The Great Outdoors

The novel celebrates the beauty and magnificence of the Two Medicine country, but it does so from the perspective of a narrator who – while keenly appreciative of the world around him – is always emotionally at a remove from the rural scenery and lifestyle. Rusty is in awe of his natural surroundings, especially at the Rainbow Reservoir, which “seemed to me then a dramatic part of the earth, and still does” (22). Nonetheless, the Reservoir is also the site of tedious fishing trips – and Rusty is invariably happier indoors, spying on people from his comfortable refuge, the back room. “Beautiful as the crisp scenic morning was,” says Rusty of his first fishing trip, “it would have been even more attractive from inside the car with the heater on” (23). On his first Derby Day, he again detaches himself from the picturesque scene, with his bathetic summary of...