Western Series and Sequels: A Reference Guide by Bernard A. Drew, Martin H. Greenberg, and Charles G. Waugh (review)

232 Western American Literature in the white man’s world as writer, but his subject was always the Indian life. In such books as My Life as an Indian, he would mix tales of his and others’ adventures, including war parties, with observations on Indian culture. Yet, if the many works have their fictional elements, the moral impulses behind them are true; Schultz presented a counter-image of the Indian and so argued the Indians’case before a white world that still functioned in the old racist fashion. Hanna presents Schultz well here, although the book’s order is a bit bumpy (there are, for instance, chapters that begin as though one hadn’t read about Schultz before—and even one on Schultz’s animals). However, all told, this is a book that anyone interested in Indian-white relationships should read. L. L. LEE Western Washington University Western Series and Sequels: A Reference Guide. By Bernard A. Drew with Martin H. Greenberg and Charles G. Waugh. (New York: Garland Publish­ ing, 1986. 173 pages, $25.00.) That the status of the Western as an internationally popular genre is inextricably bound up with its appearance in series or sequel form might be ascribed to basically three reasons: 1) The longevity of the hero through more than one book not only guarantees steady sales, but serves the genre’s mission of propagating continuity, progress, and hope; 2) The average reader drawn to western fiction is, by dint of his social and psychological attitudes, series hero-oriented; and 3) The basic idea of the West, and the Western for that matter, is cyclic, and hence sequential. Though only the second of these ideas merits cursory mention in the tenpage introduction, Drew makes some intelligent remarks on the western paper­ back hero who “ranks low in the sagebrush” among serious writers and critics. This useful and long-desired book (with some 3,500 titles from 375 series) caters to the needs of the Western buff who is looking for back titles to com­ plement his collection. It is also of interest to the western scholar with a lean­ ing to the genre’s manifestations as a product of popular culture. Much of the information given, though, can be gleaned from Vinson/Kirkpatrick and Books in Print with its back volumes. Since Drew nowhere states his principles of selection for the author’sseries, and titles he includes or omits, the user cannot help but conjecture that the underlying idea might have been to concentrate on the twentieth-century western paperbook market and neglect nineteenth-century series available as paperbacks. The bibliography, arranged alphabetically in series order, iden­ Reviews 233 tifies English-language series and their titles, which latter recur in a separate title index. The implicit focus on the twentieth-century paperback market might account for the exclusion of dime novel and pulp fiction forerunners such as “Denver Dan” and “The James Boys,” which are only mentioned s.v. By the same logic, Drew includes “The Rio Kid,” while he omits the other pulp series “The Pecos Kid.” The listings for the twentieth century testify to thorough research on the part of the compilers, not only in the case of such American series as the significant “Powder Valley,” the exotic “Six-Gun Samurai,” and the erotic “Longarm,” but also with regard to non-American series like the Australian “Larry and Stretch” and the British Piccadilly cowboys’ (Harknett, Harvey, Edson) prolific output of sensational series such as “Edge,” “Herne the Hunter,” and “The Floating Outfit.” In the “List of Authors,” by the way, “Steele” is wrongly listed under Harvey rather than Harknett, in addition to Gilman. The compilers kindly say that “there are some gaps and perhaps a few errors,” and they expressly invite information for a future edition. PETER BISCHOFF University of Munster, Germany Texas Myths. Edited by Robert F. O’Connor. (College Station: Texas A &M University Press, 1986. 248 pages, $17.95.) The essence of the sesquicentennial celebration in Texas is perhaps best represented in print not by James Michener’s Texas or even by Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove. The spirit of the state may be revealed most clearly in Texas Myths, a...