Emerson Hough by Delbert E. Wylder (review)

Reviews 271 roulette and a dogsled race — , the warring bricklayers in Valley of the Moon, and a deadly human hunt from Adventure. Whether or not all these qualify as “sports writing” is perhaps debat­ able, but the quality of contest, of competition, is as evident in London’s handling of the bricklayer’s tug-of-war and ensuing melee as it is in the harrowing tale of Tom King, the washed-up Australian fighter of “A Piece of Steak” whose arteries have lost their elasticity and he his endurance. As Lachtman points out in his introductory piece, London took pride in his sporting instincts and while certainly no accomplished athlete, he swam, boxed, fenced, jumped, put the shot, tossed the caber, rode horseback, sailed boats and kites, surfed, went target-shooting and bicycling. He was a man of superb energy, “first and foremost a man of sporting blood and fighting spirit,” in Lachtman’s words. And from his own love of sport and belief in it as something reflective of society, came his somewhat pioneering use of it in fiction and essay. DALE L. WALKER The University of Texas at El Paso Emerson Hough. By Delbert E. Wylder. (Boston: G. K. Hall & Co.; Twayne’s United States Authors Series, 1981. 163 pages, $13.95.) Emerson Hough by Delbert E. Wylder is a study in six chapters of a nearly forgotten author once famous as an outdoor-western journalist, con­ servationist, and popular western and historical novelist. The book is based on fully acknowledged use of two unpublished studies of Emerson Hough (“Emerson Hough and the Southwest: Selected Letters,” compiled by Dorys Crow Grover of East Texas State University; and Carole McCool Johnson’s dissertation, “Emerson Hough and the American West: A Biographical and Critical Study,” University of Texas at Austin, 1975) ; correspondence to and from Hough (mostly in the Iowa State Department of History and Archives, Des Moines, but also at Iowa City and Newton, Iowa) ; a careful reading of Hough’s fiction, essays, and newspaper and magazine columns; and a review of material pertaining to movie adaptations of a few of his novels. Wylder’s first two chapters are biographical and concern Hough’s rural boyhood in central Iowa, his university training at the State University of Iowa, his brief practice of law in White Oaks, New Mexico (during which he learned about western land, gold, cattle, and railroads), and then the start of his writing career through midwestern journalism and through rep­ resenting Forest and Stream in the West. From 1897 until his death, Hough workaholically produced historical romances and other fiction, muckraking 272 Western American Literature pieces, stories for juvenile readers, and essays of value to ecologists even today. Wylder ties the first two chapters together cleverly by a master metaphor: Hough strove to climb the ladder of material and professional success. His belief in social Darwinism and American Manifest Destiny comes out here as he moves up, slips back, and carries on bravely. Chapter three, clearly the best, concerns Hough’s activities as conserva­ tionist and muckraker. Like other good sportsmen, Hough both enjoyed fishing and hunting and also deplored ruinous western prodigality. Believ­ ing in the wilderness cult, he wrote and otherwise fought for the improve­ ment of Yellowstone National Park. He rightly believed that outdoorsmen should regard all wildlife as a national treasure and should “harvest” game as farmers harvest — planning to assure future “crops.” He favored less “monkeying with nature” (pp. 82-83) and more encouragement of natural regenerative processes. He urged youngsters to love nature and engage in participatory rather than spectator sports. When certain Establishment magazines dropped him for such radical opinions, Hough turned to long (often serialized) fiction, in an effort to produce money-making best-sellers. Chapters four and five concern, respectively, Hough’s western novels and his historical fiction. In neither genre was he lastingly successful. Wylder here summarizes the best of Hough’s novels too extensively and analyzes them rather skimpily. Thus, the six best Western novels — The Girl at the Halfway House (1900), Heart’s Desire (1905), The Way of a Man (1907), The Sagebrusher (1919), The Covered Wagon (1922), and North of 36 (1923) — are altogether...