The Editor’s Essay Review

The Editor’s Essay Review The American West has a long tradition of robust humor. Especially influenced by the tall-tale extravagance of the early frontier Southwest yarnspinners , western humorous writing—both folk and literary—has also assimilated other important indigenous elements: everything from Indian legends to the dry, wry wit of New England. Likewise immigrants from every corner of the earth have contributed to the diversity of western humor, the richest single source likely being the Negro legends from Africa, which have pervaded American life for more than three centuries. Evidence abounds on every hand that the stoic Indian stereotype must give way to the realization that Indians have generally displayed a remarkable sense of wit and fun among themselves and often in the presence of white men. Parkman, for example, was deeply amused at the humor displayed by some primitive Sioux: “As the pipe passed round among the men, a lively conversation went forward, more merry than delicate, and at length two or three of the older women . . . began to assail Raymond with various pungent witticisms. Some of the men took part, and an old squaw concluded by bestowing on him a ludicrous and indecent nickname, at which a general laugh followed at his expense”. Forty years earlier the ironic nature of the Anglo legacy to the Indian was noted by Captain Lewis. At Fort Caltsop he observed wryly in his journal that the Indians there gave as evidence that they had made previous contact with Anglo culture certain words they had learned: “musquit, powder, shot, [k]nife, file, damned rascal, sun of a bitch &c”. A tone of informality and humor seems to characterize western life, as Enos Mills said of a party of scientists he was with hunting for fossils in Oregon, everybody “did much jollying”. It is timely to observe on this point the experience of John Wesley Powell and his men who a century ago this month entered the Green River on their hazardous hundred-day adventure into the unknown. The humor of Powell and his men repeatedly relieved their anxiety, exhaustion, hunger, and contention. Readers of Powell’s classic account of the expedition, The Exploration of the Colorado River and its Canyons, will reall many instances of this humor: with the crew sick from eating potato tops, Sumner noted “Potato tops are not good greens on the 6th day of July”; or Powell’s note: “Soon I see Hawkins down by the boat, 80 Western American Literature taking up the sextant—rather a strange proceeding for him—and I question him concerning it. He replies that he is trying to find the latitude and longitude of the nearest pie”; Powell, stranded on a high ledge in Echo Park, was rescued when Bradley promptly took off his long drawers and dangled them down to one-armed Powell. Western literary and folk humor alike has held a prominent place since James Russell Lowell’s pronouncement 104 years ago that “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” was the best piece of humorous writing yet produced in America. Mark Twain, Bret Harte, J. Ross Browne, Ambrose Bierce, Bill Nye, and others of that period have had many heirs to their sprightly and barbed pens. Hundreds of volumes of imaginative vernacular narratives, folk songs, tall tales, legends, and colloquial personal reminiscences attest to the continued vitality of the western humorous spirit. From the time of exploration to the present the ironies inherent in every phase of western life have been effectively exploited in prose and verse. The two anthrologies of western humorous writing at hand make avail­ able a rich sampling of the prose and verse humor which has regaled readers during the past century. The Home Book of Western Humor. Edited by Phillip H. Ault. (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1967. xx -j- 364 pages, $7.50.) Bill Nye’s Western Humor. Edited by T. A. Larson. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1968. xxi + 183 pages, illustrations, $4.75.) Mr. Ault says his book might be called “Western history with a glint in its eye”. He admits this is a strange claim to make for a book “whose pages are full of lies”, but he insists that...