11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Ah Denison, ah humanity!, September 30, 2005
This review is from: Denison, Iowa: Searching for the Soul of America Through the Secrets of a Midwest Town (Hardcover)
On occasion, I read two books at about the same time which can be an "odd couple" indeed. For example, this book and New York Stories. As editor of the latter, Constance Rosenblum focuses on what she characterizes as the "glories, frustrations, and peculiar appeal" of New York City and the same can be said of Maharidge's perspectives on Denison. Although there are many stunning differences between the two cultures, both exemplify the best and worst of what is often referred to as the "American Experience."
With regard to this book, it is the latest of several collaborations by Maharidge and Williamson. In this instance, we accompany them during their search for "the soul of America through the secrets of a midwestern town." I do not recall being in Denison specifically but as described so vividly by Maharidge, the town seems very familiar...especially when I look at Michael Williamson's photographs. I am reminded of countless other small towns in the Midwest I visited in my childhood and adolescence, and then later while in college. Of course, they changed a great deal during subsequent decades (as have I) and that is one of the most fascinating subjects (among many) in this book.
Children are born, grow up, and then most leave as soon as they can for better jobs, brighter lights, a faster pace, etc. A "dying" town is one which loses appeal to its youth as its economy irrevocably declines. There are more burials than baptisms. (This process of deterioration is effectively portrayed in Larry McMurty's novels The Last Picture Show and its sequel, Texasville, as well as in films based on them.) Many of those who remain have nowhere else to go or lack the desire to seek a better life elsewhere. Here are some key facts:
About 60% of the state's college graduates leave.
Denison's population is almost 8,000.
Latinos comprise about 25% of that number.
Meat packing plants are the backbone of Denison's economy.
Maharidge and Williamson lived in Denison for a year.
Most residents seem willing, at times eager to share their thoughts and feelings.
Maharidge adds his own opinions from time to time, when appropriate.
He also provides relevant historical information to establish a frame-of-reference.
Denison adopted "It's a Wonderful Life" as its motto.
As for that civic motto, proudly featured on a water tower, it is explained by the fact that Donna Reed is a native of Denison. As Maharidge suggests, the motto is true of many residents but certainly not of all. Similar to so many other small towns throughout the United States, Denison is in the midst of an especially difficult transition. With all due respect to the significance of shifting demographics, Maharidge and Williamson concentrate almost entirely on specific residents and what appear to be their representative human experiences. The "secrets" to which the subtitle refers are best revealed within the narrative.
Of all the people with whom Maharidge and Williamson associated for more than a year, the one of greatest interest to me is Louis Navar. Consider this brief excerpt with which the book concludes. Navar has just landed a job doing a roof for Dick Knowles, a "nemesis" of two other residents, Al Roder and Ken Livingston. "I thought we were friends," one of them said. Read carefully Navar's response:
"I told them it was business, that I do business with everyone, that in Mexico it is much rougher than here. You don't trust anybody, you are only a friend after you prove it, when it really matters. It is earned. You do business with people, and you shake hands and smile and call each other `friend,' but you're not really friends. You don't trust them. It is just business. So I am doing business with Mr. Knowles [and then extending his hand to the mayor]...and with you, friend."
Navar has so many dreams but almost no illusions. His intelligence, passion, ambition, decency, and -- especially -- his energy and "street smarts" are precisely what are needed to revitalize Denison. In several respects, he is whatever future the town has.
Those who share my high regard for this book are urged to check out others co-authored by Maharidge and Williamson: And Their Children After Them: The Legacy of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, Homeland, Journey to Nowhere: The Saga of the New Underclass, and The Last Great American Hobo. Also three books by William Least Heat-Moon: Blue Highways: A Journey into America, PrairyErth (A Deep Map): An Epic History of the Tallgrass Prairie Country, and River Horse: The Logbook of a Boat Across America.
If your preference is for relevant works of fiction, I recommend the short stories of Eudora Welty and Flannery O'Connor as well as Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio and Edgar Lee Masters' poems, notably those in his Spoon River Anthology.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Very thoughtful, April 3, 2007
This review is from: Denison, Iowa: Searching for the Soul of America Through the Secrets of a Midwest Town (Hardcover)
Dale Maharidge, a former newspaper reporter, brings a well-rounded account of how cultural change presses upon the lives of a few citizens in a small town in Western Iowa.
This book fascinated me. I think it did so because of how well it oscillates between the worlds of economic development and narrative non-fiction. I have read "And Their Children After Them," but this book is cut from something finer. Maharidge has wandered into the disparate lives of many of Denison's people.
He even weaves a fable into the broader message of the story. There is a story about a white buffalo that comes back to haunt the white settlers who made victims of the Native Americans who once roamed the plains. Maharidge suggests that the waves of Central Americans and Mexicans, who happen to often have Indian blood, represent a reclaiming of the Plains by the Native Americans.
I lived in a small town like Denison for a year. In this case, it was Marshall, Missouri. Like Denison, Marshall relied on meatpacking. The town had beautiful homes on Arrow Street and a great past. The future, though, was clearly going to be different. The schools were full of Hispanics and Pacific Islander immigrants whose parents came to work in the slaughterhouses. It was a better life for the newcomers.
The problem in Denison, and in Marshall, is the one that Maharidge so eloquently captures. How do you get the existing townspeople to recognize that they must change or wither? Maharidge sees great hope in the ambition of immigrants like Luis Navar, a man who wants to become an independent contractor. At the same time, the long-time resident serving his lunch at the Hy-Vee disappoints Maharidge. She sees the newcomers as separate from the real members of Denison. "The White Buffalo is going to eat you alive," thinks Maharidge.
Cultural change is the new mandate of globalization. It is a hard lesson to adopt. That resistance is not just in the lunch counter servers. The same Navar clashes with the leaders of the town over contracts to repair a famous building. The town's leaders, in a poor moment, reward the contract through a shady backroom deal.
Going back to how this book is fascinating as piece of Journalism, Maharidge lives well beyond the constraints of news reporting. He develops a compassion to achieve his explanatory journalism. The book even discusses some of the difficult interpersonal decisions that portrayers of a place are confronted with as they work. Maharidge includes the stories of the townsfolk who wanted to befriend him beyond the point of comfort.
I would recommend this book to students of documentary journalism. This is such a better treatment of the topic of journalist-subject relationships than one might find in Janet Malcolm's "The Journalist and the Murderer." Whereas Malcolm picks apart the journalist as a seducer, Maharidge shows more of the reason for why a journalist must make friends in order to gain the trust that is needed to learn the secrets of a place. Maharidge samples the winter moonshine in one scene.
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