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Visions of a Basque American Westerner: International Perspectives on the Writings of Frank Bergon gathers the essays of nine scholars and writers from the United States and Europe, who presented papers on the novels, essays, and critical works of Frank Bergon at a two-day conference, sponsored by the Center for Basque Studies and the Jon Bilbao Basque Library at the University of Nevada, Reno, in March 2019. Topics range from Basque aspects of Bergon's fiction to his investigation of inauthenticity in a post-truth world, from discussions of Shoshone Mike as a "perfect novel" to work on The Journals of Lewis and Clark as a "dazzling and foundational account" in literary ecocriticism. A focus on Bergon's fiction reveals his uniqueness as the only novelist to present Basque American experience linearly across four generations and the first to render fully the voices of Okie California since The Grapes of Wrath.
Frank Bergon’s newest work is a thoughtful exploration of the ways that memories of random childhood events become unexpected revelations about life in the West. In many senses this project is a personalized version of Two-Buck Chuck & The Marlboro Man where Bergon explored the ways that a multiethnic and multiracial society shaped, and continues to shape, the day-to-day lived realities of the residents and communities of the San Joaquin Valley. Bergon’s latest book creation, however, is more elegiac in tone, paying tribute to ranching and farming lives that are disappearing under suburban and exurban sprawl, industrial farming, and white-collar job growth.
In 1911 a posse chased an itinerant Shoshone family across 200 hundred miles of Nevada desert and slaughtered them. Shoshone Mike re-creates this final chapter in the Old West through the eyes of an anachronistic sheriff.
Frank Bergon returns to the region he knows best in this novel based on actual events that took place in Nevada during the 1980s. When Jack Irigaray, a biologist for the Division of Wildlife, agrees to go along as backup on what should be a routine arrest of a poacher in the Black Rock Desert, he has no way of knowing that the decision will irrevocably alter his life. In the space of a few hours he will see two men die, one a close friend; he will come near death himself; and he will plunge into a world of obsession, self-destruction, and vengeance that will consume years of his life.
A collection of writings from 26 conservationists whose experiences bring the reader into direct confrontation with nature in all its beauty and power.
Frank Bergon’s astonishing portrayals of people in California’s San Joaquin Valley reveal a country where the culture of a vanishing West lives on in many twenty-first-century Westerners, despite the radical technological transformations around them. All are immigrants, migrants, their children, or their grandchildren whose lives intertwine with the author’s, including several races and ethnicities: Chicanos, Mexicans, African Americans, Italians, Asians, Native Americans, Scots-Irish descendants of Steinbeck’s Okies, and Basques of the author’s own heritage. Bergon presents a powerful array of rural and small-town Westerners who often see themselves as part of a region and a way o...
In the 1990s many people are concerned about the environment, as are St. Ed and Brother S, the only monks at the Hermitage of Solitude in the Desert. Now there is a nuclear waste dump planned for nearby land, and both monks, as well as the Shoshone Indians, object. The monks also face temptations, including lust and the desire for fame. Strong language and some descriptions of sex.
Frank Bergon’s astonishing portrayals of people in California’s San Joaquin Valley reveal a country where the culture of a vanishing West lives on in many twenty-first-century Westerners, despite the radical technological transformations around them. All are immigrants, migrants, their children, or their grandchildren whose lives intertwine with the author’s, including several races and ethnicities: Chicanos, Mexicans, African Americans, Italians, Asians, Native Americans, Scots-Irish descendants of Steinbeck’s Okies, and Basques of the author’s own heritage. Bergon presents a powerful array of rural and small-town Westerners who often see themselves as part of a region and a way o...
Two centuries after their expedition awoke the nation both to the promise and to the disquiet of the vast territory out west, Lewis and Clark still stir the imagination, and their adventure remains one of the most celebrated and studied chapters in American history. This volume explores the legacy of Lewis and Clark's momentous journey and, on the occasion of its bicentennial, considers the impact of their westward expedition on American culture. Approaching their subject from many different perspectives—literature, history, women's studies, law, medicine, and environmental history, among others—the authors chart shifting attitudes about the explorers and their journals, together creating a compelling, finely detailed picture of the "interdisciplinary intrigue" that has always surrounded Lewis and Clark's accomplishment. This collection is most remarkable for its insights into ongoing debates over the relationships between settler culture and aboriginal peoples, law and land tenure, manifest destiny and westward expansion, as well as over the character of Sacagawea, the expedition's vision of nature, and the interpretation and preservation of the Lewis and Clark Trail.
In American Silence , a complement to his previous study Trickster in the Land of Dreams , Zeese Papanikolas investigates a number of significant American cultural artifacts and the lives of their makers. For Papanikolas, both the private failures and public successes of Clarence King, Henry Adams, Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, Raymond Chandler, and Hank Williams resonate with silences.