It’s incredible that one family could produce two men so adept at telling stories, but in two very different ways. It’s not just about the medium involved (Larry working with the novel, James the song), but also the manner. Where his father’s novels are densely populated and intricately plotted, the younger McMurtry tells so much through absences, inspiring the imagination through single lines that carry the inflection of whole lives.
Here, it’s all summed up in the chorus,, where a soldier – set free from the hell of war – returns home just to realize “there ain’t much between the Pole and South Dakota / And barbed wire won’t stop the wind.”
It calls to mind another song that could have been chosen here, which is only tangentially about South Dakota, but which strikes so many of the same themes: “Badlands.” A hero “caught in a crossfire” that he doesn’t understand, filled with fear, waiting for something…he doesn’t know what.
The difference is that “Badlands” is ultimately an optimistic song, about what we can find in ourselves the capacity to rise beyond our limits. By contrast, “South Dakota” is doused in realism. It speaks to the cold terror of precarious life, the long quiet darkness of the night. The hero of this story takes to ranching, only to see an early blizzard wrecks the whole herd. As the song concludes, there’s nothing but the tired lament of those who are left behind by history:
With a gas lease or two we might’ve just made due
But there’s nothing under this ground worth a dime
Now the sheriff’s on his way and it’s damn sure not our day
It’s just our time