Who Owns the West?

The once-remote interior of the American West is changing, noted author William Kittredge writes, filling with tourists and new settlers, yielding "a time of profound transition, which can be thought of as a second colonization." The West of myth, the place of Shanelike loners such as Kittredge's father who carved out a farm from a pocket of southeast Oregon bottomland, must, he argues, give way to a new generation of Westerners who love the land and its possibilities. Kittredge populates his pages with fellow dreamers, writers like Raymond Carver and Richard Hugo, old neighbors, and newcomers, all of whom contribute to Westerners' "working to locate ourselves amid the clutter." This is a striking, constantly interesting attempt at envisioning one's home country in the midst of change.