Children, only animals live entirely in the Here and Now. Only nature knows neither memory nor history. But man-let me offer you a definition-is the storytelling animal. Wherever he goes he wants to leave behind not a chaotic wake, not an empty space, but the comforting marker-buoys and trail-signs of stories. He has to go on telling stories. He has to keep on making them up. As long as there's a story, it's all right. Even in his last moments, it's said, in the split second of a fatal fall-or when he's about to drown-he sees, passing rapidly before him, the story of his whole life.-Graham Swift, Water/and In the beginning was the story. Or rather: many stories, of many places, in many voices, pointing toward many ends. In 1979, two books were published about the long drought that struck the Great Plains during the 1930s. The two had nearly identical titles: one, by Paul Bonnifie1d, was called The Dust Bow/,' the other, by Donald Worster, Dust Bow!,l The two authors dealt with virtually the same subject, had researched many of the same documents, and agreed on most of their facts, and yet their conclusions could hardly have been more different. Bonnifield's closing argument runs like this: William Cronon is professor of history at Yale University. I would like to thank the many friends and colleagues who have read and criticized various versions of this essay. David Laurence was responsible for convincing me, rather against my will, that the perspective I've adopted here could be neither ignored nor evaded, and he offered generous guidance as I tried to acquire the critical vocabulary that would allow me to tackle these problems. As always, David Scobey has been my most faithful guide in helping me find my way through the dense thickets of literary theory. Comments and suggestions from Thomas Bender, Elise Broach,
