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270 Western American Literature postulate : readers are potential students, they must be shown the evolution of a writer’s technique. Now from a strictly literary point of view, I am not sure such anthologies add very much to a writer’sstature. As a pedagogue and research-worker, I approve of There’s Always Another Chance. It is an interesting document, helpful to the WAL specialist, and showing the development of Kelton’s skill. Besides, Kelton fans will greet it as a collector’s item. As a reader, my judgment is more reserved. I have a special tenderness for Kelton, as Hot Iron was the very first western novel I came to read, and the first inroad of that WAL virus which was to infect me permanently. I read 17 of his novels. Some provided good fun, many I found impressive, and all award winners plus Stand Proud and Horsehead Crossing I judged great stuff. In comparison, the stories of this collection are—admittedly and expect­ edly—simplistic, hurried, conventional, sometimes infantile . . . in a word “true to type,” consonant with the “Pulp” genre. I can sympathise with Kelton’s nostalgic evocation of his debut as pulp writer. It does not mean that—although historically fascinating—pulp litera­ ture is intrinsically good. Granted! Those “Ranch Romances” steadily improve from the title story (1948) to the last, “Die by the Gun” (1954). True too! Those Juvenilia show prodromes of Keltonian skills: vigorous style, a good eye for decor and action . .. but where is the psychological depth of Stand Proud, the human sympathy of The Good Old Boys? So? So not a bad book really! Clearly intended for a specialized, not popular, audience. Think of a greenhorn buying it “just to have an idea of what Kelton is like”!Brr! Strangely, it makes me think of a film company reissueing some forgotten, second-rate picture, only to show what a clumsy beginner that famous star was ... at the time. A treat for the movie specialist, but artistically speaking, of what significance? JEAN ALHINC Université de Besançon. FRANCE Death Valley & The Amargosa: A Land of Illusion. By Richard E. Lingenfelter . (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986. 664 pages, $39.95.) Over the years, writers have given more attention to California’s Death Valley than any comparable geographic feature in the American West. Unfor­ tunately, much of this literature has been anecdotal, appearing in the popular Reviews 271 press, making its accuracy suspect, or in publications which simply repeat the old saws over and over again. Manuscripts, government records and scholarly dissertations have always been available in scattered repositories, but what has been lacking is a solid history of the area to provide a background and a con­ text for primary materials. With the publication of Death Valley & The Amargosa: A Land of Illusions, Dr. Lingenfelter has made possible a renais­ sance in Death Valley studies and rescued the subject from the clutches of history buffs and popular writers, not that they themselves would not benefit from a careful reading of the book. Lingenfelter has tapped not only the pri­ mary sources, but obscure items in such rare publications as Touring Topics, long unavailable to most writers, and Desert Magazine, a valuable tool for surveying the nature of popular interest in Death Valley. Covering the period from the first white intrusions in the 1840s to the creation of Death Valley National Monument in February, 1933, Lingenfelter chronicles three interrelated phases of Death Valley’s history: the passing of the early immigrants through the area, the development of the mining industry and the beginnings of modern day tourism. In addition, he deals with the tradition of lost mines, the saga of the mapping and surveying of the valley, military activities, biological and botanical surveys, myths and folklore and all the colorful characters who have had some association with the area, including Walter Scott (“Death Valley Scotty”),one among many individuals who have made a profession of scamming potential investors in the mines. In many ways, the book is encyclopedic and will be so used by researchers seeking placename origins, a place to start in studying certain mining opera­ tions or a fix on the chronology of the mining...

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