"If the Midwest is a particular place that instead thinks of itself as an anyplace or no-place, it is likewise both present and not present in the national conversation."

On Being Midwestern: The Burden of Normality

Phil Christman

When, looking in your own mind for a sense of your own experiences in a region, you find only clichés and evasions—well, that is a clue worth following. So I began, here and there, collecting tidbits, hoarding anecdotes, savoring every chance piece of evidence that the Midwest was a distinctive region with its own history. In doing so I noticed yet another paradox: If the Midwest is a particular place that instead thinks of itself as an anyplace or no-place, it is likewise both present and not present in the national conversation. The Midwest is, in fact, fairly frequently written about, but almost always in a way that weirdly disclaims the possibility that it has ever been written or thought about before. The trope of featurelessness is matched by a trope of neglect (for what can one do with what is featureless but neglect it?). Katy Rossing, a poet and essayist, has described the formula: 

1. Begin with a loquacious description of the Euclidean-flat homogeneity of the landscape. This place looks boring. It looks like there’s nothing here worth thinking about. Example: “The sins of the Midwest: flatness, emptiness, a necessary acceptance of the familiar. Where is the romance in being buried alive? In growing old?” (Stewart O’Nan, Songs for the Missing)
2. In fact, it seems no one has really thought about it before, they all write. What IS the Midwest? The West, South, and East all have clear stories, stories that are told and retold in regionally interested textbooks, novels, movies. The Midwest? It’s a humorously ingenuous, blank foil for another region. Example: Fargo, Annie Hall.
3. But wait a minute, the writers tell you, it turns out this place isn’t empty at all! They spend the remainder of the article crouched in a defensive posture.10