It seems like everywhere I look in my life there are midwesterners.  And they are some of my favorite people.  Take Jenny(well she is already taken, but..), her parents are from Missouri and she was born in Little Rock where she attended the recently desegregated public schools.  When she was 10 her family moved to Knoxville where she finished growing up.  Knowing that she spent much of her youth in Knoxville, you might mistake her for a southerner, but if you know her, her plain-spokenness, her lack of pretense and quiet courage, she is way more Dorothy than Scarlet.  I’m lucky to be the scarecrow on the yellow brick road with her.  

The boundaries of the midwest are not fixed geographically.  After Joan Didion died a couple of years ago, I enjoyed Slouching Towards Bethlehem, her collection of stories set in central California.  She makes the point that life in the central valley has little in common with the coastal culture of San Francisco and LA.  Didion says CA’s central valley is best understood as the western edge of the midwest.  

When I was in college I did my junior year abroad in Berkeley, CA., which is definitely not the midwest, and where I had my first cappuccino and my first premium ice cream, as well as several other firsts.  The ice cream at Vivolis near the Berkeley campus was, for me, raised on Sealtest, life changing, and the cafe au lait was my opium.  I was a little uncertain how my southern Appalachian background would play there.  Would people expect me to be like Jethro on the Beverly Hillbillies?  I was pleasantly surprised to find most people I met were very positive about my background.  They perceived me as lucky to come from some place which, from their point of view,  had a history and culture, roots.  My Berkeley friends tended to see themselves as more adrift culturally. Midwesterners are generally not adrift.  

Allen’s new wife Ananya’s parents were born in India, but she was born in Kingsport TN, and raised in Iowa where her family has lived for 25 years.  Ananya likes mayonnaise.  Ananya’s parents are quiet, yet as plain spoken as Jenny.  Midwesterners.

Jeff from school is a midwesterner.  Our buddies, the Fagans, are midwesterners.  They are everywhere.  

When Allen was in high school he tortured us talking about David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, which seemed like the longest and most difficult book ever.  Finally I tried to read it only to give up, but then discovered DFW’s collections of essays, which are easy to read and hilarious.  Essentially David Foster Wallace was an essayist, not a novelist.  He grew up in Illinois.  He was a good tennis player in high school and writes about playing on the windy midwestern courts.  

Willa Cather grew up in Nebraska and wrote stories set in the middle of the US, but don’t limit her by calling her a midwestern writer or a women’s writer, she is way too good for that.  

The midwest is a veritable hotbed(maybe I should say cornfield) for literature.  Maybe there is not so much to do there but write, which could be a good thing.  The midwest can also be a creepy setting for stories.  There is something inscrutable, unknown, and unpredictable about the flat, empty, middle of the country.  There is Fargo, of course, and In Cold Blood which was set in Holmgren, KS.  One of my favorite creepy midwestern tales is Gone Girl.  After reading it in English, I read it in Spanish for practice, then listened to it in Spanish in the car.  I never got tired of it.  Gone girl is creepy, clever and insightful. 

I think maybe the best essay I ever wrote was about a midwesterner, Spence Duin, who volunteered in my classroom at school.  He is a midwestern man in full.  Read it here:  https://fworthblog.wordpress.com/2020/11/17/spence/

Which brings me to Fletcher Anderson,  who died this week here in Asheville where he has been living in retirement.  Fletcher was a Methodist missionary and minister in South America all his working life.  I know Fletcher because at age 90, he ditched his nursing home to travel with our group from All Souls when we went to Cuba a few years back.  Fletcher has many devoted friends in Matanzas, Cuba because he taught in the seminary there.  In Matanzas, he taught Hebrew, in Spanish, to Cubans who wanted to be priests and ministers.  Fletcher also taught in seminaries in Monterrey Mexico and Mexico City.  He married a beautiful Italian woman(also a missionary)  in Peru.  He served as a minister in Argentina.  He made close connections wherever he went.

I got to know Fletcher just a bit during his time in Asheville.  He led Bible classes at the nursing home until recently. His mind was alert, bilingual and optimistic until the end. His big life, many friends on multiple continents, and intellectual achievements inspire me.  I wish we had Willa Cather to write his story.  Fletcher grew up in the panhandle of Florida, which, in my opinion, may be the eastern frontier of the midwest.