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NEWS for North Dakotans
Agriculture Communication, North Dakota State University
7 Morrill Hall, Fargo, ND 58105-5665
January 6, 2000
Tom Isern, Professor of History
North Dakota State University
©2000 Plains Folk
This is quite a stretch, but hear me out. I think there is a connection between bad coffee and literature in this part of the country. Our books are much better than our coffee, but the two have something in common.
Our coffee is really bad, and as a German, I blame the Norwegians. I mean, that business of clarifying coffee with eggshells--the idea was that you should be able to see through it, right? Now, the farther north on the American plains you go, the more Norwegians you have, and the worse the coffee. There has to be a connection. Add to that the chronic low incomes of the plains, leading to scrimping with the coffee scoop, and there you have it--hot water with a brown crayon swished through it.
It is easier to find a great author on the Great Plains than it is to find a good cup of coffee. (Is that quotable enough for you?) Just throw a rock anywhere and you're liable to hit a Hasselstrom, a Woiwode, a Butala, a Norris--a great author actually living on the plains, as contrasted to earlier ones who left the plains and wrote about them from an apartment in Greenwich Village.
If you aim your rock into western South Dakota you might hit Dan O'Brien, author of a remarkable new novel called "The Contract Surgeon" (Lyons Press). The odd title refers to the narrator of the novel, a contract surgeon with Crook's column in the Indian campaign of 1876, making the notorious, horse-killing Starvation March across the burn-blackened gumbo of the West River. Later the surgeon, Dr. Valentine McGillycuddy, finds himself treating Crazy Horse after the Oglala is bayoneted under guard at Fort Robinson (northwest Nebraska). I won't spoil the book for you by telling more of the plot.
O'Brien is one of the best and most productive Great Plains writers today, producing works ranging from autobiographical reflections on falconry to mystery novels. "The Contract Surgeon" is his first overtly historical novel and his eighth book overall. Dan celebrates, as depicted on the dust jacket, by kissing his horse.
Now you think I've forgotten about the coffee, but I haven't, because here is the theme of Dan's book: the difficulty we people of the plains have with enjoying the riches our senses bring us in this part of the country. Many of our regional writers have wrestled with this. Some, like Ole Rolvaag, feed our hang-ups. Others, like Willa Cather, teach us to revel in what we have here. Dan O'Brien works with this internal conflict--the constraints of propriety versus the desire to enjoy the pleasures of the plains.
At one point in the novel, Dr. McGillycuddy accompanies a soldier named Holden back East to put him into an insane asylum. Their conversations en route show, to the surgeon's alarm, that they are much alike. Private Holden recalls the scent of buffalo on a breeze and closes his eyes "as if he were savoring the smell of morning coffee." McGillycuddy, observing, is "disturbed by this nearly perverse exhibition of the sensual"--he feels the same, and condemns himself for it.
"The Contract Surgeon" marks O'Brien, if there were any doubt to this point, as not only a fine storyteller but also a perceptive student of life on the plains. I think maybe he's kissing his horse for the sheer sensation of the fuzzy feel on his lips. The surgeon's prescription for all of us is to gather in those experiences--and to put another scoop of coffee into the percolator.
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Source: Tom Isern (701) 231-8339
Editor: Dean Hulse (701) 231-6136
Click here to download a photo of Tom Isern suitable
for printing.
(isern.tif - 512KB b&w photo)
Click here to download a photo of Tom Isern suitable for printing.
(isern-h.tif - 426KB b&w photo)