The Hundredth Meridianrnby Chilton Williamson, Jr.rnTwelve Westerners?rn”The Sahara of the Bozart,” more thanrnanything else Mencken wrote about thernSouth, won him the undying hatred ofrnthe former Confederacy and its spokesmen.rnThe essay, which first appeared inrn1917 as a newspaper column and wasrnsubsequently expanded for inclusionrnin the next volume of the Prejudices series,rnwas attacked at the time—and hasrnbeen since—as malicious and unfair. Asrnv’ith even Mencken’s most vituperativernrhetoric, however, his strictures onrnSouthern letters contained a measure ofrntruth that some Southerners recognized.rnIndeed, the opening lines of the piecernwere borrowed by the author from arnsecond-rate regional bard, J. GordonrnCoogler, himself now totally forgotten:rn”Alas! for the South, her books have /rngrown fewer—/She never was much givenrnto literature.” Historians have chastisedrnMencken for failing to observe that,rneven as he wrote, a Southern literar’ renaissancernwas in the making. I’ll TakernMy Stand: The South and the AgrarianrnTradition, by “Twelve Southerners,” wasrnpublished in 1930. But a quarter-centuryrnlater another native son, RichardrnWeaver, v as insisting that the South hadrncollapsed in part because of its failure torn”define its way of life”—a failure thatrnhad been implicitly acknowledged byrnseveral of the twelve, and explicitly notedrnby Allen Tate in his “Remarks on thernSouthern Religion.”rnThe Southern Agrarians, lookingrnabout them for support in the struggle torndefend and preserve pre-industrial civilizationrnin the United States, identifiedrnthe Western Agrarian movement as theirrnmost likeK’ potential ally. Sixty-five yearsrnlater, when both the South and the Westrnhave largely succumbed to industrialismrnas a way of life, their relationship to thernrest of the country remains analogous.rnBecause industrialization based on thernextraction and utilization of natural resourcesrnimplies a culture different fromrnone dependent on the processing andrntransformation of those resources, thernWest is determined to reject directionrnfrom the postindustrial East; while in thernSouth, another Southern renaissance—rnthis time of a social and political, ratherrnthan a literary, nature—puts the regionrnincreasingly at defiance with the North.rnAlthough the homogenization of thernSouth by Yankee influence and Yankeernimmigration gives its reassertiveness arnminority aspect that the rebelliousness ofrnthe West seems to lack, as between therntwo the odds may favor the Southernrncause over the Western one for the simplernreason that Southerners since thern1930’s have gone some way to definerntheir way of life, while Westerners haverndone very little in defining theirs.rnThe West needs its own equivalentrnof ril Take My Stand—less the bookrnitself than the organized consciousnessrnthat such a volume represents. Like thernSouth, the West has a culture, a uniquernway of life; unlike it, it lacks a Culture, arndistinctive mode of formal thought andrnway of seeing. The obvious explanationrnis that the West represents a Late Pioneerrnphase of civilization, preoccupiedrnwith subduing nature and procuring basicrnhuman and cultural needs. But tornstop here is, perhaps, to let the West offrntoo lightly. Western culture is more thanrnpractical, it is Philistine, with anti-intellectualrntendencies: the expression of arnblue-collar society where white-collarrnpeople share blue-collar tastes and ideas.rnIn the West, the bozart are predominantlyrnthe contribution of transplants tornthe region, and it cannot be said thatrnyyhat they contribute amounts to veryrnmuch.rnLeft-liberal and radical individuals inrnthe Intermountain West are likely to bernmost comfortable in social and environmentalistrnwork, in education, journalism,rnand the funded arts programs. Inrnfact, there is little place else for them torngo, little other to do. Culturally and politically.rnWestern educators, journalists.rnand artists are largely indistinguishablernfrom their counterparts in the East andrnon the West Coast from whom they receiverntheir tastes and habits of thought,rnas the intellectual establishment of NewrnEngland in the 19th century imported itsrnnotions of thought and culture from thernparent country. Most Western newspapersrnand television news programsrnsupport range and iriining reform, sympathizernwith environmentalist causesrnin the region, oppose the Sagebrush Rebellion,rndefend federal ownershiprnand control of the public lands, regardrnTenth Amendment advocates as slightlyrncracked and potentially dangerous people,rnand promote federal policy furtheringrnthe consolidation of Washington’srnsocial, economic, and political controlrnover the 50 states. They are also stronglyrnprotective of the state arts councils, andrnof the National Endowments for the Artsrnand Humanities which underwrite these.rnIn Wyoming, the Casper Star-Tribunernregularly pounds the drum for thernWyoming Arts Council, which receives arnsignificant portion of its income fromrnWashington and regards itself as a sort ofrnartistic Prometheus, bringer of the divinernflame to a region that previously neverrnhad a thought of striking flint for itself.rnUnfortunately, the council with itsrnmonthly newsletter, mailed to everyrnhouseholder in the state, is an embarrassmentrnand even a minor scandal, chiefl}-rnon account of its naive critical assumptionrnthat creativity is a wholly undifferentiatedrnquality, pushpin being indeedrnas good as poetry provided that the pinsrnthemselves are handmade. More seriously.rnWestern poets, story-writers, andrnnovelists have taken contemporarv Easternrn”artists” for their models. Terry TempestrnWilliams, a Utah native and a Mormonrnin (apparently) good standing withrnher church, is hardly more a Westernrnwriter than her friend Bill McKibben ofrnNew York State, although the setting ofrnher books remains the West; temperamentallyrnand ideologically, she hasrnbecome an Easterner. In the last generationrnor so the best—as well as the bestknownrn—Western writers, from EdwardrnAbbey to Thomas McGuane, have beenrnnative Easterners as well. In this respect.rnWestern literature has actually lostrnground in the past half-century, asrnMARCH 1996/49rnrnrn