Bad Land

Jonathan Raban, in his award winning novel, Bad Land, attempts to describe the migration of homesteaders to eastern Montana in the first decade of this century, and examines the last great wave of American western settlement. More tellingly, Bad Land is somewhat of a memoir; a well edited collection of stories and events that took place during Raban’s experiences in the Great American West. His novel is an attempt to redefine a travel book, in which Raban drags us through a century's frontier history. There is no doubt of Raban’s excitement and interest in Montana’s culture. You can feel Raban's compulsive interest in the West expand as the book progresses, and although there are some wonderful moments when he tries to communicate his excitement to others, as a whole, the novel leaves you with a feeling of, “I guess you had to be there”.

To describe the way in which Jonathan Raban writes would take little more than one word; emotional. Jonathan Raban writes with such feeling and passion, that you feel the exact sentiments of the people or the surroundings being described. When reading about the loneliness of the land, you too feel as though you are the only human being for hundreds of miles. When getting a sense for the har

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For example, “A truck sloshed past at a crawling speed, throwing up a wake that broke against the doors of darkened stores”(page 19), says Raban. During these chapters, he harshly takes a detour from the normal sequence of his novel and branches off; providing relevant input, but slightly off topic. Listing the ledger's grim figures would have been dry history in another writer's hands, but Raban brings the moment home. Cameron, a wry, whiskery Londoner, had depicted the essence of the prairie in the first years of the century; and with a lens that showed a smaller slice of the visual field than Raban's Pentax did.

Raban uses the interpretations of the land of others matched with the views of his own to provide us with visual imagery of the time. Raban relates all occurrences to that having to do with the sea. In the eighth chapter, Raban uses his mastery of tone to describe the uncomfortable situation of cattle branding.

The similar concept hold true in the chapter entitled, “Pictures”. But Thomas Hart Benton, another painter, looked through the other end of the telescope. The homesteaders, many of whom were immigrants from northern Europe, had staked their claims in an arid, unforgiving sweep of high plains that defeated most of them. Whether or not they literally “arrived with $25, a wagon and a mule” (page 197), most left, 10, 20 or 30 years later, with hardly any more than that. What the bottom line always says is the old 2 a. But there is a point at which Raban seems to go overboard: everything in moderation. Raban seems to get caught up at many points within the novel with his descriptions of events that obviously touched him deeply and left a strong and deep impression with in his mind. cry, We can't go on living like this”(page 11).

Approximate Word count = 1394
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)

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