Culture in the American Southwest: The Earth, the Sky, the People.

By Keith L. Bryant Jr. Tarleton State University Southwestern Studies in the Humanities, No. 12. (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2001. Pp. [xii], 379. $34.95, ISBN 0-89096-948-5.)

Keith L. Bryant Jr.'s data-packed overview of culture in the American Southwest--a region he defines by drawing a line from Houston through Tulsa and Colorado Springs to Los Angeles and then moving south along the border with Mexico (pp. 5-6)--attempts to reconcile two premises. In chapters 1 and 2, Bryant describes three cultural traditions--Native American, Hispanic, and Anglo--that he says were shaped in the centuries before 1900 by shared memories of the enveloping earth and sky. He asserts that these legacies interacted to create a distinctive regional culture in the twentieth century. In the remaining chapters, which divide twentieth-century developments into six periods, Bryant shifts his focus to institutions of "high" culture based on the Anglo tradition (opera, theater, symphony, ballet, architecture, literature, and museum collections). He claims that by building these institutions and by supporting the artists who give them life, southwesterners satisfied a "quest for cultural maturation" (p. 8) in urban settings and entered the nation's cultural mainstream. Although Bryant identifies a "dynamic tension" (p. 7) between the drive for integration into national culture and the search for regional expression, he does not highlight specific moments when Native American, Hispanic, and Anglo elements came together to form a distinctive regional tradition. He also fails to show how southwestern artists responded to and influenced national trends, and Asian and African American contributions receive almost no notice.

Bryant does not engage effectively the considerable scholarship that grapples with contested meanings of "culture," "regionalism," and "Southwest"; nor does he summarize changing attitudes toward aesthetic expression that might have better placed his narrative in historical context. Lapses of attention to detail also call into question the reliability of this fact-laden book. Perhaps some of the numerous misspellings (for example, Jeu de Poume Museum, for Paume [p. 163]; or Nathaniel, for Nathanael, West [pp. 173, 255]) can be blamed on the editor, but when "Jane" is erroneously inserted as the middle name of Ima Hogg, a major Houston philanthropist (pp. 145, 199, 227), the author must take responsibility. Houston Symphony supporters did not "giv[e] the orchestra a new home" (p. 296) in the 1980-95 period, although a major new venue for musical theater has just opened. A paragraph about Houston's Wortham Center (p. 299) jumbles complicated fundraising and architectural projects, the center's opening ceremonies, and its general artistic goals. Readers unfamiliar with the Wortham's dual purpose as home to Houston Ballet and Houston Grand Opera will fail to understand how these organizations share use of the two theaters housed there. Does Bryant's understanding of Houston's institutions typify his knowledge of activities in other cities?

Bryant's sweeping account of cultural institutions in and artists from the Southwest provides a starting point for students interested in the region and its contributions to our national heritage. Although his thorough footnotes reveal a heavy reliance on secondary sources, his selected bibliography includes an extensive list of archival and published sources that should help scholars clarify the function of artists and cultural institutions in southwestern history.

KATE S. KIRKLAND
Rice University