Reviews
Vanishing America
In Pursuit of Our Elusive Landscapes
by james conaway, reviewed by daniel bellow
Counterpoint Press, 2007. $24.95, 275 pages.
IN E. M. FORSTER’S 1909 science
>ction classic, The Machine Stops, human
beings live underground in isolation from
the world and from each other. Their
every bodily need is met by the giant
underground city of the Machine; their
time is spent discussing abstract ideas to
ward o= the ennui of their lives. No one
ever goes anywhere. “Why,” the inhabitants ask, “go to Pekin when it is just like
Shrewsbury? Why go to Shrewsbury
when it is just like Pekin?”
America used to be a country where
people wrested a living from small farms,
pastured cattle on the open range, hunted
whales and bu=alo, made useful things in
workshops and factories, and built cities
that were unique in their local culture and
politics. Today, it is fast becoming a coast-to-coast strip mall full of people consuming the same products, doing jobs that
involve the manipulation of abstract
Orion Gatherings
Orion is more than a
magazine. Read about
Orion gatherings at
orionmagazine.org.
in?uences our surroundings. In his
introduction—as succinct a summary of
the problem as I have seen anywhere—
he describes how he and his wife are local
preservationists at their vacation place in
the Blue Ridge Mountains. In the midst
of some land-use >ght with other weekenders “indi=erent to the past and
hostile to even the smallest sacri>ce
for the general good, even
if gratifying their desires
meant wrecking views for
others and sullying the way
of life that had attracted
them in the >rst place,” he
turns to her and says: “Let’s
just enjoy it here for as long
as it lasts.”
According to Conaway,
preservationism—the love of
the natural and the man-made environments of an
earlier time—is still seen as
an a=ectation, “discounted as sentimental
or attacked as an obstruction to the overriding quest for material grati>cation and
maximum pro>ts in minimal time.” Yet
people have a yearning for beauty, harmony, a life that makes sense. As the glaciers of the northern Rockies melt away
to nothing, 2 million people a year visit
Glacier National Park, “all of them eager
to experience an American version of the
sublime even as it dwindles before our
eyes.” But preservation requires sacri>ce,
and that makes for di;cult politics
among a people who believe, despite all
the evidence to the contrary, that they can
have their cake and eat it too.
Conaway’s writing is clear and power-
symbols, and driving, always driving,
in their automobiles. Why go to Fort
Lauderdale when it is just like Federal
Way? Why go to Biloxi when
it is just like Duluth?
Why have we done this to
ourselves? James Conaway is
an able magazine journalist
who has given this phenomenon a lot of thought. In
Vanishing America, he takes
us from the high plateaus of
the Arizona Strip to the
streets of New Orleans, from
Big Sur to the Dry Tortugas,
from the wilderness of the
West to the yacht clubs of
Nantucket. Conaway interviews people
struggling to preserve ways of life that,
while super?uous and even quixotic in
purely economic terms, serve to de>ne
them as human beings. He talks to people >ghting to preserve environments,
both natural and cultural, that lend
meaning to the lives of those who
inhabit or come to visit them.
All these people, all these places,
are swimming against the tide of standardization and e;ciency and pro>t,
all of which our society has raised to
a semi-divine status, just as the people
in Forster’s novella begin to worship
the Machine. Conaway is at his best when
he talks about how our mental landscape
