Document Type

Book

Publication Date

1989

Abstract

Readers quickly discover that there are three Tony Hillermans. One is the reporter, the streetwise observer of all the grandeur and all the depravity of the human race. Another is the storyteller, the person who sees in life’s events an endless source of entertainment. The third is the Southwestemer, a native of the region acutely aware of the locale’s complex uniqueness and the strata of human history that it embraces. All three personae merge in Hillerman’s writings, placing him solidly in the veritistic tradition established almost a century ago by Hamlin Garland. Writing in Crumbling Idols (1894), Garland calls for a new literary realism that will capitalize upon the artistic possibilities of the diverse regional materials of the United States. This realism, he says, will derive from the native’s sense of the basic human truths present in local materials: “The real utterance of a city or a locality can only come when a writer is bom out of its intimate heart. To such a one, nothing will be ‘strange’ or ‘picturesque’; all will be familiar, and full of significance or beauty” (61).

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