Dark and Dashing Horsemen by Stan Steiner (review)

284 Western American Literature guage than Bly formerly allowed (“Noble loneliness held him.”), and more reliance on setting a scene. Certain themes persist and are carried over from the first two sections, especially the need to confront and accept the father, but there is a feeling of improvisation, of true searching, despite a more formalized sense of structure. “Well, if I know how to live, / why am I frightened?” Bly asks in one poem. In another he answers, speaking of the habit of ignorance and the need to “learn by falling:” “This time we live it, / and only awaken years later.” To put it simply, Bly is showing us how he’s learned that there is more than one approach to the deep, more than one sounding of the cave, and so there must be many different lines and many different songs. CHARLES MOLESWORTH, Queen’s College Dark and Dashing Horsemen. By Stan Steiner. (San Francisco: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1981. xvii + 173 pages, $13.50.) Stan Steiner’s Dark and Dashing Horsemen is a misnomer. This familiar expression is left far behind as Steiner trots off in search of little known facts about riders and their horses throughout history. Stylistically it is an exciting yet informal turning over of stones to examine overlooked details and probe into forgotten crevices of historical minutiae to come up with a fresh perspective on a seemingly well-covered field. Several characteristics contribute to the fascinating novelty of both the content and approach of Steiner’s work. First, Steiner takes well-known images, terms, or concepts and applies them in unexpected ways. For example, Steiner calls the reader’s attention to “Old Testament Cowboys” whom he shows to “have been among the earliest bronco busters and bareback riders.” Abraham was an expert horseman, whom “we might today call ‘a hard-riding man.’” Second, Steiner eschews the more familiar horsemen, like the American cowboy, while devoting time to Jewish conquistadores of Mexico or Moorish “vaqueros.” He also calls the reader’s attention to certain aspects which are commonly ignored, like the origin and meaning behind the mystique of the horse and the horseman. The answer comes from digging back into the Koran and the myths of old Babylon. He deals too with the origin and meaning behind the American Indian’s reputation for horse thievery, and exonerates the Indians while pointing a guilty finger at the U.S. cavalry. But no matter how far afield Steiner lets his inquiries roam, each dis­ covery adds to the unifying principle of showing how the horse and his rider worked out their particular relationship from culture to culture, from cen­ tury to century as far back as 1730 b .c . He moves from Babylon to Egypt, from Syria to Greece, from Persia to Kurdistan, from the Aral Sea to China, Reviews 285 from 13th century Prussia to medieval Spain, from Cortez’s Mexico to the Apaches, and ends up with the iron horse of contemporary times. Steiner’s work is history at its most fascinating, but unfortunately it is of limited use for the scholar, since documentation is sparse and informally cited. Another weak point is that at times Steiner strays too far from horsemen and horses into politics or economics, or confusingly doubletracks in time sequencing, or seems to throw his lasso around an interesting fact but never rope it in and tie it down with explanations, especially in the chapter on American Indians. But compared with the narrative skill, the wealth of new material, the unique vision and hence fresh interpretation of what the reader thought he knew so well, these shortcomings don’t fill a hoofprint. We recommend a sequel where Steiner can go on a new adven­ ture to rediscover other unique horsemen like the gauchos of Brazil or the Ukrainian kozaks, who were at the same time horsemen and boatmen, a rare combination. Such a sequel should make great reading, just as this book does. OLENA H. SACIUK Inter American University of Puerto Rico Crazy Fox Remembers. By Don and Sue Preston. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1981. 215 pages, $10.95.) In this book’s author-written introduction we are told that in...