Sacagawea's Nickname: Essays on the American West Book

Some writers are so closely associated with the region they write about that to try to separate them from their settings would be like trying to take a fish out of water.

This book contains essays about the West. All of the essays were beautifully constructed. While McMurtry discusses at length the creation of the myths that surround the region, much of this book seems to have the intention of telling the stories of the West in an unsentimental and slightly brutal fashion (which is very western).

I suppose I cannot write this review properly without some personal information. I was born and bred out West. I was born in North Dakota and to this day, most of my extended family live there. I spent most of my childhood in another western state with a plain view of the Big Horn Mountains. Twice a year, my family would drive up to the big city (passing the site of Custer's Last Stand (aka The Battle of Little Big Horn) in order to buy clothes for the next season. My high school abutted a field where cattle grazed, so when the wind was right (or, actually, wrong), the whole building would reek of cow manure. My favorite high school teacher, who taught English, was a compact, short-tempered little cowboy who entertained the school at large with his ongoing, bitter feud with the other English teacher, who was a feminist. Looking back at what I remember of his classes, every semester we would read one Shakespeare play and one classic book (such as The Great Gatsby or The Nick Adams Stories) which I'm now positive the powers-that-be insisted on, and the rest of the time was spent reading books like The Big Sky, The War on Powder River and The Ox-Bow Incident. I also was introduced to Larry McMurtry's book Lonesome Dove, for which I am grateful.

As a person who did not choose to live out West, I found none of the romance of the region that many others did. The emptiness, the lack of history, and the provincialism grated on me. (I do miss the cultural acceptance of a maverick attitude, though.) I left as soon as I graduated high school. The whole idea of moving out West again is something that I have nightmares about.

I'm not sure if any book can overcome such obstacles. I certainly didn't feel any nostalgia or urge to visit, but I will say that, in this book as well as in his other books, he captures the essence of the West. There is a unflinching realism and a sort of casual acceptance of the harshness of life that I recognize when I read his works as being the environment that I grew up in. That sort of authenticity is not something that all Western writers have, yet it is absolutely essential to understanding the region and its people.

As far as I'm concerned, McMurtry is the voice of the West. It's not a voice that completely resonates with me, but I can recognize it for what it is.