Hill Folks: A History of Arkansas Ozarkers and Their Image Review

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(More customer reviews)I am drawn to books that analyze the complex relationship between people and places. Brooks Blevins illuminates the Arkansas Ozarks both as a place and as an idea, and shows the tensions that emerge when a place becomes an idea. The book's subtitle suggests that it is a history, which it is, but I found it intriguing more as a history of the idea of place in general than as the history of a specific region.
Blevins shows the Ozarks where 19th century settlers and their descendents farmed cotton, harvested timber, made barrels, and did other work that drew from the region's resources. Yet, none of these economies was successful on a large scale. The real place was too disconnected, with its interruptive hills, streams and hollows, to allow for large-scale production. With the exception of the far northwest plains areas near Fayetteville, the region never experienced significant economic growth. Farming needed to grow in scale to succeed (hence today's agribusiness), but these hills did not offer enough open expanse to make such farming profitable or even technologically possible. Many left the region for opportunities picking apples in Washington state or cotton in the Delta.
Those remaining adapted by marketing the idea of the Ozarks as place--in this case, a traditional Americana of banjos, fiddles, and homespun crafts. Entrepreneurs with an eye on the tourism industry sold Eureka Springs, Mountain View, and other Ozark towns as centers of Americana folk tourism. Tension grows in Blevin's book toward the later chapters when we see the people having to emulate folk music and craft traditions that were steeped in a romantic idea held by a nation that had left such quaintness behind.
Blevins suggests that residents were displaced by immigrants from the Midwest and elsewhere who were more willing than the locals to play the parts required by this idea of folk Americana. Middle class white retirees from troubled cities in the South and Midwest and elsewhere have moved into the Ozarks, perhaps in search of this illusive idea of a more simple life. It is the same comforting world that has lured world weary music buyers to the soundtrack of "O Brother, Where Art Thou?
The most obvious characteristic of the postmodern time in which we live is that image is reality. The idea of France as portrayed in Disney theme parks, for example, is as real as France itself and less messy. This is an age of simulacra. Blevins' book does not directly make such cultural critiques, but leads the reader to them. Having just spent a relaxing week in the Ozarks, soaking up the music and culture, I then was left to question what I had experienced. The three musicians I played guitar with in front of the grocery store in Marshall-were they doing so because they wanted to or because a larger idea of place engulfed them and tacitly directed their behavior to conform with its folk tourism economy?
In the end perhaps it doesn't matter. My new friends seemed genuinely happy and invigorated by their region's musical identity. A region could be known for worse things than great music. And the Ozarks is the home of Wal-Mart, perhaps the most obvious example of mass marketing economic success.
For contrast, go to the Florida Keys and watch the bored pseudo parrot heads churn out plastic versions of old Jimmy Buffet tunes. Here the idea of place becomes stifling, preventing the natural evolution of a society. And the sheer number of tourists landing for an hour or two on cruise ships has driven locals to the role either of acting out Buffet-like parts or hiding. Blevins' book makes us aware that regions that become too closely identified with a particular mythology can become prisoners of that mythology. He implies that such has happened in the Ozarks, but I see enough vibrancy and cultural authenticity (whatever that may be) to feel comfortable with this idea of place. It is one I will return to, albeit with a slightly more critical ear and eye.

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The Ozark region, located in northern Arkansas and southern Missouri, has long been the domain of the folklorist and the travel writer--a circumstance that has helped shroud its history in stereotype and misunderstanding. With Hill Folks, Brooks Blevins offers the first in-depth historical treatment of the Arkansas Ozarks. He traces the region's history from the early nineteenth century through the end of the twentieth century and, in the process, examines the creation and perpetuation of conflicting images of the area, mostly by non-Ozarkers.
Covering a wide range of Ozark social life, Blevins examines the development of agriculture, the rise and fall of extractive industries, the settlement of the countryside and the decline of rural communities, in- and out-migration, and the emergence of the tourist industry in the region. His richly textured account demonstrates that the Arkansas Ozark region has never been as monolithic or homogenous as its chroniclers have suggested. From the earliest days of white settlement, Blevins says, distinct subregions within the area have followed their own unique patterns of historical and socioeconomic development. Hill Folks sketches a portrait of a place far more nuanced than the timeless arcadia pictured on travel brochures or the backward and deliberately unprogressive region depicted in stereotype.

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