The Rise and Fall of Barney Tullus

D O N D. W A L K E R University of Utah The Rise and Fall of Barney Tullus* Late in the spring of 1962 a small novel issued from the presses of an Eastern publishing house. Coming as it did rather late in the critical season, it attracted little attention from the reviewers. The Tirnes simply noted that it had appeared; the Wednesday Review gave it a three-line summary; and the American Saddle and Bridle Gazette allowed it one substantial paragraph, noting particularly that the saddle mentioned on page 104 seemed to be a genuine Peotone Rider, with leathers hand-shaped over the seat and side bars of the tree hand-formed with a drawing knife. The Rise and Fall of Barney Tullus, however, was destined for a more serious and extended critical consideration. Early in the winter of that same year scholars in Western American litera­ ture apparently discovered it. There followed a series of full-length critical essays, explicating Barney from various points of view. By the end of 1964 he was in quality paper-back, and when the academic year opened in September, 1965, he was required or recommended optional reading in a dozen classes at a dozen different colleges and universities. Just a few years later one can say that The Rise and Fall of Barney Tullus has become a minor classic in American letters. And one can predict with considerable confidence the ultimate appearance of a work entitled The Art of Barney Tullus or perhaps Barney Tullus: Text, Sources, and Criticism. *This paper was delivered at the annual meeting of the Western Literature Association in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in October 1967. 94 Western American Literature A critical history of Barney Tullus of course remains to be written, although earnest graduate students may already be at work upon such a project. However, while waiting for the completion of such a study—a more definitive analysis and a more complete summary of critical discoveries—we can usefully survey briefly some of the major interpretations that have demonstrated the novel’s importance. Since some readers may not know the book, let me quote in full a key episode, the one from which the novel seems to have derived its title and upon which the critics have chosen to focus. Barney slowly sat up and sleepily reached for his boots. The warm afternoon air had partly dried his socks, but after he had pulled on the left boot the right boot stuck, and he thought again, as he had thought so many times, why does one goddamn foot have to be bigger than the other? Or why can’t a man go into a store and say, give me that little boot and give me that big boot and put ’em both in the same goddamn box? The exertion stirred the old beer again. He could feel it rumble beneath his broad belt buckle. He wished now he had saved the fourth bottle for another time. Booted at last, he rose unsteadily. He tipped backward; he tipped forward; he caught himself in gentle sway. He spread his legs; the boot heels dug deeper into the soft earth; he stood solid at last. It can’t be the beer, he thought. It must be the sun. He pulled the rag of a handkerchief from his left rear pocket, wiping his sweaty face. “Goddamn,” he said. “Even a man’s dainties stink of horse sweat and dust.” Lifting the coil of rope from the dry juniper limb, he squinted toward the watering trough a hundred yards away. They were still there all right, the mare stirring the dust with her big feet and brushing black flies with her tail. Even with the flies, they’d just as soon wait awhile, he thought. The saddle lay dumped where he had dropped it a couple of hours ago, the blanket still damp with the morning’s sweat. I’ve come to the crossroads of life, he thought: I can pack this stinking saddle all of the way down to that horse, or I can lead that stinking horse all of the way back to this saddle. He chose the second...