Defining Midwestern Literature

The concept of Midwestern literature existing as its own literary genre is as vague and disputed as the concept of the Midwest itself. The most inclusive definition of the Midwest region incorporates twelve states and a “vast sweep of land extending from the Old Northwest of the Ohio Valley and the Great Lakes to the Upper Mississippi Valley to the dry western plains of the Dakotas, Nebraska and Kansas,” (Weber 7). Due to this broad stretch of the American heartland, “there have always been various Midwests, and within them varieties of Midwestern experience—a region so diverse as to suggest to some that the Midwest is not a region at all in any meaningful sense,” (Weber 7). Along with disputes regarding its geographic borders, the Midwest suffers from a strong lack of central culture, history, traditions, and geographic landscape. Essentially, the Midwest is arguably the only region of the United States that lacks a central identity. It does not know what it is.

It is therefore no surprise that the idea of Midwestern literature suffers from the same identity issues that plague the region. To many, Midwestern literature’s moment on the literary stage existed briefly after the Civil War and came to a close in the 1920s “…fixed between the fading of the New England tradition and the emergence of the southern literary renaissance,” (Weber 2). Yet throughout history, the Midwest always has, and continues to produce exceptional writers. Many of these writers, such as Carl Sandburg, Willa Cather, Toni Morrison, Sinclair Lewis, Ruth Suckow, Stuart Dybek, Scott Russell Sanders, and Sherwood Anderson have taken the time to write about the region they call home and have been joined by writers from different corners of the country such as Joyce Carol Oats, Philip Graham, Reginald Shepherd, and James McManus who have also felt the need to make the Midwest their subject. Some of these writers wrote with the intention of helping to define the Midwestern literature genre, some did not, but it is through their collective work that we are able to start and piece together a picture of what Midwestern literature is and identify its qualities.

Once the characteristics of Midwestern literature have been defined, then I will analyze how two contemporary works, David Foster Wallace’s novella “Westward the Course of Empire Takes its Way,” and Charles Baxter’s novel The Feast of Love fit in with the qualities of Midwestern literature and treat their homeland in their writing. Hopefully by viewing these works within the larger analysis of the Midwest and its literature, it will be possible to answer questions such as: What are the strengths of Midwestern literature and what challenges does it face? Why is it necessary to define the literature of the heartland in its own genre? And more importantly, why does this genre deserve attention in today’s literary world?

After analyzing the history and literature surrounding the “Midwestern moment in American writing,” spanning roughly from the 1840s-1920s, a few patterns emerge that hint at the qualities of Midwestern Literature (Weber 2). Four overriding characteristics seem to govern Midwestern literature: realism, simplicity of subject matter, a sense of longing or emotional restraint, and the treatment of the Midwest landscape itself, which has historically been portrayed either as a vision of pastoral loveliness or as an empty ugly landscape. In order to accept this general definition of Midwestern literature as being characterized by these four characteristics it is important to trace each through the history of the region to show how it came to be a defining quality of Midwest literature. 

Although the Midwest suffers from a lack of definitions, there is one thing all Midwesterners can agree upon. They know what they are not. “What makes the Midwest different, I think, is that [people] here are not part of an elaborate and lengthy social heritage as they often are on the East Coast, nor are they posed against a grandiose landscape as they are in the West,” (Gernes 72). Humble would be one word to describe the psyche of the Midwest, insecure would be another, but perhaps the most appropriate word to describe the way Midwesterners see themselves would be inferior. Somewhere in its early beginnings, the Midwest’s flat landscape and regular farm-life were labeled as boring and uneventful, especially in relation to the other regions of the country that were more beautiful and more exciting. This inferiority complex is partially to blame for the hesitant and slow emergence of writing about the Midwest.

Even the few early Midwesterner writers who felt compelled to write about their surroundings “found themselves uncertain about its appropriateness as literary material of interest,” (Weber 10). Luckily, realism was emerging at the same time, which provided early Midwestern authors with a style of writing that emphasized “truth-telling,” as the primary focus, granting permission for Midwestern authors to write about their “boring” farm and small-town lives without apology. Part of the reason literary realism is such a natural form for the Midwestern voice to speak in, is because stark reality is inescapable to the Midwestern experience, “Things are elemental here—stripped down, flattened out, in plain sight. There’s not much here that I can sentimentalize, and not much that I can overlook. I am forced, day after day, to admit the solidity, the tenaciousness, the simply assumed sense of survival that holds those of us who live here to this flat and fertile earth.” (Gernes 72). Additionally, literary realism also mirrors the same values that Midwesterners hold dear, “aesthetics versus practicality has always been an issue on the farm, where the ugliest buildings are often among the most useful,” (Pichaske).

Among the many characteristics of literary realism, the idea that, “characters are more important than action and plot, appear in their real complexity of temperament and motive,” offered Midwestern authors a pass on infusing their writing with elements inorganic to their surroundings, such as dramatic plots (Campbell). Through literary realism, the average life of the Midwesterner became appropriate literary material worthy of writing and reading. While the Midwest’s intense attachment to realism has loosened somewhat over the years, as the genre has moved slightly away from the earlier super-realistic work of authors such as Theodore Dreiser and James T. Farrel, literary realism is still the preferred style of writing, not just because it the genre from which Midwestern literature was born, but also because it speaks to the characteristics and values from which Midwesterners hail, “A century later, Midwesterners are still mostly mud-on-the-shoes realists, prone to draw a dichotomy between style and content and to favor content over style. They are practical people,” (Pichaske). For these reasons, it seems fair to assert that one of the core pillars of Midwestern literature is its use of realism.      

The guiding principle of literary realism, “faithful representation of reality,” meant different things for each region of the United States, who had extremely different experiences of reality. For the Midwest, reality was painfully consistent and simple and, “shied away from the extremes of human experience,” (Weber 13). So, when it came to realistically portraying the Midwest through writing, what emerged were “hushed books, about vivid lives lived quietly,” literature that, “like the Midwest itself, is subtle literature, not much given to high drama, about people who live quiet lives,” (Longworth). It is no wonder that early Midwestern writers felt, “most at ease with stories of plain people in a plain environment living plain lives—a people not inclined to excesses of language or action,” (Weber 13).

As the life of the average Midwesterner began to change, and its writing began to stray away from the everyday pioneer farming experience, the genre remained committed to simplicity in subject matter, “Midwestern literature tells the stories of ordinary people who want ordinary things, like happiness, love, connection,” (Warner). In this way, Midwestern literature speaks to the basic human desires. Beyond its subject matter, the idea of simplicity can be seen through the use of other techniques such as prose style, narrator, and voice, “The Midwestern narrator is rarely flamboyant or self-celebrating.  Usually he is unpolished, apologetic, confused, unpretentious [and has] plain, colloquial speech, with elements of self-conscious doubt,” (Pichaske).

Midwestern literature’s masterful ability to render the truthful simplicity of their reality is probably one of the reasons it has been so overlooked, because simplicity of subject matter and prose style have been mistaken for “dull” or even worse, “lazy.” It requires an intelligent reader to understand and appreciate the beauty of simplicity. “Midwestern literature is like our landscape, flat and featureless unless and until you pay attention and look closely,” (Warner). But in the end, it is from the specifically Midwestern interpretation of literary realism that the characteristic of simplicity, primarily in subject matter but also in other elements of writing, emerged as a defining characteristic of Midwestern literature.

The third characteristic of Midwestern Literature, a sense of longing or emotional restraint, is rooted in a specific moment of history. The story of the American pioneers is admittedly not confined to the Midwest. However, it is in the Midwest with its “fertile soil, and easily traversed landscape,” where the real American pioneers found the most success, taming a landscape “ideally suited to homesteading: 160-acres—one quarter of a square mile of land—free to any native or immigrant willing to invest five years living upon and cultivating the claim,” (Pichaske). Thus, with its never-ending open space of fertile, flat land, ideal for farming, the Midwest, rather than the other regions of the country, became the place in which “so many millions found some real substance to the American Dream,” (Pichaske).

The farmland and prairie of the Midwest became in essence, a Garden of Eden, “an agricultural paradise in the heartland—simple, in harmony with nature, based on an economy of self-sufficiency, blessed by divine providence,” (Weber 20). Yet the success of the pioneers in taming the wilderness into prosperous farmland also presented the Midwest with a dramatic problem: there was nowhere to go from there. It is once “the splendid story of the pioneers is finished,” and it becomes clear that “no story of equal power is yet on the horizon,” that the Midwest begins to shrink off-stage from its moment in the spotlight (Weber 18). No longer can the Midwest see itself as agrarian garden of Eden, but rather resigns itself to accept its plainness, “…the sense of great things done; the pioneering moment as over…and nothing could be seen looming ahead but dun-colored, humdrum life. We had no choice but to turn inward upon ourselves, away from the shores of expansion and toward the flattened, middling, uninspiring qualities of our lives,” (Weber 197).

Ironically, it is from the conclusion of the story of the pioneers that Midwestern Literature really began to emerge. Just as the American South is characterized by the loss of the Civil War, so too is the Midwest characterized by its “fall from pioneer perfection…that brought with it an awareness of lost innocence and of human limitation…[in] the failure to sustain a rural Eden,” (Weber 17). More importantly, it established the idea of a “compelling past set against a disappointing present,” which infused a specific feeling of longing into Midwestern life that authors could respond to (Weber 17). The longing of Midwestern Literature began first as a longing steeped in nostalgia for the pioneer prairie past and linked directly with images of nature, “I think of those roots lacing through the black soil of the prairie, beneath the swamp, beneath the woods. I remind myself of all that buried strength,” (Sanders 62). Later, this longing evolved into a longing of a life beyond the Midwest, a longing for escape.

In a region fretted by longing but a place that valued practicality, the longing of Midwesterners is rarely explicitly expressed, but rather, restrained, denied, or pushed down. Therefore, the region’s literature is fraught with “below the surface tension” that is the result of emotional restraint, “The face we Midwesterners present to the world keeps us largely unknown. The masked drama of the Midwest thrives on seeming simplicity and restraint,” (Radavich 190). In a landscape which heartedly resigned itself as a place where nothing dramatic happens, it forces the conflict that does occur underground, where it won’t ‘rock the boat,’ “Things happen in Midwestern literature but not in your face. If there's a rape, it doesn't happen onstage, as in A Streetcar Named Desire: we're not New Orleans. If there's incest, we learn about it years later. We're sinful and lusty, but we're also discreet. Life goes on, but beneath the surface,” (Longworth). This practical tendency to repress strong emotions and the tension such repression creates is one defining characteristic endemic to Midwestern literature.

The final determining characteristic of Midwestern Literature is the treatment of the landscape and Midwestern experience itself. Jonathan Franzen, an acclaimed contemporary Midwestern author, has “a theory of Midwestern experience that unfolds in three steps: innocence, backlash, then a blending of the two,” (Fehrman). Franzen’s theory of Midwestern experience appropriately mirrors the different treatments of the Midwest in its literature: as either a wonderful place of beauty, an ugly place of repression and confinement, or a mix of the two. Historically, Midwestern literature has primarily focused on the two extreme treatments of the Midwest. The idea that the Midwest is a place of both beauty and ugliness is a contemporary view that only emerged after the 1920s. 

The rural pastoral tradition of Midwestern literature emerged after the end of the pioneer days (roughly around the 1890s) and is characterized by its longing for the past Edenic Midwest. In this treatment of the Midwest, the landscape “suggests a latitude, a limitless prospect of prosperity, and pastoral loveliness,” a “grace in the wild, space for personal growth and freedom,” (Pichaske). The flat landscape is given a beauty, although this beauty is rooted in the natural past, rather than in the “present” state of the Midwestern landscape marred by industrialization and modernity, “Maybe it’s not so bad to want everyone to feel what we’ve lost here, to feel the quiet, birdless sky as a deaf sky, to enter that deafness and our own thin-lipped soundlessness, enter it fully, and acknowledge the pain, make a sound to mourn the loss of the prairie, your lost love,” (St. Germain 77). William Barrillas argues that, “the Midwestern pastoral is a literary tradition that celebrates an attachment to land that is mystical as well as practical” and that the literature retains its resonance because, “Midwestern pastoral writers relate to place emotionally as well as aesthetically and intellectually,” (Barillas ix).

However, like any movement in art, there had to be a reactionary movement against the rural pastoral treatment of the Midwest. It is no coincidence that the second treatment of the Midwest in its literature, is one of rebellion to the small-town ideals and revulsion to the landscape and occurs as Chicago is emerging as a powerful city. The early 1900s saw the Windy City as the first viable place for Midwesterners to realistically “escape” to. In comparison to the city, the Midwest’s flat geographical landscape was suddenly viewed as not only ugly, “…there’s a nearly arctic barrenness stretching around me—wispy snow in tiny waves curling across the empty fields, the world cold and bare, stripped down, riding out the worst the indifferent universe can bring,” (Grindy 142) but also spoke of the its greater detrimental psychological effect,  “…the great expanses of empty space were an opponent against which humans struggle for identity and their sanity,” (Pichaske).

Writers viewed the landscape as repressive to their creativity, “Flat was beyond boring; flat was aesthetically unacceptable,” (Grindy 140). This dissatisfaction sparked a mass exodus of some of the Midwest’s most talented writers in the 1920s, such as Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, and is yet another explanation for why it has taken so long for the Midwestern literature to be considered its own genre. Thankfully, even those writers who fled the Midwest were unable to escape the very powerful hold that the Midwest had over them, “We are programmed for flight. We populate the cities of this country, living as expatriate small town Midwesterners. We grew up wild in the middle of nowhere with the nagging suspicion that life was certainly elsewhere. But we always feel the pull of our home ground,” (Marquart 69). In this way, the psychology of the Midwest has ensured that writers have continued to write about this region and keep the genre alive.

As it stands, a solid footing in realism, simplicity in subject matter, a sense of longing or emotional restraint, and the treatment of the Midwest landscape, appear to be the defining qualities of Midwestern literature. While tracing the historical roots of why these characteristics came to be was essential, without demonstrating how these qualities actually manifest in pieces of writing, the argument that these are the four defining characteristics of Midwestern literature, falls flat. Since these qualities have been determined from a comprehensive study of Midwest writing that goes no further than the late 1920s, it is vital to examine some contemporary Midwestern works. Although poetry, nonfiction, and fiction were analyzed during the process of identifying the genre’s defining characteristics, the contemporary analysis will just be on fiction.

Charles Baxter’s novel The Feast of Love, and David Foster Wallace’s novella, “Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way,” will serve as examples of contemporary Midwestern fiction. By using these two works that are both written by Midwestern authors and are set in the Midwest, it will hopefully be possible to better answer the questions: How do the aforementioned qualities of Midwestern literature manifest in a piece of writing? What are the ways in which contemporary writers have interpreted the determining characteristics of the genre? And finally, what role or function does the Midwest play in fiction?

Baxter’s The Feast of Love and Wallace’s “Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way,” are two works of contemporary fiction that, on the surface, are somewhat difficult to identify as realism. Baxter’s novel is haunted by a dream-like state some have called surrealism, and Wallace’s novella is primarily classified as metafiction. However, while both The Feast of Love and “Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way,” may dive into these otherworldly elements, neither Baxter nor Wallace attempts to make the Midwest surrealist or fantastical. While historically, Midwestern literature has reeked with realism, contemporary Midwestern authors seem to be playing with the totality of this defining characteristic—allowing themselves the freedom to play with other aspects of fiction while still staying true to their realist roots, “Midwestern writers contain their stylistic and structural experiments within a relatively narrow range. Imagism, surrealism, mysticism, and magical realism—all of which can indeed be found in Midwestern literature—are usually so alloyed with realism as to slip by almost unnoticed,” (Pichaske).

The very first sentence of The Feast of Love, “The man—me, this pale being, no one else, it seems—wakes in fright, tangled up in the sheets,” actually implies that the novel will be a work of metafiction as this sentence shatters the sacred fourth wall of authorial intrusion (Baxter 3). The fact that the narrator is also named Charles Baxter, offers up questions about the novel possibly being a work of nonfiction. The rest of the prologue includes Charlie Baxter’s dream-like mystical musings as he takes a walk through his town and winds up at a park where Bradley Smith tells Baxter he should write a book about Bradley’s life, “Why don’t you let me talk? Let everybody talk. I’ll send you people, you know…human beings who genuinely exist, and you listen to them for a while. Everybody’s got a story, and we’ll just start telling you the stories we have,” which is exactly what The Feast of Love does (Baxter 16). While this beginning offers up questions of metafiction, surrealism, and nonfiction, a hesitation in classification that lingers over the rest of the book and resurfaces in the concluding postlude, the other 286 pages of The Feast of Love are decidedly realist. Baxter’s decision to give the job of narration over to the characters themselves, and “Let everybody talk,” creates a stronger sense of realism in a deceivably post-modern way.

Additionally, Baxter’s treatment of the Midwest town of Ann Arbor, Michigan is always portrayed realistically, even in the “un-realistic” beginning where Charlie is suffering from “identity lapses,” doubting who he is and his immediate surroundings, such as the “unmirroring mirror,” (Baxter 4). It is once Charlie leaves his house and begins walking among Ann Arbor that Charlie feels, “no longer a menace to myself or to anyone else…feeling calmer now that I am outside,” (Baxter 4). It is the familiar stable landscape of Baxter’s Midwest surroundings that grounds the beginning chapters, and consequently helps prepare readers for the realism ahead.  

Similarly, Wallace utilizes the Midwest in this manner, to serve as a grounding force in the metafictional world of “Westward.” Wallace’s novella screams metafiction, with the qualities of Wallace’s writing, “his digressions, spiraling narrative loops, and footnotes-within-footnotes,” leading some to consider Wallace to be an anti-realist, a member of “the modernist or postmodernist camp, known for defining himself against the pieties of traditional style,” (Baskin). Grammatically and stylistically, Wallace’s writing does not abide by the qualities of realism. Yet, Wallace’s treatment of the Midwest in his novella as painfully realistic raises questions and reconsideration of brushing Wallace aside as an “anti-realist.”

Throughout “Westward,” the central Illinois landscape is viewed by different characters through airport or car windows, occasional moments of inner thought occurring throughout the chaos of the story, “The sunlight is both glaring and impure. Dew-turned-humidity rises as one slow body from the green sweep of corn, the mist breaking Swiss-cheesily into patches as it heats and ascends to mess with the purity of the light,” (Wallace 262). These moments rarely have emotion or comment attached to them, the characters simply describe the central Illinois landscape as they see it, ““Is that all corn?” Mark asks, pointing past the terminal window. “Sure as fuck green, isn’t it.” “It’s all there is. It’s all you can see. I’ve never seen so much of anything.” “This is farm country man,”” (Wallace 254). These moments spent realistically describing the landscape provide both the characters and the readers with momentary breaks from the intellectual and philosophical thoughts that are rampant in “Westward.” In other words, Wallace’s use of the Midwest grounds the novella in reality, even if only for occasional moments.

As both Baxter and Wallace’s work contain elements of realism, both works also include an emphasis on simplicity of subject matter, exhibited through their “ordinary” characters that grapple with “ordinary” problems. Baxter’s The Feast of Love is a book whose entire premise is based upon bringing to life the regular lives of regular people as Charlie Baxter listens to and relays the stories of Bradley Smith, his ex-wives, his neighbors, and his employees. Baxter’s characters deal with problems such as love, marriage, sex, and truth, problems are certainly “everyday” problems that face ordinary people, but they are also rather universal. Instead, it is the multitude of smaller issues these characters face, such as Bradley’s trouble to wrangle his dog back from his sister’s family, the tension Diana’s love of for a statue causes during her honeymoon, Chloe dealing with her creepy father-in-law, Bradley’s obsession with trying to fix his wives irrational fears, and Chloe’s search to see a psychic, that more appropriately color the subject matter of The Feast of Love as truly simplistic and specific to the lives of “ordinary” people.

Perhaps the best way Baxter is able to highlight the plight of the ordinary lives lived by ordinary people, is through the sense of mundane routine Baxter evokes throughout the book, “Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays I cook dinner. My specialty is a beef burgundy, very tasty…We read, we talk, we play canasta and Scrabble. We feed the two goldfish, Julius and Ethel,” (Baxter 74). Baxter embraces the dull simplistic existence of his characters lives and even goes so far as to explicitly label it Midwestern, “We’re talking about an ordinary summer night in the Midwest now. In a bar,” (Baxter 41). Baxter’s simplicity in subject matter is also transferred into his style, “There’s nothing fussy or affected about Baxter’s style,” rather it appropriately reflects the speech patterns and view of the world of each of his regular characters (Feeney).

Although Wallace’s prose style is anything but simplistic, Wallace’s “Westward” does fit the characteristic of simplicity in subject matter. Wallace’s characters do grapple with larger more universal, and definitely more intellectually challenging issues such as the meaning of truth, literature, and reality, but at its most basic, “Westward” is a story about communication and transportation problems. Mark, D.L, and Sternberg find themselves stranded at the airport without a way to get to Collision, Illinois due to a communication error. Within that ordinary problem, Wallace explores even more, smaller everyday problems that plague “ordinary people” such as Mark’s obsession with his lost arrow (Wallace 295), D.L.’s frustration with the Avis representative refusing their credit card (Wallace 274), and Sternberg’s stress about using the bathroom, “He’s needed a bowel movement for hours…He tried, back at O’Hare. But he was afraid that Mark, who has the look of someone who never just has to, might enter the rest room and see Sternberg’s shoes under the stall door and know that he was having a bowel movement,” (Wallace 254). It is Wallace’s inclusion of these small, even potentially dull, moments of his ordinary characters that allow “Westward” to fit within the defining Midwestern characteristic of simplicity in subject matter, despite the deep philosophical questions Wallace’s novella is famous for addressing.

The simplicity of subject matter within Baxter and Wallace’s fiction is balanced by a profound sense of longing and emotional restraint, which is felt throughout both works through the multilayered complexities of Baxter and Wallace’s characters, which creates a sense of underlying tension that runs underneath both works. The characters within The Feast of Love are characters that long for things desperately but quietly. Bradley constantly yearns for love, Chloe longs for security both monetarily and against death, Diana longs for David, and Harry longs for his son. But few, if any, of these desires are admitted by one character to another. Rather, Baxter’s characters long deeply but silently, because the character’s desires sometimes shift or they themselves are unaware of the things they long for, the way Kathryn realizes when she meets Jenny, what she had been unknowingly longing for in her marriage to Bradley, “I had never gotten a whiff of Bradley’s soul and at that moment at the table in the King’s Armor I had a flash that I never would. But at that table I could smell [Jenny’s] soul and I wanted it,” (Baxter 39).

Exploring the complexity of Baxter’s characters is arguably the intent of The Feast of Love, to slowly reveal the many layers each character. Baxter believes that his characters appropriately mirror the Midwest in this way, “It takes a while to get to know somebody in the Midwest; it takes a while to get to know these characters in my fiction. I like that sense of gradually unpeeling a character before you get to know that person. Gradually, the secret comes out,” (Sycamore Review). Bradley’s painting The Feast of Love is especially symbolic of both the sense of longing and emotional restraint felt throughout the novel as Bradley hides his one and only artistic masterpiece, an artistic representation of an abundance of love, the thing he most desires in the world, in his basement (Baxter 81).

The desires of Wallace’s characters in “Westward,” are harder to identity than the characters in The Feast of Love, not because they do not exist, but because Wallace’s characters are so incredibly complex. Apart from the collective desire to reach Collision, Illinois, there are many smaller desires that the characters have such as, J.D. Steelritter desires, “more than anything, to be hapified, at peace,” and Sternberg is bogged down with his former desire for the D.L. of the past, rather than the person she’s become (Wallace 350). Very few of these desires are explicitly expressed and the many emotions they draw on are very repressed, such as D.L.’s desire for Mark’s love but also her desire to punish him.

We don’t learn about D.L.’s desire for revenge, despite being in her point of view many times before this, until the end of the novella. Mark’s desire to someday publish a great story is hidden, and when it is finally explicitly expressed, “Please don’t tell anybody, but Mark Nechtr desires, some distant hard-earned day, to write something that stabs you in the heart,” is surprising in its intensity because Mark has managed to restrain this intense longing from everyone through his apparent nonchalant attitude about his writing towards everyone around him (Wallace 332). Essentially, the constant contradiction of the character’s multiple desires against each other, against their actions or thoughts, or as constantly changing desires throughout the story, results in the overarching problem these characters’ lack of knowledge of who they are. This lack of identity creates quite a mess when it comes to longing, but the overall effect of a tangled web of desires quite powerfully infuses the novella as a whole with a strong sense of longing.

The Midwest as a landscape operates explicitly in both Baxter and Wallace’s works, as neither author shies away from making explicit statements about the character or landscape of the region. Yet, recalling back the two traditional treatments of the Midwest as either a rural pastoral or a rebellious revulsion, neither The Feast of Love nor “Westward” falls squarely in either one of these categories. Instead, what both Baxter and Wallace present is a contemporary portrayal of the Midwest as a blend of what have long been considered opposing treatments. Baxter and Wallace present a Midwest that is both beautiful and ugly, freeing and repressing, through the use of multiple point of views of their characters—showing the extreme variance in different character’s thoughts and feelings towards the Midwest and arguing that the Midwest is a landscape not of dichotomies but of synthesis, a place to love and hate at the same time.

In general, the Midwest in The Feast of Love is presented as a symbol of commonness, or even at times, boredom, which hints at a cynicism typical of the rebellious treatment of the Midwest. Diana’s description of Bradley as simple and fine but missing any excitement is compared directly to the Midwest, “What a Midwesterner he was, a thoroughly unhip guy…He was uninteresting and genuine, sweet-tempered and dependable, the sort of man who will stabilize your pulse rather than make it race,” (Baxter 140). Yet this label of the Midwest as boring and ordinary is infused with an amused adoration and comfortability. “We worked in the yard, we went to my health club. There was a peacefulness to it…though I thought it was a bit dull, the way a comfortable familiar thing is dull,” (Baxter 139). There is also a sense that the boringness and plainness of the Midwest may actually be a virtue, “Because it’s the Midwest, no one really glitters because no one has to, it’s more a dull shine, like frequently used silverware. We’re all hand-me-down personalities. But that’s liberating; it frees you up for other matters of greater importance,” (Baxter 204).

Through the character of Bradley, who is often directly called out as being an embodiment of the Midwest, Baxter seems to have arrived the conclusion that while the Midwest and even Midwesterners themselves are undoubtedly dull and boring, the region and its people are possible of being beautiful and creating beauty, and for the rest of the country not to underestimate this, “…he seems so nondescript and Midwestern, harmless, and then he produces from the back of his basement a picture that anyone would remember for the rest of their lives. It was a recognition for me, a moment of beauty. How strange that a wonderful painting should be created by such a seemingly mediocre man,” (Baxter 82).

Through the multiple viewpoints of Wallace’s many characters, the landscape of the Midwest in “Westward” is portrayed as both vapid and empty, “…a piss-poor little accidental town, smashed and stuck deep, corn-surrounded, in a flat blanket of soil so verdant and black it is one of only two things he truly fears,” but also hints at a rural pastoral view as well, “…and dew glitters, the corn one ocean…one hand passed over, producing one wave. Not sluggish and dead, but gentle,” (Wallace 242, 244).

Overall, there are far more negative depictions of the Midwest and its landscape in “Westward,” and yet, the most important moment of the story (Wallace even tells us “This is pretty much the climax” (Wallace 345)) occurs during what is repeatedly referred to as a Midwestern storm, which is railed against by many characters. Mark and Magda talk outside where “the rain reveals both their bodies and the skeleton underneath the scarecrow’s clothes. Magda is really not pretty except for the utter and unconsciously expressed pleasure she takes in the water’s feel between her toes,” (Wallace 350). Here, Magda, who has accurately predicted the future of the other characters, tells Mark, when he asks how she knows all this says, “You can hear what’s true, inside. Listen. You can always hear it. In the rain….It’s here,”(Wallace 351). Despite the negative depictions of the Midwest, the rain of the Midwestern storm ushers in the climax of the novella in which a character acquires “truth,” and clearly speaks to the Midwest’s beauty and importance.  In this way we see Wallace nods to the two traditional ways the Midwest has been portrayed historically but using a contemporary treatment that presents both sides without either dominating.

The idea of Midwestern literature being widely recognized as its own genre, with its own defining characteristics, is a dream that is still a long way off. There are many problems posed by the Midwest itself, most notably it’s lack of clear geographical borders, sense of cultural identity, and the insecure psyche of Midwesterners that have contributed to the painfully slow emergence of Midwestern writing being viewed on its own terms. However, that is beginning to change.

After completing a historical analysis of the Midwest and its literature up until the 1920s, several patterns emerged that can be considered the defining characteristics of Midwestern Literature: a solid footing in realism, simplicity in subject matter, a sense of longing or emotional restraint, and the treatment of the Midwest landscape. After narrowing the scope to a deep analysis of contemporary fiction, it became clear not only that Charles Baxter’s The Feast of Love and David Foster Wallace’s novella “Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way,” both uphold the defining characteristics of the Midwest genre, but also how these characteristics are manifested in a work of Midwestern writing. Baxter and Wallace’s work demonstrate a more liberal interpretation of some of the defining characteristics such as the incorporation of realism in their works. They also offer a contemporary treatment of the Midwest, as a synthesis of the two traditional treatments, a place of both freedom and repression, ugliness and beauty. While a more comprehensive study would need to be done of many contemporary Midwestern works of fiction, it seems that Baxter and Wallace’s work hint at the idea that contemporary Midwestern writers, while still abiding by the defining characteristics of Midwestern literature, are feeling more free to play within these boundaries and embrace all aspects of the region.

Just as any literary genre, offers a specific set of opportunities and advantages for writers to use, so does the genre of Midwestern literature offer fiction writers many exciting possibilities. Essentially, it’s a genre loaded with creative challenges. The Midwest’s landscape offers a challenge to the imagination, to see beauty within its bleakness and flatness. Similarly, the constant repression of dramatic events and emotions offers fiction writers a setting that while on the surface may seem simple, is naturally brimming with under the surface tension to draw upon, the kind of situation writers love to explore. With a cast of characters who are inherently complex and beg for their many layers to be excavated, it seems clear that by setting a story in the Midwest, an author is automatically handed situations full of complexity and tension, elements that naturally lend themselves to excellent fiction, when in the hands of a proper writer of course.

This is just one of many reasons why it is necessary to define Midwestern literature as its own genre, not just to legitimize the writing of the Midwest as serious literature, or even to help infuse the region of the Midwest with a strong cultural and regional identity, but to allow writers from all regions to see the Midwest as a place with something to offer their fiction, a setting that comes with a wide array of great possibilities for them to use. The idea of Midwestern literature existing as its own genre faces many challenges, but hopefully by drawing attention to its qualities and characteristics, the literary world will once again see the Midwest as a region with literature worthy of notice.  

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