J. F. Powers’ Morte D’Urban as Western (1970)

D. H. S T E W A R T Idaho State University J. F. Powers’ Morte D’Urban as Western “Comfort thyself,” said the King, “an do as well as thou mayest, for in me is no trust for to trust in. For I must go into the vale of Avilon to heal me of my grevous wound. And if thou hear nevermore of me, pray for my soul.” Malory I J. F. Powers provides an interesting test-case for criteria by which a writer qualifies as “western.” Unquestionably his fictional domain occupies the old Northwest Territory: his city is Chicago; his country, Minnesota. If Frederick Manfred qualifies by resi­ dence, so should Powers. But of course, Manfred may qualify not by residence but by his preoccupation with an older West. If we define “West” as the past, then only historical writers can be con­ sidered—or at least only writers who use the frontier past as a determinant background for current action; for example, John Graves or H. L. Davis. Powers does not do this. Urban twentieth century American life determines his characters’ every deed. Moreover, he may have forfeited any claim to be considered “western” in the same way that Willa Cather did at last. If she gravitated toward Europe for cultural background (so that Mary Austin debarred her from the western tradition), Powers began with a cultural background rooted in Europe. Some might label him an American Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, Morris West, or Francois Mauriac. Almost without exception, Powers’ fictional world exists within a Roman Catholic frame. Rome determines all ultimate values, and they undergo no subtle mutation in the presence of an American environment as they do in Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop. Where she exhibited the process of Catholic adjustment within Mexican and Indian environments, his central message repudiates concession or assimilation completely. He views traditional American secularization of religious life not as a sign of healthy adaptation but of adulteration. 32 Western American Literature How then may we claim him as a western writer? I think there are two ways. First we must concede that repudiation, no less than endorsement of western life can quality the writer. The Paleface as well as the Redskin can be accepted if only he takes western ex­ perience into account. Willa Cather was as much a western writer when she condemned frontier life in her early stories as when she celebrated it in O Pioneers! Thus the only non-western writer is the one for whom our cotton-corn-cow people never existed; that is, the exclusively urban writer who lacks a single tie with the land. That delightful Dutch Chicagoan, Peter DeVries, might serve as an example. As we move toward the end of the twentieth century, a second possibility emerges. If we begin with the assumption that the West was a European as well as American phenomenon that died in 1890 or perhaps 1930 (when population density in the new world equalled Europe’s before 1492), then we must assume that all western lit­ erature in the twentieth is historical rather than contemporary. The only true writers of western literature are diarists, chroniclers of voyages or travels, and an occasional “creative writer” such as Cooper or Lanier. Since 1890 or certainly 1930, western literature can be nothing other than an extended “remembrance of things past.” But the original story of how, in Frost’s words, Americans “gave themselves to the land” has been told often enough that it requires no further re-telling. Indeed it can no longer be told accurately, because no writer in the twentieth century has first­ hand knowledge of the process. Now it has become pure fable (perhaps better for that) like the story of Hamlet for Shakespeare. Twentieth century American literature (whether Yankee, Southern, or Western) tells the story of a people who have undergone the abrasive cleansing (or the erosion) of frontier experience, and now must re-assimilate their antecedent European culture. This is why twentieth century American literature cannot be labelled “western” in the old sense of trans-Atlantic or -Appalachian or -Mississippian; it has become simply a branch of “western civilization.” As Europe has national...