The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 107, July 2003 - April, 2004 Page: 141
660 p. : ill. (some col.), maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Book Reviews
prehistoric New Mexico. The rest of the articles, after all, he did collect from
specialists in their fields who provided rich, detailed analytical biographies.
Nevertheless, the book is highly readable and provides a wonderful view into the
lives of prominent Nuevo Mexicanos. Etulain is correct when he argues that
"Americans enjoy biography" (p. 1). This prosopography is no exception.
Nebraska Wesleyan University SANDRA K. MATHEWS-LAMB
Translating Southwestern Landscapes: The Making of an Anglo Lterary Region. By
Audrey Goodman. (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2002. Pp. xxix+224.
List of figures, acknowledgments, introduction, notes, bibliography, index.
ISBN 0-8165-2187-5. $40, cloth.)
Audrey Goodman's book, Translating Southwestern Landscapes, examines the
ways southwestern Anglo ethnographers, writers, and photographers attempt to
translate and represent the Southwest and how their constructions changed
through their extended experience in the region.
Concentrating on the period from the "close" of the frontier, a demise solidi-
fied by Frederick Jackson Turner's influential essay, to the onset of the Great
Depression, Goodman's book also attempts to document the transition from
turn-of-the-century popular to the high culture of the 192os. In order to do
this, Goodman focuses on the images and texts of five major figures: Charles
Lummis, Zane Grey, Paul Strand, Willa Cather, and Mary Austin. However, she
includes other writers and photographers such as Mabel Dodge Luhan, Ansel
Adams, and Edward Curtis in her discussion. Goodman explains how these writ-
ers and photographers apprehend the unfamiliar southwestern culture and
translate it to their readers and viewers. Though very different artists, they were
united by their common attraction to the region and the effect of their art in
defining the southwestern landscape.
As Goodman investigates the interactions of representations of the
Southwest, she moves beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries by synthesiz-
ing anthropology, art history, geopolitical theory, American studies, literary
studies, and history. Beginning with Lummis, she traces the Anglo conception
of the Southwest through its incarnations in the early unification of the
region for tourist consumption to Zane Gray's romanticism of the region in
his first formula Western. In chapter three, Goodman examines photographic
representations of the Southwest. Her final two chapters explore Mary Austin
and Willa Cather's construction of region and the difficulties of constructing
a poetics of space in a period of rapid modernization and the struggle
between the simultaneous desire to understand and to rule the Southwest's
native cultures.
The strengths of this book are its focus on the transitional period between
the early phases of Anglo development based on natural resources and later
phases based on cultural resources and on its sophisticated treatment of the
relationship between material and cultural development. Goodman also
demonstrates the ways the Southwestern region has generated creativity among141
2003
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 107, July 2003 - April, 2004, periodical, 2004; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101224/m1/159/?rotate=90: accessed March 28, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.