A Midwestern Identity
What does it mean to be a Minnesotan writer? In this age of placelessness—sitting in a Starbucks or Motel 6 or airport lounge or on a Facebook page, you could be anywhere—even our literature is without landscape or regional identity. Especially literature from the Midwest, which, when compared with New York City writing or the work of Southern writers seems bland in its vernacular and hard to locate. “There is nothing worse than the writer who doesn’t use the gifts of the region, but wallows in them,” wrote Flannery O’Connor, the ultimate advocate for regional voices. “An idiom characterizes a society, and when you ignore the idiom, you are very likely ignoring the whole social fabric that could make a meaningful character.” What is Minnesota’s idiom, our social fabric? Many years ago I read an essay by David Mura in The View from the Loft; it struck me so much,…