Schoolboy, Cowboy, Mexican Spy by Jay Monaghan (review)

286 Western American Literature disposal of the contention that historians create a truer picture of the cowboy than fiction writers do supports his thesis that dissatisfaction with western literature arises from literary, not historical, criteria. Jack Brenner’s complementary essay pointing out problems and dilemmas for the western writer explains the West as a West of words, part of the “struggle toward consciousness” we realize through the “style and gesture” of language. The collection is actually a study in paradoxes and ironies, words that recur in most of the essays. The ironies of myth and fact appear, for example, in Jack Davis’s study of the Indian Oakatibbe and the inability of white men to appreciate the “advanced social techniques” of a culture in harmony with the environment. Martin Bucco’s ingenious analysis of east-west movement in Dreiser’sAn American Tragedy asks how far we have actually travelled, and George M. Armstrong’s skepticism about our learn­ ing from the past in his study of Beulah Land ends by suggesting that progress is a myth. Other essays, including studies of travel literature, also note the need to reassess the frontier myths. The paradox is balanced by repeated suggestions that westering was a unique experience, not to be ignored in American studies. The ironies focus ultimately in the western hero as delineated in various essays: the Virginian, Billy the Kid, Canadian Jesuits, the anti-heroes of Edward Abbey, the Mexican pachuco. Dick Harrison’s tragic hero, isolated by the violence that enabled him to establish order, points a basic irony, balanced by Max Westbrook’s competently drawn hero of commanding presence who reminds that “virtue in a democracy is voluntary.” The weaknesses of the collection noted by the editors — the neglect of women and blacks— are outweighed by the strengths. The wide range of views presented offers the reader a rich and fascinating account of the “lovely ironies” John Ditsky, in his thought-provoking epilog, calls “the glory of American writing.” This work is indispensable for serious writers and critics of western American literature. LUCILE F. ALY, University of Oregon Schoolboy, Cowboy, Mexican Spy. ByJay Monaghan. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977. 246 pages, $10.95.) Though it covers only a few teen-age years, this is a pleasant and surprising autobiography. One might expect that a historian’s intellectual development would begin in the dust of old books and then mature on a steady diet of esoteric documents. That is not the case here. Rather, the reader is caught up into a narrative that on the one hand would satisfy the most uncritical Saturday matinee westerner, and yet on the other hand Reviews 287 reminds us of significant challenges that are inherent in dealing with the Western experience. Even those who have never heard of Jay Monaghan will enjoy reading this book. It is a narrative of adventure that will hold its own against the best selling popular pulp. Cowpunching, freighting, mule skinning, fighting, crossing back and forth between revolutionary armies, confronting desper­ adoes, renegade Indians, and stampeding cattle — this remarkable man presents us with a string of adventures, narrow escapes, and remarkable experiences that are at once wonderful and credible. This book is in some ways everybody’s dream of Western adventures suddenly come true. It is the West of Owen Wister, Theodore Roosevelt, and Frederick Remington validated by individual experience. It is a book that one smiles over often, finding a personal satisfaction that one’s own favorite heroes are not just fictions on a page, but flesh and blood people. For instance, writing in the third person, Monaghan reports of himself, “The boy looked at Dee’s lean frame and haggard cheeks. His mustache, a mere black line, hooked down at the comers of his mouth. This face reminded the boy of the Specimen Jones drawn by Frederick Remington in Owen Wister’s Red Men and White. Dee’s helper, named Charlie, appeared much younger and fuller­ bodied, more like one of the western characters W. H. D. Koemer painted. The boy admired the drawings of both artists, and he set to work with a will helping these two models of men he knew very well...