The Ox-Bow Man: A Biography Of Walter Van Tilburg Clark

Chapter Seventeen: The Doten Journals and Declining Health

« chapter seventeen » the doten journals and declining health W     productive year in 1964, writing and publishing several pieces of nonfiction, including the article “Alf Doten in Como,” a foreword to a new collection of Bret Harte’s stories, an introduction to a new edition of A.B. Guthrie Jr.’s The Big Sky, and a foreword to a catalog for a retrospective exhibition of Robert Cole Caples’s paintings and drawings . In addition Clark contributed to a written symposium on the Western novel, appearing along with Frederick Manfred, Frank Waters, Vardis Fisher, Harvey Fergusson, Forrester Blake, Paul Horgan,andMichaelStraight.Thecontributionswereintheform of questions—the same ones asked of all the contributors—and answers by each author. Clark’s answers to the first two questions are revealing of his literary stance: 1. Are you conscious of being a western writer, and how does this aƒect your writing? › 353 ‹ 17-unv002.c17.4 6/29/04 4:40 PM Page 353 Yes, I am conscious of being a western writer, in the sense that, since the American west is the world I know best and care most about, it is also the world from which most of my stories have emerged. I can’t see, however that this means anything in terms of my purposes, or those of anyone trying to write well about the west (certainly it shouldn’t, anyhow) that it wouldn’t to a writer from any other region. No story is without a world. Every world has its individual characteristics which furnish certain problems for the writer. But the eƒort of any writer must always be to make the actualities of his world say something of more than local and passing validity. 2. What are the characteristics of the American West, especially the chief motivating force on fiction? The only important diƒerence between the west and any other American region—if we are talking country—seems to me to be still what it has always been, that it is a vast land with relatively small population, so that other aspects of nature than man must count for more than they usually do elsewhere. Nature, we might say, must become actor, not backdrop. But by the next year, 1965, Clark had gotten to the point where he not only had trouble writing his fiction—indeed, he would seem to have just about given up trying—but writing other things as well. Successive entries in Barbara’s diary during November and December of 1965 suggest the depth of his frustration: 11/11/65 Walter working on piece for Rotarian—What the West Means to Me. 12/2/65 Walter still working on article for Rotarian. 12/8/65 Walter depressed about writing, so suggested trip to Pyramid [Lake]. Were too late to take a picture of all the water coming in from river [to send to Caples]. the ox-bow man › 354 ‹ 17-unv002.c17.4 6/29/04 4:40 PM Page 354 12/12/65 Finished Christmas cards. Walter very depressed about article for Rotarian. Snow on ground in morning. 12/14/65 W. still working on article. Apparently he gave up—the article was never published. Because no new Clark fiction had been published for years, his fame began to fade; however, it must be said that Ox-Bow was still alive in paperback and his stories were still being included in anthologies, especially the “big four”—“Hook,” “The Wind and the Snow of Winter,” “The Indian Well,” and “The Portable Phonograph.” Nevertheless, invitations to write reviews, prefaces , and articles were now coming less often to him. And what jobs he did take on usually caused him to struggle. In 1967 he accepted a New York Times invitation to write a review, which he worked on day and night for three weeks and finally had to send oƒ airmail special delivery in order to meet his deadline. In June of 1968 he struggled with and finally wrote an introduction (to Lady in Boomtown) but had to give up in September, in frustration, on another introduction to a book by a friend. Thus it was that his writing life seemed to fade away, just as his own life began to fade away. But Alf Doten was with him until the end. In almost every extant letter from these years, Clark notes his ongoing work on the Doten journals. His editor, Saxe Commins, died...