the way this state was historically hewn out of the wilderness

Wallace's IRS heroes hew toward transcendence through immanence, down in their holes

Even though her family was black and mine white, I hewed more to her worldview than to the four-in-hand tie knotters riding the club car or going to the Yale game in Cheever’s and Salinger’s and Fitzgerald’s books.

They were hewing out of the mountain of white supremacy the stone of their individuality.