Formats
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Kindle Book
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9781948742764
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9781948742764
- File size: 3054 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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January 15, 2020
A Midwestern author surveys an amorphous region that resists easy categorization. According to Christman (English/Univ. of Michigan), everything you think you know about the Midwest is wrong. It isn't as flat as you think, nor as normal and nice. It isn't as white, or as boring, and it isn't as hopeless as its Rust Belt corrosion would seem to indicate. The boundaries of this multistate region are also murky, described with an "antiquated nickname that stuck." As the author notes, the name "Middle West" was initially used to describe Tennessee. In fact, there is no universal agreement on any single state as Midwestern, though Illinois comes closest in consensus. (Even there, those in Chicago tend to consider themselves Chicagoans rather than Midwesterners.) Christman assembles the narrative to resemble a grid, an organization of "six rows containing six prose 'plats, ' each approximately 1,000 words long." Within this orderly construction, there is plenty of disorder, or at least ambiguity, as the author surveys the territory along historical, political, moral, and economic lines. He looks at the Jeffersonian era of the first survey, when the area was the Western frontier, and the transformations wrought by the railroad (and the Underground Railroad), automobile, assembly line, and labor movement. Christman's text is pointed and often very funny as he ponders a subject that has been hiding in plain sight: "The Midwest is, in fact, constantly written about, often in a way that weirdly disclaims the possibility that it has ever been written about before," as writers describe with wonder their "discovery" of great museums, restaurants, literature, and deep cultural resources. Though much of the tone is dark and acerbic, the author finds glimmers of hope in the region as "a moral frontier," where Americans might best face the considerable challenges of capitalism and climate change. A provocative analysis. You'll never think of Peoria in the same way again.COPYRIGHT(2020) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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