Jim Vandergriff*

After I read The Pure Experience of Order, I reread it to be sure my first impression was accurate. It came out the same: the work is somehow incomplete, unsatisfactory.

The main fault with the book is that it does not do what it sets out to do. It is a collection of essays, the ostensible purpose of which is to explore certain aspects of material culture in the American West. But, it immediately dives into Levi-Strauss, et al., and drowns. It is not that the theories are not relevant, but that Poulsen does not show how they are relevant. He needs to lead us through the evidence, not merely assert his conclusions.

For instance, in Essay 5, "Hawks and Coyotes on Western Fences," Poulsen gives a fascinating gloss of Medieval gardening practices but does not prove their causal relationship to contemporary practices of hanging predator carcasses on fences. That is not a minor oversight; it makes the essay read like an extended post hoc.

If Poulsen's idea is correct, he needs to prove it, not merely assert it. To establish symbolism in an act or object, one must show some degree of symbolic apprehension on the user's part. He seems to be aware of that need in the final essay when he discusses why people build in traditional forms, but he ignores it everywhere else.

Overall, I think the work is based on a couple of invalid, unproved assumptions. First, it assumes that habitual equals traditional and that traditional is necessarily symbolic. Secondly, it assumes that what is modern is non-traditional and, therefore, not symbolic. As Poulsen is aware, human beings are driven by a need for stability; pastel tuxedoes can fill that need as well as can dancing in a watering trough. It is how the actor perceives the act that creates symbolic value, not chronology.

Poulsen has started with a theory and tried to hammer his data into it. The result is not satisfactory. The problem, though, is in method, not idea. He has some good data and a good idea, but I would like to see him nail down the relationships more rationally.

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*Jim Vandergriff holds B.S. and M.A. degrees in English and has taught at Oregon State University, University of Missouri-Columbia, Emporia State University, and Central Missouri State University. He is currently teaching at Wentworth Military Academy Junior College. For three years he edited a folklore journal, Heritage of Kansas. He served on the executive board of the Kansas Folklore Society for two years and is in his fifth year as a director of the Missouri Folklore Society. Though he is primarily a dialectologist, he is also a publishing poet, a folklore researcher, and a "folk artist" of sorts: he makes traditional wooden toys. He has given numerous papers and lectures on folklore, and folklore and the creative arts.