TALKING UP A STORM: Voices of the...

TALKING UP A STORM: Voices of the New West by Gregory L. Morris (Bison Books: $12; 246 pp., illustrated). In his professorial introduction to these interviews with 15 contemporary writers on the American West, Gregory L. Morris notes that his subjects “stand in new and tense relation to the place of which they write, and to the writers who have written of that place before them.” Elizabeth Cook-Lynn, Ivan Doig, Gretel Ehrlich, William Kittredge and others debunk popular Western myths and recount their own efforts to describe the open country. Montana-based Ralph Beer comments: “I think we’re going to have to find new stories to tell ourselves, because the old stories don’t have much weight anymore. The old stories are getting people into trouble around here.”