From the fall of the Confederate army to the Emancipation Proclamation; from the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 to the fateful, final performance of the legendary John Wilkes Booth; from the treacherous Injin tribes of the Wapatoke Plain to the burgeoning gangster culture of the turn-of-the-century midwest; from love to hate, through failure and triumph, and all the way across the many ages, there has been only one true salve for the American soul...
Southern Comfort."
"Historiographic metafiction is one kind of postmodern novel which rejects projecting present beliefs and standards onto the past and asserts the specificity and particularity of the individual past event. It also suggests a distinction between 'events' and 'facts' that is one shared by many historians. Since the documents become signs of events, which the historian transmutes into facts, as in historiographic metafiction, the lesson here is that the past once existed, but that our historical knowledge of it is semiotically transmitted. Finally, Historiographic metafiction often points to the fact by using the paratextual conventions of historiography to both inscribe and undermine the authority and objectivity of historical sources and explanations." (122-123, Linda Hutcheon).
To the Clearwater County of Minnesota the New Year brings a covering of snow that hardens and sets through the winter months. The black volcanic rock jutting out across the iron range all but disappears. The Bobcat and Pine Marten find shelter in the hollow husks of perished Redwoods. The Elk and the Bison head west across the outwash plains in search of the last remnants of vegetation. The Timber Wolves leave the cover of the Broadleaf forest and scour the back alleys of the white ghost towns, scavenging for scraps. At the edge of the Chippewa prairie the horizon is washed into a great blanket of white. All sense of perspective is lost. Land and sky become one, enveloping life in whiteness. The earth seems to surrender all hope of rejuvenation.
By April the sun returns. A bright blue spills through the white sky and trickles out across the horizon. The pine and spruce trees dot their branches with greenery. The rivers thaw. The lakes teem with Walleye, Bass, Muskellunge and Northern Pike. The Whitetail Deer frolic in the Broadleaf. The iron ranges begin to shed their skin from the bottom up and from every height, water drips. It snakes its way down from Eagle Mountain, through the rolling peneplain, where it finally comes to rest in Lake Itsica, the fountainhead of the Mississippi River, the lifeblood of America.
Like all great journeys, the Mississippi’s first steps across America are made with nervousness and trepidation. She meanders her way gently through Minnesota, into the city of St. Cloud, The Granite City. Her journey has been a private one till this point. When she reaches St. Cloud people begin to ask things of her. Steamboats dock on her banks; industries rest their profitability on the ebb and flow of her waters. Great slabs of reinforced concrete are placed across her path. They harness her gentle energy and redistribute it among the city. She fractures into a series of disparate channels twisting and fizzling away from each other, but one stream remains. She continues to travel, regain her strength. She hits Minneapolis. The energy and vibrancy of the big city invigorates her. She grows, she flourishes. She flows ‘neath bridges, she turns mills, Minneapolis summons her energy and she alone powers a great city.
On she flows. Through Red Wing, Winona, La Crosse, Dubuque. She passes Wisconsin and cuts a line through Iowa and Illinois, swerving her way through Clinton, Davenport, Galesburg and Quincy. The large hardwood forests that once trotted along side her tire and surrender their journey, giving way to low rugged hills of dappled Conifer. And on she flows.
She rolls her way into Missouri and cradles the great city of St Louis in her motherly curves. Laclede’s Landing clings to her side and sprouts a teeming metropolis on her shores. She spawns offspring. She sends the Missouri river shooting out to the west, spreading her tentacles through Kansas, and Omaha. Up through Nebraska, South Dakota and North Dakota she travels before petering out through the dry heart of America. Splaying into a capillarous network of a thousand streams and lakes that multiply across Montana, Idaho and Washington and trickle through the western states.
To the east she births the Ohio River into Kentucky, spreading her generous waters through Louisville, Cincinnati, West Virginia, Pittsburgh and Pennsylvania. She etiolates and reforms again, spreading her fingers up the east coast; Philadelphia, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Boston, Maine. She reaches, she surges, she spreads her life across the face of the nation. And on she flows, the arterial heart of the nation, forging her path to the south. She dances through Tennessee, she catches Memphis in her stride, past Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Texas, Louisiana. She hears a sound. She moves to a calling. Her bends and sways seem to groove in time with a distant beat. She jives and jitterbugs past Baton Rouge. She syncopates and swings southwards and as she turns that final bend, music fills the air around her. New Orleans, the city of Jazz. Her final resting place before she scarpers away into the Gulf of Mexico. She fills the streets of New Orleans with verve and vibrancy that is electric. It is the culmination of all she has collected on her way. The life force of America distilled in a music that sends a shockwave back through the great nation that has borne it.
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