'Fly-over state' is a common term these days, being used liberally by those both coastal and coastally-aspirational. The meaning and the attitude behind the term are not difficult to parse out. To many these middle states are little more than great expanses of farmland—i.e. nothing—that must be passed over or through on one’s way to Chicago or to visit college or grad school friends in Madison or Iowa City, those islands of culture. Sometimes I fear that Midwestern authors are seen from a similar vantage point: that many of us are “fly-over writers” to whom readers wave (or just ignore completely) as they make their way to Saul Bellow and Stuart Dybek and Marilynne Robinson. I fear that these bigger names, along with a few others (Charles Baxter, Lorrie Moore), are seen as exceptions to the general rule that little of cultural worth grows in this flat, middle stretch of the country.
Ian Stansel on the literary value of the Midwest.
