The Anti-Western?

Social media, I am told, is all abuzz these days with Larry McMurtry’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Lonesome Dove. While I lack even a passing acquaintance with the online exchanges, I have it on good authority that the book is experiencing a resurgence, heaped with praise all the way up to and including being christened the greatest book of all time.

Much of the discussion revolves around Lonesome Dove being declared by some the “anti-Western.” I’m not sure what that means. It may have to do with the idea that McMurtry attempts to present a realistic portrayal of the Old West, warts and all—a departure from the romanticized, glorified version popularized by Owen Wister, Zane Grey, Louis Lamour, and others, continuing right up to our time. (Not that those good-versus-evil tales with their necessary triumph of the good-guy hero are unusual in literature. The same pattern holds true at least as far back as Homer and the legends of King Arthur, and continues in cozy mysteries, thrillers, fantasies, private-eye novels, Westerns, and even much of literary fiction.) But somehow, calling Lonesome Dove the “anti-Western” gives supercilious readers permission to read a Western novel—something their refined, sophisticated tastes would not allow otherwise.

But there is nothing new in Lonesome Dove’s attempt to present a raw, unvarnished version of the Old West. It has been done before and since, many times. Andy Adams tried it in 1903 in The Log of a Cowboy, a trail drive novel that, unlike Lonesome Dove, grew out of the author’s personal experiences.
Paso Por Aqui, penned by Eugene Manlove Rhodes in 1925, cannot be written off as glamorizing its subject. Nor can The Ox-Bow Incident by Walter Van Tilburg Clark, which has been turning the mythical Old West on its head since 1940. Glendon Swarthout’s The Shootist (not the movie, which pulls Swarthout’s punches) breaks all the expectations of the triumph of good over evil. True Grit by Charles Portis also represents a departure.

A previous Pulitzer Prize-winning novel set in the Old West, Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner, presents a realistic view borrowed from the experiences of real-life Western transplant Mary Hallock Foote.

It would be difficult to depart from the romantic view further than Cormac McCarthy does in Blood Meridian and The Crossing, or E.L. Doctorow in Welcome to Hard Times. Loren D. Estleman’s Bloody Season demonstrates the dubious distinctions between heroes and villains. And while a glamorized view of the Old West peeks through in Ivan Doig’s Dancing at the Rascal Fair and The Meadow by James Galvin, it is portrayed through the eyes of some characters, and is countered by the notions of other characters.

Are these examples—and others out there—“anti-Westerns,” or are they merely Western literature, sharing the stage with the broad range of plots, points of view, and approaches that make reading good books of any genre a joy? I cast my vote for the latter. To me, Lonesome Dove is not “anti-Western” at all, but “pro” good reading and a great Western novel.

What’s in there?

There’s a man named Justice who made himself a judge.

There’s a madam named Mercy who makes him nervous.

There’s a three-legged dog named Twah.

There’s a barroom bouncer named Al, short for Alice.

There’s a dim-witted town marshal named Luther.

There’s a phrenologist, a milliner, and a medicine show.

There’s a riverboat gambler and a Philadelphia lawyer.

There are rents to pay, taxes to collect, and percentage payoffs.

There are disagreements, disturbances, tribulations, and trials.

There’s a courtroom in the saloon and card games at the brothel.

There’s never been a town like this one.

And there’s never been a novel like this one.

Justice and Mercy is now available in paperback and coming soon in eBook.

There’s a lot to smile at in its pages.

See page 26.

The August 2023 issue of Roundup Magazine, official publication of Western Writers of America, focuses on the theme “Writing the Traditional Western Novel” in a series of articles. One story, by Western Writers Hall of Fame author Loren D. Estleman, offers a departure to talk about Western novels that stray from the herd in search of something more.

Estleman writes in “Westerns: Beyond Tradition”: “The difference between the ‘traditional’ Western and literature that resonates through the decades is the sense that these stories are not confined to the page. The characters seem to have a life outside the story. Men and women live and die, often violently; but they don’t exist merely to thrill. While they live, other lives are affected, and when they die, others are left to mourn, or at least ask why. That simple premise is what separates the enduring classic from empty tradition.”

Offered as examples are The Virginian by Owen Wister (of which, Estleman says, “Nearly all the tropes we associate with the Western were invented by one writer in one book”), Shane by Jack Schafer, True Grit by Charles Portis, the novella “A Man Called Horse” by Dorothy M. Johnson, Ride the Wind by Lucia St. Clair Robson, and All My Sins Remembered by Rod Miller.

What? If that last bit surprises you, imagine my surprise when I saw it. About the book, Estleman writes, among other things, “Miller tells his story with a minimum of emotion and just the right amount of pathos, masterfully expressed between the lines of his spare prose. A 2022 release, All My Sins Remembered is a late addition to the long string of Western classics and promises that it’s nowhere near its end.”

By happenstance, when the article appeared I had just started proofreading the galleys for the pending paperback and eBook editions of All My Sins Remembered, due out within the next couple of months. The hardcover edition is still out there and will be, I hope, for a long, long time.

Nothing to say.

 

My Favorite Book, Part 29

We citizens of the United States sometimes forget that we do not own the West. Most everything that counts as cowboy came to us from south of the border, courtesy of Spanish and Mexican vaqueros. And their influence, always adapted for regional use, did not stop at the Canadian border. Cowboys are big in Canada.

I was reminded of that fact with this novel, Breaking Smith’s Quarter Horse. The book was recommended by my friend Doris Daley from Alberta. She is as fine a poet, reciter, and writer as you’re likely to find anywhere.

Written by Paul St. Pierre, the details of cowboy life in Breaking Smith’s Quarter Horse will be recognized by anybody who loves and lives the West, but with a unique north-of-our-border flavor that captures the quirks and customs of a time and place where the West was wild, the winters cold, and a sense of humor a necessary tool in coping—the sense of humor (or ‘humour’ as they spell it in Canada) perhaps most important of all. As you smile through page after page, and occasionally laugh out loud, you’ll wonder if the Indian cowboy—a horse whisperer of sorts—will ever find time in his not-so-busy schedule to see to the breaking of Smith’s quarter horse.

I thank Doris Daley for the recommendation. You will too.

 

Silver Screen Cowboys I have loved.

Movies and television programs are very much a matter of opinion. What some like, others despise. The same holds true for actors. Portrayals of cowboys on the big (and small) screen range from authentic to absurd, and the actors assigned those roles come off as believable or bogus, and sometimes downright laughable.

Like most movie fans, I have my favorites. I lean toward actors who are absorbed into the role, rather than movie stars who are essentially playing themselves in cowboy costumes. Here are some of my favorites, in no particular order. (Not included are many, many fine players who appear mostly in supporting roles or small parts.) I’m sure some—most—of you will disagree with my choices. Others will wonder about those left out. That’s fine. You can make your own list.

Robert Duvall. Tommy Lee Jones. Ben Johnson. Clint Eastwood. Tom Selleck. Paul Newman. Henry Fonda. Robert Redford. Thomas Hayden Church. Ed Harris. Jeff Bridges. Alan Ladd. Sam Elliott.

And, finally, Latigo Brown.

Latigo Brown?

Excuse the crass commercialism, but Latigo Brown is the hero of my latest novel, Silver Screen Cowboy. Like me, Latigo Brown is often uncomfortable, sometimes downright dismissive, of the unrealistic ways cowboys are portrayed on screen. Despite his surprising path from ranch and rodeo cowboy to movie star back in the golden days of Westerns and the remuneration and renown that come with it, some of the things he is asked to do on screen chafe like a bur under a saddle blanket.

Give Silver Screen Cowboy a read. Could be that Latigo Brown will make it onto your list of favorite silver screen cowboys. Even if you’ve only seen him in your mind.

At the movies.

Latigo Brown is a cowboy. A real cowboy, not like those TV and movie cowboys who ride everywhere at a high lope firing off six-shooters and hardly ever come into contact with a cow. But he finds himself lured to Hollywood by a rodeo hero, where he unexpectedly becomes a box-office star during the heyday of big-screen Westerns and cowboy heroes. Amidst the glitter and glamour of the movie business, he still harbors resentment for the way he—and other cowboys—are portrayed.

Will Latigo Brown swallow his pride and pocket the money? Will starlets, high society, and riches win out? Or will Latigo write “The End” to the movie business? Follow Latigo Brown’s adventures through rodeo arenas, film sets, and the Hollywood West in the pages of Silver Screen Cowboy. Coming soon in paperback and eBook from publisher Speaking Volumes.

 

Pairs of Aces.

In a recent post I mentioned the on-screen chemistry between Paul Newman and Robert Redford in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Sting. Some readers wrote to say they agreed that it was a fine pairing. That set me to thinking about other pairs that, together, made their characters and the movie better than they would have been otherwise. Here are some that are embedded in my memory as winning pairs—pairs of aces, if you will.

At the top of my list has to be Tommy Lee Jones and Robert Duvall in the television mini-series Lonesome Dove. Both these actors are favorites of mine, and together they made one of the best duos ever.

Going back a few years, there’s the unforgettable combination of Glenn Ford and Henry Fonda in The Rounders.

Ed Harris and Viggo Mortensen were outstanding in Appaloosa. An altogether different kind of movie, a hilarious spoof of Westerns, teamed up Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson in Shanghai Noon. In the category of remakes that improve on the original as well as demonstrate the importance of casting, don’t miss True Grit with Jeff Bridges and Matt Damon (and, of course, Hailee Steinfeld).

Finally, there’s a movie on my list far removed from a Western—but it stars two old cowboys who can’t help but be cowboys. Wilford Brimley and Richard Farnsworth were a pair of aces in the baseball movie The Natural—two actors I liked in any role, and especially enjoyed seeing together. They also co-starred in a short-lived TV series, The Boys of Twilight. It was set, and shot in part, in my home state of Utah. I didn’t see it (me and everybody else, it seems) but I hope to find it somewhere, somehow. Those two old codgers make a good pair to draw to.

 

At the movies.

One of my favorite movies, and certainly one of my favorite Westerns, is Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

I am fully aware that it bends and twists history until reality is unidentifiable, and faithfulness to actual events is lacking. Still, it does have some basis in fact. And, let’s face it, it’s not as if even the most studied scholars and historians agree about the exploits and adventures, the villainy and vices, the lives and deaths of Robert LeRoy Parker and Harry Alonzo Longabaugh.

What do I like about the movie? For one thing, it’s funny, and humor is one thing that’s sadly lacking in Old West film and fiction. The picture above portrays the climax of one of the movie’s most hilarious moments, Butch and Sundance’s escape from a persistent posse by leaping from a cliff to a river below following a furiously funny debate. Then there’s the fact that the actors, Paul Newman and Robert Redford, are masters of the craft and their partnership here, as well as in The Sting, is inspired given the on-screen chemistry between them. And it’s well written and well-directed. Finally, much of the movie was shot in and around my home state of Utah, showcasing the wild beauty of our varied landscape.

I don’t know how many times I’ve watched Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. I last loaded up the DVD a few months ago. And it won’t be too many months before I see it again.

 

Coming soon.

Sometime in February, Five Star will release my latest novel, All My Sins Remembered. It is unlike any other novel I have written, and I am not even sure where it came from. But those who have read it seem to like it—if “like” is the right word for such a dark, suspenseful tale.

Loren D. Estleman is a member of the Western Writers Hall of Fame, winner of numerous Western Writers of America Spur Awards and Wrangler Awards from the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, and a best-selling author of both Western and private-eye novels. He says, “All My Sins Remembered is destined to join the ranks of the frontier classic. Here is suspense as taut as freshly strung barbed wire, rock-solid period detail, and an emotional roller-coaster ride set against a West that is both historically accurate and stunningly immediate. Rod Miller does what only a handful of writers have ever done: make you care about (and even perhaps root for) an astonishingly evil man.”

Another winner of the Wrangler Award and a Spur Award winner, Western novelist Michael Zimmer says, “One of the more powerfully haunting novels to come along in years, Miller’s All My Sins Remembered stands shoulder to shoulder with such literary classics as Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian and Charles Frazier’s Cold Mountain. A brutal, beautifully rendered masterpiece, guaranteed to stay with you long after the last page is turned.”

Finally, Marc Cameron, New York Times Bestselling author of several Tom Clancy novels as well as the Jericho Quinn and Arlis Cutter political and law enforcement thrillers, says, “All My Sins Remembered is hypnotic and poetic and vivid.”

Watch for All My Sins Remembered. As I said, it is unlike anything I have written before. And, I suspect, unlike anything you have read before.

A book reborn.

Years ago, an author friend asked me to write a novel for a new publisher he was trying to help get established. The result was Cold as the Clay. That publisher, unfortunately, never gained a foothold and has long since folded its tent and pulled its picket pin. So, Cold as the Clay has been out of print for years.

But the book is too good to die. Now it is available in a handsome new e-book and paperback edition (that’s the cover above), published by Speaking Volumes. The links will take you to the publisher’s site, but you will also find it wherever you buy books online.

The story follows a cowboy named Wilson Hayes, whose life more or less follows the pattern of King David’s story in the Bible—plenty of heroics, violence, treachery, greed, and romance. All, of course, in an Old West frontier setting.

I’m happy to see Cold as the Clay live again. It deserves a second chance.

 

 

Camel bytes.

 

The Western Fictioneers Peacemaker Award and Western Writers of America Spur Award finalist novel, Rawhide Robinson Rides a Dromedary: The True Tale of a Wild West Camel Caballero, is now available from Speaking Volumes in digital bits and bytes. Which means you can download and read it on your Kindle, iPad, smart phone, or other electronic gadget. For us old-fashioned or unplugged types, it is also now available in paperback.

Here’s where to get your copy of the eBook:
Amazon US
Apple Books
Barnes & Noble
Google Play
Kobo Books
Here’s where to get your copy of the paperback print book:
Amazon US 

You can read more about Rawhide Robinson, the ordinary cowboy who lives an extraordinary life—much of it a product of his imagination—on his very own web site. Enjoy.

About those cat videos.

I have no personal experience in the matter, but I am told that cat videos are popular on the internet. I wonder if that fascination spills over to cat books.

Our cowboy hero Rawhide Robinson, star of many a campfire tale and Old West adventure, is up to his knees in felines in Rawhide Robinson Rides the Tabby Trail—The True Tale of a Wild West CATastrophe. Winner of a 2015 Western Fictioneers Peacemaker Award and Finalist for a Western Writers of America Spur Award, this hilarious tale is now available in paperback and eBook, formatted to fit your bookshelf and whatever electronic gadgets you have. The publisher, Speaking Volumes, has listed the novel all over the place:

Print Book:

·   Amazon US
·   Barnes & Noble

eBook:

·   Amazon US
·   Apple Books
·   Barnes & Noble
·   Google Play
·   Kobo Books

eBook Preview:

·   Amazon US
·   Google Play

Enough shameless commerce for today. Rest. Relax. Curl up with a good kitty and enjoy.

Dateline: My House

 

SANDY, UTAH: Work proceeds apace at writer Rod Miller’s desk. The author recently shipped With a Kiss I Die off to Five Star Publishing. The novel follows the star-crossed love story of a young emigrant girl from Arkansas and a Mormon boy from Utah Territory, and events leading up to the historic Mountain Meadows Massacre. Given publishing schedules, the book is not expected to see the light until 2023.

In other news, Five Star Publishing recently completed the cover design for the writer’s forthcoming release, And the River Ran Red. This novel is also based on Western history and tells the story of the Massacre at Bear River, the deadliest slaughter of American Indians by the US Army in the history of the West.

But not all the writing news is related to tragic historic massacres. Miller just finished proofing page galleys for the paperback and ebook release of the hilarious Western Fictioneers Peacemaker Award-winning and Western Writers of America Spur Award finalist novel, Rawhide Robinson Rides the Tabby Trail: The True Tale of a Wild West CATastrophe, soon to be released by Speaking Volumes. That publisher also revealed the cover design for Rawhide Robinson Rides a Dromedary: The True Tale of a Wild West Camel Caballero, a finalist for the WWA Spur and Western Fictioneers Peacemaker awards. Both comic novels should hit the shelves, physical and digital, any day now.

On schedule for release in early 2022 from Five Star is a novel by Miller that has already been labeled a “frontier classic,” All My Sins Remembered. Finally—for now—This Thy Brother, a sequel to his 2018 Peacemaker finalist, Father unto Many Sons, is expected for release by Five Star in the fall of 2022.

Read all about writer Rod Miller’s fiction, history, poetry, and magazine work at www.writerRodMiller.com and www.RawhideRobinson.com.

My favorite short story.

 

“Genesis” is a long short story—82 pages—tucked into the middle of Wallace Stegner’s Wolf Willow. The tale’s main character is Lionel “Rusty” Cullen, a 19-year-old Englishman who migrated to cattle country in Saskatchewan, intrigued by the romance of the Old West and in search of adventure. It didn’t take him long to realize his notions of cowboy life were misguided:

    Already, within a day, Rusty felt how circumstances had hardened, how what had been an adventure revealed itself as a job.

 Rusty also realizes he is but a pilgrim, least among the nine cowboys who ride out on a late fall roundup to bring in calves for winter feeding. Still, he is determined, even eager, to give it his best, to prove himself a man among men.
        As with many Westerns, landscape and weather are also characters in the story. The roundup is interrupted repeatedly by early blizzards that scatter the cattle time and again. The storms become so violent and the cold so brutal the men are forced to abandon the herd, even the remuda, to race across the plains at a snail’s pace, trying to outrun death itself.
        Romantic notions, if any still exist at this point, are further disabused by the awareness that these men, and others like them throughout the West’s cattle country, put their lives at peril:

For owners off in Aberdeen or Toronto or Calgary or Butte who would never come out themselves and risk what they demanded of any cowboy for twenty dollars a month and found.

 As much as I like “Genesis” for what it includes—a realistic look at cowboy life and work, albeit in extreme circumstances—I like it for what it does not include. There’s not a single gunfight. No Hollywood walk-down quick-draw contest, no snarling packs of bad guys shooting up the streets and back alleys and saloons of a wooden town. There’s no damsel in distress—unless you count mother cows and heifer calves. No splendid super steeds racing at top speed across page after page with nary a stop for a blow, a sip of water, a mouthful of grass. And there are no six-foot-tall bulletproof heroes with broad shoulders, narrow hips, and a steely gaze.
        That’s not to say there’s no courage, bravery, or heroics in “Genesis.” But it’s realistic valor, not the over-the-top imaginary superhero stuff so common in Western stories. Stegner sums it up best when, near the end of the tale, he says this about Rusty:

 It was probably a step in the making of a cowhand when he learned that what would pass for heroics in a softer world was only chores around here.

 

One sitting each.

A “short story” has been defined as one that can be read in one sitting. That being the case, Hobnail and Other Frontier Stories, a new anthology from Five Star, is good for seventeen sittings.

Some of my favorite Western writers, including Loren D. Estleman, Johnny D. Boggs, and John D. Nesbitt are featured here. And there is a story by yours truly.

“The Times of a Sign” is about mules and jacks and horses and thievery, as it tells of a young man who takes part in a horse-stealing expedition to California, which leads to establishing a mule- and oxen-breeding operation in Missouri. As he explains to a questioner the absurdity of the sign advertising his enterprise, he relates the adventure of establishing the business.

The sign reads:

for sale

mules and oxen

breeding stock

     

What could possibly upset him so? One sitting with Hobnail and Other Frontier Stories will answer that question.

A look into the future.

Five Star, publisher of several of my books, just sent the cover design for my forthcoming novel, Pinebox Collins.

It’s about a one-legged itinerant undertaker in the Old West.

From the battlefields of the Civil War, Jonathon “Pinebox” Collins wanders the West seeking his place in the world. Cow towns, mining towns, boomtowns, small towns, growing cities—he tries them all.

Along the way, he witnesses what, where, and how the West changes America and the world. And he sees who makes it happen, crossing paths with pivotal people of the times. Among them, “Wild Bill” Hickok, whose trail repeatedly intersects with Pinebox’s.

Pinebox Collins offers a unique view of the Old West, through the eyes of a man who looks death in the eye every day.

The book is due for release in March 2020. Put it on your “to-do” list.

My Favorite Book, Part 20.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: some readers love Cormac McCarthy, and some readers hate Cormac McCarthy, and there are very few readers to be found in between.

He’s not a writer you read to “escape.” You know, those kinds of books you crack open and fall into and zone out and breeze through without working up a sweat or having to stop to catch your breath. Or think.

You have to pay attention when you read Cormac McCarthy. And even then, you’re apt to find yourself re-reading a passage here and there because something unexpected happened; a surprise you didn’t see coming but, on reflection, had to happen.

And there’s his style of writing. He isn’t big on quotation marks, so, again, you have to pay attention when he’s writing dialogue. But his vivid language, searing descriptions, complex characters, and stories where a lot happens below the surface will engage your mind and infiltrate your consciousness and never let go.

All the Pretty Horses is one of McCarthy’s masterpieces. It won the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award, among other honors. And it sold wagonloads of copies for years, and probably still does, which is a rare feat for a Western novel.

It inspired a Hollywood movie of the same name, which I did not see for years. Having read the book several times, instinct told me which aspects of the complex, interwoven stories movie cameras would focus on, turning the tale into something of a high-class soap opera. I was right. What a shame.

All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy deserved better. It’s a remarkable novel. I think I will now go and pull it off the shelf and read it again.

“Father” goes to college.

The latest issue of Utah State magazine, the alumni publication from Utah State University, features my new novel, Father unto Many Sons. Included is a brief excerpt from the book—the Preface—and a brief bio about yours truly.

Although it has been a long, long, long time since I graduated from USU, I still have a lot of fond memories of my years going to school and working in Cache Valley, and am always on the lookout for an excuse to visit. (One such excuse takes me there October 10 to address the Cache Valley Historical Society; more on that later.)

Take advantage of this opportunity to increase your education. Take a look at Father unto Many Sons in Utah State magazine.   

      

My Favorite Book, Part 16

It would be difficult, I believe, for any list of outstanding Western novels to exclude Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove. I have read several McMurtry novels, and the truth is I run hot and cold on his writing—some of the books I like, some do nothing for me, some I would not recommend.

But when it comes to Lonesome Dove, I am hard pressed to do anything but stand in awe.

The main tale, a trail drive from Texas to Montana, is simple enough. But the many intertwining subplots give the book depth and richness, with stories both intricate and complex.

But it is the characters that set the book apart from all others. Woodrow Call and Augustus McCrae are an unlikely pair, with well-developed personalities that are at the same time contradictory and complementary. And the supporting characters, the whole long list of them, are likewise realistic and representative of the depth and breadth of humanity.

To win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction—which Lonesome Dove did in 1986—is an accomplishment unrivaled for a novel. For a Western novel, it is almost unprecedented and, for a “cowboy” novel, I believe it is unique.

The film adaptation is well done, but it’s about time for me to dive back into the book for, I think, the third time.