Losing Religion in Flyover Country

During my years as a graduate student in Missoula, Montana, I was struck by the dynamic between the writers in the university's M.F.A. program and the native Montanans who constituted most of the student body. While the hipster poets disdained anything that smacked of conservatism, they seemed perfectly at home adopting the accoutrements of working conservatives from the Mountain West. They donned trucker hats and flannel shirts, drank Pabst Blue Ribbon and cheap whiskey, and wore Wranglers and cowboy boots that they found at the secondhand store....