The Oregon Trail : Spuyten Duyvil : 9781952419997 : 21 May 2021 : "Entering Joe Safdie's new book, The Oregon Trail, ought to be accompanied by the 20th Century Fox theme song. It's not that he's as straight as Fred McMurray in The Oregon Trail (though they are both writers), but the film, which opens with a brief shot of some buffalo which must have been wrangled up from some zoo, charts a violent, shameful moment in US history that dwells just beneath the surface of Safdie's world. As the credits unfold, the camera lingers on details of a wagon train rolling into Oregon Territory, then erupts into anxiety music accompanying a slow pan along the prostrate leg of some white dude toward the revelation of an arrow stuck in his chest. Message: it's gonna be a hairy ride. Like the Oregon Trail that was American colonialism's highway to heaven, Safdie's Oregon Trail also journeys into a strange new land. Leading into and through an ordinary world of this and that, it insists on opening into