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.
