Customer Reviews

Great Plains

5 star:		(24)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I first read this book in a writing class in college and just recently reread it. If you're at all interested in what really goes on "beyond the plane window" down on the ground in the Great Plains geographical region you will most certainly enjoy this book. What I appreciated most was Frazier's ability to link the often colorful historical past of this region to the modern day present conditions. Pulling us backward and forward in time, Frazier gives us an engaging, humorous, and historically informative review of some of the Great Plains most well remembered events. Fortunately, often Frazier unintentionally shows his biases (always softening them with humor) on certain themes: strip mining, the Herb Clutter "In Cold Blood" murders, the Indian Crazy Horse, the military's placement of ICBMs on the northern plains, and Lawrence Welk. Great Plains is an entertaining and excellent read, especially on a flight from New York to Los Angeles. Just read and look down at the ground outside the window! I recommend it wholeheartedly.

Ian Frazier is a skillful writer of non fiction. I would compare this book to John McPhee's Coming Into the Country. Frazier traveled some 25,000 miles across the Great Plains states that is from the Dakotas to Texas. He has tried (successfully) to distill the essence of the Great Plains in this regrettably short book. We learn where tumbleweed comes from-the steppes of Russia, what it's like to operate a Minuteman silo, how immigrants were enticed to come to the Great Plains. That the railroads wanted Germans but no French or Italians. Financing of agriculture is discussed-no loans west of the 100th Meridian. He writes of the the Dust Bowl and the population declines in 2/3rds of the counties. How an agricultural agent went to the steppes of Russia to get hardy wheat seeds and led to the popularity of pasta. This is not a travel guide. If you want detailed travel information, I suggest the Off the Beaten Path series of the Dakotas, Nebraska. and the other Plains states. The book could have been longer and better organized. For example the author mentions Odessa but does not mention the meteor craters, the million barrel tank, the Moynihan (sp?) sanddunes, the Mojo. He mentions the Black Hills but not pitchfork fondue. If you plan on going through the Plains states, you should read this book.

This is a wonderful book. I've read it several times and each time it knocks me out. It begins with six sentences in a row that end in exclamation marks and has a scene about a local fashion show that summarizes the lost possibilities of America as well as anything I've read. It tells the story of Indians in the plains and the story of white people and why the author decided never again to cut his hair. And it is a museum of writerly virtues -- Frazier seems incapable of putting together a sentence without an unexpected but perfect swerve in it towards the end.

On the Great Plains is a great look at the land and it's history by a vagabond traveler that initially hooks up with a Sioux indian by the name of Le War Lance in New York and suddenly transports himself in a rusty van to travel the lonely highways of the Great Plains. While rambling through the country side Frazier provides a history of the land and a description of its present day state with a description of the people as well. Stories of Custer, Bonnie Clyde, Crazy Horse ( a particularly long fascination), Billy the Kid and the descriptions of the places that made them famous. Also fraught with humor such as a descriptively long ride to Sitting Bull's former cabin site located beyond the middle of nowhere with a guide that has to study intently a fuel additive bottle before believeing its not the right kind of alcohol. The history and stories of people and places are endlessly fascinating such as the inhabitants of Nicodemus, a black pioneer town that never completely died and that has an annual festival attended by the whole county, the story of Lawrence Welk and how he was once hit by a thrown brick, a description of a present day rendezvous at the site of Brent's Fort, a visit with the future and controversial Superintendent of the Little Bighorn Battlefield Gerad Baker and many more descriptions and historic story telling. More poignant in that Frazier travels as a modest man that sleeps frequently in his van while listening to the land outside including the ocassional vehicle that goes by in the night. A precursor to "On the Rez".

This book is not a tourist book of the Great Plains but rather some interesting vignettes of the area as perceived by the author, Ian Frazier,about a vast expanse of 'big sky' territory.

Although not a history book, Frazier, weaves some interesting historical facts on a variety of people, places and subjects. Thus, we read about the great Indian warrior, Crazy Horse (a firm Frazier favourite), his adversary, Custer,and outlaws such as Billy the Kid and latter-day villains such as Bonnie and Clyde who all made appearances across the grand stage of the prairies.

We also learn of the impact of the railways and the effect of migration on the region with the rail companies preferring German workers over the French or Italians.

The miltary might of the USA is also portrayed as the author describes how parts of this seemingly tranquil territory has the capacity to effectively demolish the rest of the world, if American fire-power was ever fully unleashed. However, one thing the Russians were able to penetrate the US with was the humble tumbleweed. Frazier describes how they came originally from the Russian steppes. The author is something of a tumbling tumbleweed himself, moving as effortlessly from place to place in his rambles over this quintessential part of America.

Such a book can only give a flavour of the many states that constitute the Great Plains region.What Frazier has done for this far-away reader is to interest me in reading the history of the region in greater detail. Perhaps Walter Prescott Webb's similarly named book, (The Great Plains), will provide the detail missing from Frazier's cameo piece.

This is my favorite book of Frazier's. The section on Crazy Horse bears frequent rereading, and it's end, in which Frazier recites his reasons for liking Crazy Horse, is exceptional writing.

Great Plains is a cross between Kathleen Norris "Dakota" and William Least Heat Moons "Blue Highways." Its a road book about the high plains -- that semi-arid, often treeless region covering 10 states lying between the Rockies and the Mid-West. Rather than a day-by-day log of a single journey, it is an account of many trips, as its author criss-crosses the terrain, jumping from place to place and from one historical period to another. When you are done, you have a sense of a vast land and a great 200-year swath of history.

Fragments of times and places that we may know from movies and text books come together in a sweeping tapestry containing: Indian tribes, buffalo herds, cattle drives, railroads, homesteaders, droughts, blizzards, grasshoppers, long rivers, sand hills, badlands, small pox epidemics, black settlers, missile silos, strip mining, the Dust Bowl, the Ogalala aquifer, Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, Custer, Bonnie and Clyde, and the experience of driving a van along straight, empty highways in all weather, picking up hitchhikers, sleeping overnight by the road, and stopping to talk to ordinary people living extraordinary lives in a depopulated landscape most travelers know only as "flyover," that featureless land seen from above between East and West Coasts.

Its a great enjoyable read that meanders over its subject, sometimes with a sense of wonder, sadness, amusement, and even -- at a fashion show in Nicodemus, Kansas -- unadulterated joy!

Wallace Stegner has written beautifully of the northern Great Plains (specifically Saskatchewan and Montana), and some small sense of similarity will occur naturally when reading this book. But Stegner had a deeper personal connection to the landscape and the writing here is better compared to Edward Hoagland's. Like Hoagland, Frazier visits and observes landscapes and cultural communities that are not his home, but that fascinate him. He enters a landscape and then 'paints' portraits of its physical features, its recent history, its lore, its natives, its foreigners, its itinerant dreamers, its meteorology, its bigness, its diversity and its sameness.

Garrison Keillor said that the book "makes me want to get in a truck and drive straight out to North Dakota and look at the prairie," and it had the same effect on me. Frazier's style is more laid-back than Stegner's or Hoagland's, and the writing might seem effortless (in a good way) except for the obvious fact that the work required a fair amount of research. Frazier sketches the personalities of the plains with just the right level of detail. Diverse personalities: Crazy Horse, Theodore Roosevelt, Lawrence Welk, random farmers, rangers, American Indians, local history buffs, nuclear missile silo personnel. Cultural characteristics of native tribes are sympathetically but colorfully explained: "The Comanche, who probably killed more settlers than did any other American Indians, made a distinction among whites between Texans and all others. Then, as now, it was possible to tell the difference. . . The Comanche hated Texans the most of all."

From a rise in a dirt road near Beach, North Dakota: ". . . all you'd need to paint [the] landscape would be gold for wheat and blue for sky."
At a civic event in Nicodemus, Kansas: "At one o'clock the parade began. It was like a parade in someone's living room. Its front was followed closely by its back."
In a restaurant in Lincoln, New Mexico: "The menu featured home-baked bread and sole; New Mexico is like the Vermont of the West."

Like a stretch of prairie road, the book invites the reader onward. It might easily be read in two or three sittings, but that's not what I did. I habitually keep a book in my car, to keep me company at lunch, and this is how I read Great Plains. A few paragraphs or pages at a time, with a burrito or a Jamba Juice, it was quite tasty.

GREAT PLAINS by Ian Frazier is one of those travel essays that might serve as the source of arcane facts useful as party trivia. A Plains dust storm in May 1934 dropped an estimated 12 million tons of topsoil on Chicago. Brown-colored dust storms originate in Kansas, and red ones in Oklahoma. Among the Indians, two knives, a pair of leggings, a blanket, a gun, a horse, and a tipi might be bartered for a wife. (Hey, I got ripped off! I had to trade four knives, three horses, a squirt gun, and $50-worth of McDonald's coupons.) Roughly 10% of those pilgrims traveling the Oregon Trail to the West died enroute (34,000 of 350,000). The first man Thomas Jefferson (as Secretary of State) sent to explore the West was John Ledyard in 1785 - preceding Lewis and Clark by 18 years. Contrary to nuclear apocalypse films, the 110-ton concrete door topping U.S. missile silos doesn't slide or swing open at weapon launch; it's blown out and away by internal charges. And there's no known photo or drawing of Crazy Horse.

The fact that the author gathered material for GREAT PLAINS from several trips makes it all somewhat jumbled. Only the starting and ending points are the same - Montana. Probably the best chapter, because of the author's concluding eloquent tribute to the man, is the one that describes the life and shameful death of the Sioux war chief Crazy Horse. Otherwise, Frazier haphazardly touches on the history, geography, peoples, personages and events of his vast subject in Colorado, Texas, New Mexico, Kansas, North Dakota, Nebraska, Montana, Wyoming, and South Dakota.

Now, don't get me wrong. I enjoyed this book because I learned something about places I'll likely never see. But it isn't, in my mind, great travel writing in the tradition of, say, Eric Newby. Now, perhaps if you just want recipe suggestions for your next back yard potluck ...

" ... ants (scooped from anthills in the cool of the morning, washed, crushed to paste, made into soup) ..."

"The Arikara retrieved from the Missouri (River) drowned buffalo so putrefied they could be eaten with a spoon."

Yum.

Starting with a chance meeting with a Sioux native American and somehow leading to an exhaustive visit to the Great Plains, Ian Frazier travels just like Charles Kuralt meeting people, places and history along the way. He doesn't see everything but he describes what he sees just like anyone else that travels the backroads and highways. He adds tremendous history about the places such as the history of the west from Custer, Sitting Bull to Billy the Kid to the 20th century to Bonnie and Clyde to the present day. Vivid historical perspectives such as Brents Fort a once major rendevouz for trappers and now for reenactors, pictures and grand detail on the Sioux Indians particularly Crazy Horse. All told vividly with wonderful dots of humor. All taken from the vantage point of a man traveling in a rusty van who often sleeps by the side of the road. Like his off road trip to Sitting Bull's last lodge site, it's not a tourist book, it's a excursion through the plains that's strictly freelanced. This book is the the springboard to "On the Rez".