Has Landpoke or anyone else read
 

The Legend of Colton H. Bryant, by Alexandra Fuller?

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/08/bo...tml?ref=review

The Economist had a short review of it last week. I just ordered a copy and thought I'd like to hear what a Wyoming guy thinks. Or anyone who's read it or is familiar with the story.

I vaguely remember an NPR interview with the author a while back, but I haven't read the book. I'm probably not the best person to ask as I tend to be a bit oversensitive and overprotective when it comes to Wyoming. I find that transplants writing about the essence of the place always rub me the wrong way as they never seem to get it right. They're either too gushing or too harsh, always disneyfying the place such that it's not real anymore. A book called "The Solace of Open Spaces" by Gretel Ehrlich comes to mind as a particularly annoying example of the gushing, Anne Proulx's Wyoming stories are an example of the other side of the spectrum.

That being said I'll order the damn thing and report, probably in a black drunken rage, my dissatisfaction with the book.

I guessed there might be an outsider's know-it-all-ness condescension. I hear the kid was a bad-ass, but I'm guessing the writer has an axe to grind against Wyoming oil. [reminds me of all the NYC folks here who, although they've never been west of Ohio, lecture westerners about the need to protect the environment as they throw their cigarette butts on the ground.]

You are probably correct. She lives up in Jackson which is all I need to know.

It sounds a bit like the Cowboy Poet's in Elko. When it first started, it was legitimate, with some guys really being cowboys who could turn a phrase. By now, it's a bunch of cityfolk, looking like John Travolta in Midnight Cowboy.

Outsiders don't know the frontier and should stop writing about it, because they are schlocky second rate poseurs.

If I have relatives in Wyoming, and Wyoming blood in me, and I move to rural Wyoming, will I still be considered an interloper?

Not always. Remeber Edward Abbey came from back East (pennsylvania?) and IMO no one captured the arid desert west more fully than Abbey. (SU will pop a cork and blather on about STegner; Stegner did the people; Abbey didn't like the poepl, he liked the place; the land).

Yes.

I grew up in a little town in Utajh but if I went back now I would be an interloper, too. Going there or going back is not the same as being there.

Ok, I remember this person. She was the author of this lovely fair and balanced NYT OpEd from a few months back.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/op...l?pagewanted=2

Rich out of stater's like Ms. Fuller can shove it. Her concern is solely for the views from her front window, not for the people of this state. Matter of fact I'll go so far as to say Ms. Fuller doesn't give two shits for the regular folk in this state. If she did she'd realize that for all the horrible destruction oil and gas rains down upon the state it returns to the people 100x in benefits. She'd further realize that this state would be West Virginia, economically speaking, if we had to rely on the mighty economic output of the saint-like ranchers. A place where regular working folk wouldn't be able to eek out even a moderately comfortable living. Which is what she ultimately desires, to have Wyoming for those who don't dirty their hands with honest work, the trust funders and the idle rich whose wealth makes it possible for them to deny that the world functions because of the work of the common man.

In short she's an elitist in populist's clothing and I have no time for her bullshit.

Depends. If you come in and tell us we're doing it all wrong and back in Texas/California/Africa we did it this way which is much better and you're all a bunch of know-nothing inbreds because you live in Wyoming and we'll tell you what's best for you, well that might not go over too well