Patricia Nelson Limerick: A fictional interview

My name is Courtney Lowery and I am the managing editor of New West.Net.

I'm writing to request you remove an article ("Patricia Nelson Limerick: A fictional interview") you posted in its entirety from New West.Net on Dec. 5. (http://hnn.us/roundup/14.html#top)

The post came from a writer who runs his own blog on New West.Net and it has been removed from our pages because it was in violation of our policies -- we do not condone fictional interviews.

I would appreciate this piece being removed from your site in a timely manner or a clarification be included with the piece explaining to your readers that the story is from Mr. Probasco and not sanctioned by New West.Net.

Thanks for your understanding in this matter and please call or write with any questions or concerns.

Best,

Courtney

Courtney Lowery
Managing Editor

New West Network & Magazine*

For those to whom the name is not familiar, Patricia Nelson Limerick, professor of history and environmental studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder, is the acknowledged leader of a highly influential cadre of historical revisionists known as the “New Western Historians.” Her book, The Legacy of Conquest is necessary reading for anyone with pretensions of knowing anything about modern Western history. Limerick is much praised on the back cover of her book. Howard R. Lamar, Sterling Professor of History Emeritus and former President of Yale, writes that “Patricia Nelson Limerick’s The Legacy of Conquest returns the Western American past to the mainstream of national history” and Richard White, President of the Organization of American Historians writes, “The Legacy of Conquest is going to be the most talked about and influential book in Western history in years.…(She) is one of the most engaging historians writing today.”

You might well ask, “Why not try to get a real interview with Patricia Nelson Limerick, instead of making all this up?” and I would have to answer, “It wouldn’t be nearly as fun.” So let’s get to it.

Probasco: Hello Ms. Limerick. I just finished rereading my 1988 W.W. Norton paperback edition of The Legacy of Conquest and several of your essays and interviews.

Limerick: Hold on to your copy of Legacy. You’re going to need it for a long time.

Probasco: Let’s start with a close reading of the book and the material I printed out.

Limerick: Fire away. And I don’t mean that in the old, clichéd sense. When I say “fire away,” I am only using a phrase and not necessarily giving credence to its violent, provocative implications. Let me just say, “Proceed.”

Probasco: I am turning to the introduction to Legacy and I see here on page eighteen—you say, “Americans are left to stumble over—and sometimes into—those connections, caught off guard by the continued vitality of issues widely believed to be dead.” I think that you are referring to frontier issues, and what I want to ask is, who believes these issues to be dead?

Limerick: Those who follow He Whose Name Cannot Be Spoken. I can’t say his name because I believe his thesis has been given excess respect and I don’t want to compound that. And I’d rather not use the “F” word either.

Probasco: You are talking about Frederick Jackson Turner and his seminal essay “The Significance of the Frontier in American History.” By “F,” you mean “frontier.”

Limerick: We New Western Historians compete to see who can write the longest text without employing the F word. So far the winner is Richard White whose It’s Your Misfortune and None of My Own does not once reference the F in all its 644 pages.

Probasco: In Legacy you talk about how Western studies weren’t really taken seriously back when you entered the field. You write, “the subject of slavery was the domain of serious scholars and the occasion for sober national reflection; the subject of conquest was the domain of mass entertainment and the occasion for lighthearted national escapism,” and then you continue, “Children happily played ‘cowboys and Indians’ but stopped short of ‘masters and slaves.’” Well, Ms. Limerick, don’t children still play ‘Yankees and Rebels,’ pretending they are fighting the civil war? Come to think of it, don’t adults play that game? Only they call it ‘reenactments.’ But it’s just play, isn’t it? Isn’t there just as much of an element of escapism there? Aren’t you confusing academic studies and popular culture, in essence implying that southern history is Shelby Foote and Western history is The Great Train Robbery? Weren’t there any serious Western scholars before you came along?

Limerick: No, no, no, no, no and no. When scholars of Western history left the room, real historians would snigger at them and pretend they were shooting six-shooters and arrows at each other.

Probasco: Let’s get back to the frontier. New West Historians seem to have a particular problem with that word, especially the way Turner used it.

Limerick: The F word carries a lot of baggage. It is fraught with emotional and ideological connotations.

Probasco: Unlike “conquest.”

Limerick: Exactly. The F word, shall we say, has been deep-fried in the batter of nationalistic pride. What’s the first thing you think of when you hear it?

Probasco: A region just beyond a settled area.

Limerick: Precisely. A wild borderland. A place of romantic adventure and escape.