âGallatin Canyonâ is a short, grim road trip story by American author Thomas McGuane. This story served as the title of McGuaneâs 2006 collection. In 2021, Deborah Treisman and TĂ©a Obreht discussed its merits on the New Yorker fiction podcast.
SYNOPSIS
A man and a woman drive through Gallatin Canyon, toward Idaho, where the narrator (the man) intends to use his obnoxious guile to undo a business deal. âIâm a trader,â he tells his companion, on what will be their last day together. âIt all happens for me in the transition. The moment of liquidation is the essence of capitalism.â
Stephen Metcalf, 2006
McGuaneâs first collection in twenty years.
Place exerts the power of destiny in these ten stories of lives uncannily recognizable and unforgettably strange: a boy makes a surprising discovery skating at night on Lake Michigan; an Irish clan in Massachusetts gather at the bedside of their dying matriarch; a battered survivor of the glory days of Key West washes up on other shores. Several of the stories unfold in Big Sky country, McGuaneâs signature landscape: a father tries to buy his adult son out of virginity; a convict turned cowhand finds refuge at a ranch in ruination; a couple makes a fateful drive through the perilous gorge of the title story before parting ways. McGuaneâs people are seekers, beguiled by the landâs beauty and myth, compelled by the fantasy of what a locale can offer, forced to reconcile dream and truth.
The stories of âGallatin Canyonâ are alternately comical, dark, and poignant. Rich in the wit, compassion, and matchless language for which McGuane is celebrated, they are the work of a master.
CONTEMPORARY WESTERNS
Obreht notes that there has been a renewed literary interest in the American West. However, this time around around Western fiction tends to be by writers who themselves come from the West. Thomas McGuane moved to Montana in the late 1960s.
Iâll add that contemporary Westerns are technically, almost without exception, anti-Westerns and have been anti-Western since WW2.
What makes them âantiâ? While Western stories of all kinds are deeply connected to landscape, the old-school Westerns glorified expansionism, whereas the anti-Westerns of today highlight the harsh and unforgiving landscape. Anti-Westerns minimise the significance of humans, who are now depicted as temporary fascinations on a vast landscape. Death is a constant spectre.
That said, expansionism is still a thing. Now itâs called development, or our ârapidly changing worldâ.
Louise was a lawyer, specializing in the adjudication of water rights between agricultural and municipal interests. In our rapidly changing world, she was much in demand.
âGallatin Canyonâ
CHARACTERS WITH INCHOATE PLANS
âGallatin Canyonâ also interests me as a short story because writers are often advised to give main characters plans. Sure, things happen in stories to stymie the best-laid plans, but writers are frequently told their characters must make plans anyway, then change them as the opponent steps in to mess things up. Otherwise, we are told, stories suffer from poor pacing and unsatisfying drive, starring annoying characters who lack get-up-and-go.
The problem is, in real life there are people whose characters and lives fit exactly that description. In fact, this probably describes most of us at some point in our lives. Donât poor planners deserve to see themselves in stories, too? Well sure, although only lyrical fiction seems to have time for this kind of mimesis. (Genre fiction goes by different rules.)
The main character of âGallatin Canyonâ does have a plan, of sorts, but because he is insufficiently self-aware, his plan is only partially formed. This short story serves as a great case study in how to write a character with inchoate plans. Sure enough, inchoate plans come back to bite us in the bum.
AN EXPLORATION OF MALADAPTIVE MASCULINITY
Hereâs another thing that makes this an anti-Western rather than a Western per se: old-school Westerns glorified a certain type of masculinity. Contemporary anti-Westerns are far more likely to critique than glorify that old cowboy style of bravado and jostling for hierarchy. I spent the first half of this story irritated to be in the company of the main character of âGallatin Canyonâ. What saves it is the narrative choice, which leads me to the climax, in which we get our critique.
McGuane writes about men, and he often writes about men in the American West; and so heâs thought of as a writer of manly-man reticence in the school of Hemingway, beautified with dashes of Big Sky coloring. [âŠ] And for all its propensity to macho wandering, âGallatin Canyonâ is where Frederick Jackson Turnerâs well-traveled clichĂ©, about the openness of the American frontier and thus the American character, has come to die.
Stephen Metcalf, 2006
Metcalf also writes that American manliness and American loneliness are one and the same.
SETTING OF GALLATIN CANYON
You can write about a place but it takes something else to be a writer of a place. McGuane is a writer of the American West.
TĂ©a Obreht
PERIOD
The first person narrator is writing this story one (rodeo) weekend in the early 2000s but he is looking back on himself as a young man. My take is that he was 20 or 30 years younger, suggesting the 1970s or 80s. McGuane wrote this story when he was in his mid 60s.
TĂ©a Obreht has noticed a tendency in modern literature for older narrators looking back at their younger selves to sneer at how they used to be. This story avoids that despite showing the absurdity of the young manâs situation. This is a humane rather than a sneering story, representative of McGuaneâs later work in general.
DURATION
Most of this story takes place over the course of a single day, with a brief postscript type of ending which takes us a few months into the future, but not into the present of the narratorâs current life. (Weâll never find out what his life looks like now.)
LOCATION
The first sentence in a work of fiction places the first limitation on the utterly limitless world of the authorâs imagination.
Alice McDermott
McGuane places is in space in the first sentence:
The day we planned the trip, I told Louise that I didnât like going to Idaho via the Gallatin Canyon.
âGallatin Canyonâ
This story rewards those with a knowledge of Montana and Idaho geography. Iâm limited to what I can see on maps. This is the route they donât take due to repairs:
ARENA
The opening paragraph continues:
Itâs too narrow, and while trucks donât belong on this road, there they are, lots of them. Tourist pulloffs and wild animals on the highway complete the picture. We could have gone by way of Ennis, but Louise had learned that there were road repairs on Montana Highway 84âtwelve miles of torn-up asphaltâin addition to its being rodeo weekend, and âDo we have to go to Idaho?â she asked.
âGallatin Canyonâ
Notice also that the author sets up the emotional expectation of this story when he writes âwe could have gone (by way of Ennis)â, foreshadowing the fact that this is ultimately a story about regret.
The narrator has a home in a place nearby called Sourdough.
On their journey south along Highway 191, they move through places called Storm Castle, Garnet Mountain, Ashton, St. Anthony, Sugar City, Rexburg, Wilford, Newdale, Hibbard, Moody, Hog Holly Road, France, Squirrel.
Another mythical journey in which place names are scattered into the the short story like this is âBeer Trip To Llandudnoâ but Kevin Barry. Both of these short stories are daytrips. Listing place names in this way, with brief descriptions and the odd detour is a great way to pace what we might call a âdaytripâ short story.
The signficance of stories set over single days in lyrical short stories? They frequently leave us with this thought: Life can alter its path in the space of a single day.
MANMADE SPACES
The first person narrator owns a small car dealership in âthe sleepy town of Rigbyâ.
Four Corners was filled with dentistsâ offices, fast-food and espresso shops, large and somehow foreboding filling stations that looked, at night, like colonies in space
âGallatin Canyonâ
Most of this story takes place on a highway, which I argue is the manmade analogue of a river, as both are about fate and entrapment. This story is a home-away-home journey split into two clear parts: The journey there and the journey home. Childrenâs literature offers the clearest examples of this structure. See The Gruffalo by Julia Donaldson and The Enormous Crocodile by Roald Dahl. The story doubles back on itself at around the midpoint, and sometimes mirrors itself. The mirroring structure emphasises how different a trip along the same path can be. Thereâs generally a shift in emotional valence.
NATURAL SETTINGS
Whenever a lyrical short story involves a canyon, you can be sure the author is going to make metaphorical use of it. Here it is, the Gallatin Canyon in West Yellowstone:
Rivers have many symbolic uses in story, and in some ways they are equivalent to highways. Both can symbolise fate. Once youâre on a river/highway youâre inevitably headed towards some end goal. One canât simply back out. Even the way we talk about highways utilises the language of waterways:
We joined the stream of traffic heading south, the Gallatin River alongside and usually much below the roadway, a dashing high-gradient river with anglers in reflective stillness at the edges of its pools, and bright rafts full of delighted tourists in flotation jackets and crash helmets sweeping through its white water.
âGallatin Canyonâ
Rivers have inherent danger to them. Stories such as Deliverance utilise this danger to the full. In this highway story, McGuane foreshadows the danger of the highway, emphasising the way in which a stream of traffic entraps you in much the same way as a strong current. Although itâs technically possible to swing a U-ey and turn a vehicle around at any point, the experience of being on a congested highway is more like the experience of being caught in a rip:
This combination of cumbersome commercial traffic and impatient private cars was a lethal mixture that kept our canyon in the papers, as it regularly spat out corpses. [âŠ] A single amorous elk could have turned us all into twisted, smoking metal.
âGallatin Canyonâ
The road stretched before me like an arrow [another fatalistic symbol].
âGallatin Canyonâ
Whenever youâve got a canyon foregrounded in a story you can bet a good lyrical writer will symbolic use of it. (See, for instance âThe People Across The Canyonâ.) A canyon has a precipitous drop. It is also a landform equivalent of any kind of lacuna.
This story is about a couple who might be romantic, but who are detached. Louise is self-contained, has her own law practice and a past marriage which she has fully recovered from. She doesnât need him. (Perhaps she doesnât need anyone.)
The main character is also trying to close a deal and to create a gap between himself and the current contracted buyer. There are metaphorical canyons all over this story. Watch out for âgapâ synonyms such as âchasmâ:
I didnât mind equal billing in a relationship, but I did dread the idea of parties speaking strictly from their entitlements across a chasm.
âGallatin Canyonâ
Then there is the ironic gap between what the young narrator can see about himself and what the astute reader can understand about him. Unlike us, the young narrator is unable to make connections. For example, thereâs a moment during the drive when he says heâs reminded of a failure back in Rigby but he is unable to put his finger on it. In this way, landscape connects directly to character.
WEATHER
West Yellowstone seemed entirely given over to the well-being of the snowmobile, and the billboards dedicated to it were anomalous on a sunny day like today.
âGallatin Canyonâ
More important than the weather in this story, which we assume is sunny and unremarkable: The shift from daytime to night-time, when the story turns dark and dangerous.
TECHNOLOGY CRUCIAL TO THIS PARTICULAR STORY
The vehicles are important to âGallatin Canyonâ. Not only does the climactic event include vehicles, but the first person narrator also sells them. Iâm not sure if Iâm supposed to consider the cars in this story more carefully because of that connection, but if we go back to the first paragraph, in which the author emphasises the route he didnât take, itâs clear (especially when looking at a map) that there was a much easier and more direct way of achieving his goals that day. He seems to feel that if he had driven the short route (despite the roadworks) his entire life would have panned out differently.
The narrator is also fixated on those billboards about snowmobiles. He sees a juxtaposition between the snowy imagery of the promo material around Gallatin Canyon and the sunny day upon which theyâve arrived. Is this the author signalling to readers that we are to be on the lookout for other juxtapositions ourselves?
LEVEL OF CONFLICT
The narrator mentions that itâs rodeo weekend. I think this provides verisimilitude, and an added reason for the congestion around West Yellowstone, but also reminds the reader that we are reading a contemporary (anti-)Western.
Although the West is fully explored by this point in American history, this guy is still very much a modern cowboy in that he is involved in his own version of expansionism, ostensibly in reverse: Heâs hoping to avoid closing the sale on a car dealership he already owns, because heâs got a far better offer elsewhere. This argument heâs about to have with the first buyer is the contemporary equivalent of a gunfight on Main Street.
Like short stories by Annie Proulx, thereâs a conflict in this one between the reality of nature and the way humans try to manipulate natural resources which refuse, ultimately, to bend to our will:
âYou should be in my world,â Louise said. âAccording to the law, water has no reality except its use. In Montana, water isnât even wet.
âGallatin Canyonâ
STORY STRUCTURE OF âGALLATIN CANYONâ
On the New Yorker Fiction podcast it is remarked that, âThereâs a sense of space and time closing in around [the main character]â. This suggests a story in the shape of a vortex.
SHORTCOMING
The main character is of the economically fortuitous generation and has âcaught the upswing in our local economyâcars, storage, tool rental, and mortgage-discountingâ. TĂ©a Obreht uses an interesting word to describe this first person narrator: ânarrative consciousnessâ. (This is a handy word to use when we donât need to emphasise whether this story is told in first, second or third person.)
There is a clear difference between our main characterâs imaginative landscape and how he perceives it. He thinks he has more control over his situation than he really does. (This isnât the only guy in the stories of this collection to think that; Faucher in âOld Friendsâ also has this problem, and in aggregate it is clear that McGuane is creating men who overestimate their own charms as a generally problematic aspect of cowboy masculinity.
This story serves as commentary on the cultural messaging that men get (and got even more strongly last century): That as long as a man tries hard enough and persists, he can persuade any woman to be his. As much as this guy respects Louise as a lawyer, he is still failing to clock her as a fully fledged human being with her own (lack of) desires and goals. Capitalism has taught him that people can be manipulated in the business world; heâs trying to bring that to the romantic table, which never works. McGuane is sure to use the word âcapitalismâ once on the page.
McGuane communicates his main characterâs shortcoming to readers by telling the story from the point of view of the callow young chap as an older, wiser man. (ie. The older, wiser first person narrator of the story has changed so much that we can now consider him an extradiegetic narrator.)
Perhaps this guy would seem less sympathetic if recounted by an unseen third person narrator. That fact that heâs looking back at his younger self with the benefit of knowing, wry hindsight, means we can sit in the same car as this wheeler and dealer whose only goal is to back out of a deal legitimately made by pissing a buyer off. He also seems more sympathetic to the reader by failing to concoct a good plan. In his imagination he fleshes out the bit where, after pissing the guy off, he takes him out for a steak. In hindsight he is also self-deprecating, which contributes to the humour of the voice:
I had this sort of absurd picture of myself strutting into the meeting.
âGallatin Canyonâ
For some reason we tend to find characters rehearsing scenes before they happen very funny. Itâs always a set-up and pay-off gag because scenes in fiction donât go exactly as theyâve been rehearsed.
I would guess this young guy isnât very good at reading his own emotions in general. An occupational therapist might say his interoceptive skills need work. (A surprisingly large proportion of adults donât have good interoceptive skills.)
DESIRE
The first person narrator has two goals for this trip, though he doesnât tell us the second one until he âgets to know us a littleâ. He first tells us the business reason for the trip in the second paragraph:
I was headed to Rigby, Idaho, expressly to piss off a small-town businessman, who was trying to give me American money for a going concern on the strip east of town, and thereby make room for a rich Atlanta investor, new to our landscapes, who needed this dealership as a kind of flagship for his other intentions.
âGallatin Canyonâ
We then learn that heâs hoping to deepen the romantic relationship between himself and Louise, the woman he has invited along, though she doesnât really want to go. (âDo we have to go to Idaho?â she asked.)
OPPONENT
ROMANTIC OPPONENT
McGuane has become our poet-philosopher of the armâs length, of the prudently aborted intimacy that keeps both isolation and commitment equally at bay.
Stephen Metcalf, 2006
This is a love story (tragedy), which makes Louise the main (love) opponent. In the retelling of this story, Louise and the main character seem at first glance like equals in that they are both self-deprecating and have a similar sense of humour.
But hereâs the sad irony: This main character wouldâve made a good romantic partner for Louise⊠had he managed earlier to achieve the kind of knowing insight into masculinity that Louise has already achieved. She shows her reflective sense of humour here:
Bobâs from the South. For men, itâs a full-time job being Southern. It just wears them out. It wore me out, too. I developed doubtful behaviors. I pulled out my eyelashes, and ate twenty-eight hundred dollarsâ worth of macadamia nuts.
âGallatin Canyonâ
In contrast, the main character narrator shows us how obsessed he is with where he slots into the hierarchy of other men in Louiseâs life. He asks her if her ex is married, for instance. He wants to know heâs right out of the picture, and assumes that remarriage would be proof, or something.
Iâll point out at this stage that thereâs no evidence Louise is a romantic person. My interpretation is that she may be on the aromantic spectrum. This is a seldom-considered possibility when interpreting fiction, since we live in a strongly amatonormative society. The main character, too, may be aromantic. His actions in this story indicate he feels pressure to have a culturally sanctioned romance with Louise. He exhibits no burning desire to be with her. If he hasnât been comparing himself to those guys with the many kids (âpotato-fattened, bland opportunists with nine kids between themâ), he may not have even felt less of a man for âfailingâ to secure himself a family. As discussed on the New Yorker fiction podcast, the main character is thinking about Louise in a very transactional way.
Is this aromanticism or is it the effect of maladaptive masculinity? Impossible to say, since this cowboy masculinity requires men to quash feelings of romance.
MINOTAUR OPPONENT
So Louise is functioning as the main opponent of this story, but even âloveâ stories require another level of opposition in order to be interesting, so the Minotaur opponent of this story is the small-town businessman the narrator is aiming to piss off: Oren Johnson.
Now, because stories often feature those two levels of opposition and still work perfectly fine, readers are all the more surprised when a third (or possibly the same?) opponent turns up later, just as we think the day is drawing to a close.
The danger of the congested highway â a metaphorical fast-flowing river â heightens the anxiety our narrator feels about his half-arsed plan to deepen his romantic connection to Louise. In this way, the environment functions as an opponent, contributing to our main characterâs anxieties.
Apparently, McGuane has been asked who he intended the highway monster to be. He replied that it might be the Grim Reaper, or we might equally interpret him as the buyer of the car dealership experiencing spectacular buyerâs remorse.
PLAN
As mentioned above, the âplanningâ aspect of this story makes for an interesting case study because we have a character with no clear plan. In fact, this will be partly what contributes to his downfall.
THE BIG STRUGGLE
The suspense level of this story really picks up at Black Butte on the journey home. McGuane has teased us into thinking that the main battle is going to occur between the narrator and the buyer he is hoping to piss off, but in that our expectations are stymied.
On the way home McGuane takes us into an American urban legend â the type where a couple is chased on a lonely highway by a headlight which turns out to be supernatural.
After a tricky manoeuvre, the main character avoids an accident but the tailgater plunges to his death in the canyon.
ANAGNORISIS
Hereâs an example of how stories set in the American West are so intimately connected to landscape (manmade or otherwise): The journey to Rigby is congested. Although these characters take the same route home, the highway is completely different this time. The pair are now isolated. The highway itself reflects the changed emotional state of our romantic opponents. Why do they take the same route home? TĂ©a Obreht suggests that perhaps thereâs an attempt to recoup where they were that afternoon â a more promising emotional space. But ironically, what lies at the end of it is even worse than the discomfort of earlier in the day.
Hereâs the thing about stories told by first person narrators in hindsight: The self-revelations are dripped throughout the text:
I reflected on the pathos of ownership and the way it could bog you down.
âGallatin Canyonâ
Good fictional dialogue contains an unsaid layer. At the climax of this story Louise tells the narrator she wishes she could feel something. She is clearly talking about her relationship with the main character as well as the guy who flew off the cliff into the canyon.
Louise is revealed in this moment to be another person who canât make connections particularly well, either. The connection she is making is between the unpleasant day and this horrific event. This is the connection that she will dwell upon. She may realise that she, too, is a bit lost.
Our narrator should learn in this moment that Louise doesnât want to marry him, but doesnât quite believe it at the time. Heâs going to persist a while longer. Only in hindsight does this extradiegetic self understand that they were never meant to be.
McGuane utilises a form of dramatic irony by creating a gap between what the reader understands and what the young narrator fails to understand at the time of this story: We know all along that Louise isnât interested in marrying him.
âGallatin Canyonâ is an example of a short story which has emotional closure without hermeneutical closure. Readers of lyrical short stories arenât the kind of audience who feel short-changed if they donât ever know who flew into the canyon after the tailgating incident.
NEW SITUATION
The main character doesnât get what he wants. One deal closes (the wrong one), another deal fails to close (marriage).
Then thereâs the tragedy of the unknown person who, for all we know, was trying to alert this couple to an axe murderer riding in the backseat of their car.
Tragedy has the reputation for breaking relationships. Friendships and casual romance can be broken by a shared negative experience. Louise breaks off her relationship with the narrator.
The narrator does not immediately accept that Louise is no longer interested in seeing him, for whatever reason. He continues to call her with updates on who the dead guy was.
EXTRAPOLATED ENDING
My refrigerator moment: Did the narrator really find all that stuff out about the mystery driver who flew into the canyon, or is he making it up? Heâs clearly requiring a reason for calling Louise, though if he were a more emotionally mature person he could simply call her and tell her straight what he wants from their relationship rather than playing this game.
McGuane never tidies this story up for us. This is clearly deliberate. Heâs intending for readers to see the main characterâs romantic desperation, otherwise the narrator would have told us where he got the info from. If we go back to the beginning paragraphs, this is a guy who doesnât sell his reader short on detail⊠where thereâs detail to be told.
I extrapolated on second reading how ironically tragic it is that the main character didnât achieve more maturity at the time he was seeing Louise, because he and Louise (at least how the narrator describes her) seem well matched. He kept insisting that they were a good match at the time, but he wasnât any match for her yet. (He doth protest too much at the time about how good of a match he was.)
Does the older, wiser narrator really have a handle on Louise? I donât think heâll ever know why she wouldnât have him. Itâs easy to attribute it to the shared terror and tragedy of that trip, but it could just as easily have been the fact that he isnât just closing the deal, as she suggests, both from a legal and moral stance. It could be because he scared the hell out of her by driving so fast to evade the tailgater.
COMPARE AND CONTRAST
TĂ©a Obreht points out that landscapes of the American West lend themselves to serious mythic narratives rather than humour, perhaps, but another author who writes funny work about similar characters and similar situations is Annie Proulx.
Compare âGallatin Canyonâ with Annie Proulxâs short story âA Lonely Coastâ, a story set on the other side of Custer Gallatin National Forest. Proulx utilises fire and lighthouse imagery. In this story too we have the âincandescent globesâ of the scary headlights. McGuane does in this story, Proulx ends her story with a drive along a highway ending in tragedy. Both short stories encourage readers to contemplate our own lack of freewill in a famously awe-inspiring landscape which is far bigger and more powerful than ourselves.
William Trevorâs âBravadoâ is another short story discussed on the New Yorker fiction podcast. Trevorâs short story is also about a failure of masculinity, but this time starring even younger men. In both stories the viewpoint shifts to someone only peripherally connected. A young woman in âBravadoâ wonders how much of a death (not caused by her) was ultimately her own fault. In both stories there is a peripheral death which will haunt the main characters for the rest of their lives.
Header image uses a screenshot from Google Earth.