The Lost Cause and the American Dream in Ruins

Last night I watched Gone With the Wind on Turner Classic Movies. Believe it or not, this was the first time I’d ever seen it. I was only vaguely familiar with the storyline. And I’ve always been a little puzzled by people who go crazy over Clark Gable.

Rust Belt Literature probably has a lot in common with Southern Literature. As a story, Gone With the Wind shares many of the same characteristics as Crooked River Burning. It starts out in an improbably idyllic time that you watch uncomfortably because you know it’s going to end. There’s an equally doomed romance to keep an eye on. Both stories are big and filled with a dizzying array of historical details (including the not-so-subtle racism of the times).

And just as Gone With the Wind illustrates the Lost Cause of the Confederacy, an overarching theme of Crooked River Burning might be called “American Dream in Ruins.”  That is, focusing on that tenuous period between the birth of the middle class, and when that middle class began to falter — the period that Rust Belters look back on with as much problematic nostalgia as Lost Cause Southerners looked back upon the Confederacy.

Review: Crooked River Burning

Winegardner, Mark. Crooked River Burning. New York: Harvest Books, 2001.

Crooked River Burning has been in my to-read pile since 2006, when I bought a copy of Good Roots: Writers Reflect on Growing Up in Ohio, for which Mark Winegardner penned the afterword, “Toward a Literature of the Midwest.”

(Though I didn’t know it at the time, the roots of Rust Belt Reader took hold right then and there.)

In his afterword, Winegardner grimly recounts the following experience with his publishers, prior to the publication of Crooked River Burning:

We went into a big conference room. The marketing director started the meeting by saying (after admitting she hadn’t read the novel), “We see this as a strong regional book.” If it does well in the Midwest, she says, there’s hope it might catch on elsewhere.

They all seemed surprised when I asked if the elevator went to the roof, so I could go jump off.

However, this was long before All Things Local became the boutique obsession of the intellectual class, before consumers craved “authenticity” (a dressed-up marketing term for “slumming it”), before Detroit’s ruined urban landscape became emblematic of a corporate greed gone not just wild but metastatic, before recession chic became de rigueur in the Real Simple parlors of the elite.

What’s On My Reading List

Library of Congress subject headings can be wonderful things. Whether you need a plumbing manual or a GRE study guide, they can help you find exactly what you’re looking for in a matter of seconds.

But they can also be imperfect things. (I can say that — I’m a librarian.) For example, there’s no subject heading for “Rust Belt — Fiction.” And even if you look up something like “Pittsburgh — Fiction” or “Cleveland — Fiction,” there’s no guarantee that the book is really going to be about that place, if you catch my drift. For some stories, the setting is irrelevant. They could take place in Youngstown or on Jupiter — it would make no difference.

So how do you find these elusive Rust Belt tales? Well, that’s the tricky part, something I plan on sharing as I go. For now, though, I’ve come up with five  worthy candidates to start with. Here’s what’s on my current to-read list:

Crooked River Burning (Mark Winegardner; 2001)

The Keepers of Truth (Michael Collins; 2000)

The Greatest Thing Since Sliced Bread (Don Robertson; orig.pub. 1965; reissued 2008)

Steel Ashes (Karen Rose Cercone; 1997)

Good Roots: Writers Reflect on Growing Up in Ohio (ed. Lisa Watts; 2007)

I’m happy to accept suggestions, so feel free to leave them in the comments or email rustbeltreader [at] gmail [dot] com.

NYT Notable Books: American Rust

American Rust is one of the only novels I’ve read so far that takes place in the post-Reagan era Rust Belt. I plan on giving it a second read and reviewing it  here in the next few months, but for now I can’t help but hope that its inclusion in the New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2009 is a sign of good things to come for the genre.

Welcome to the Rust Belt Reader

The Rust Belt, once the heart of American manufacturing, stretches from the Mid-Atlantic to the Upper Midwest, centering around the Lower Great Lakes.

Lately, the Rust Belt has enjoyed a dubious national spotlight. The auto industry continues to decline. Ohio finally approves casino gambling. Buffalo posts its largest population loss ever.

But much less attention is paid to the voices and characters of the Rust Belt. Google “Rust Belt fiction” and you won’t come up with much. The Rust Belt Reader will attempt to define a literature of this oft-maligned, under-appreciated region. Although we will mainly focus on fiction, some nonfiction will probably sneak in. Have a suggestion for a book you’d like us to review? Email us at rustbeltreader [at] gmail [dot] com.