The Best of the West ed. by Joe R. Lansdale (review)

56 Western American Literature Selling the Wild West: Popular Western Fiction, 1860-1960. ByChristine Bold. (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1987. 215 pages, $27.50.) In the Introduction to Selling the Wild West, Christine Bold asserts that her book “is not a survey of the publishing industry or of Western authors” (pp. xv-xvi) but a study of representative authors whose works show “a ten­ sion between formula and individual initiatives” (p. xvi). She makes the nice point that popular authors are similar to the Western hero in that “they react against the imposition of restraining conventions” (p. xvii), and in the main body of the book she frequently shows how these authorial reactions are reflected in the characters. Chapter by chapter, the book offers insightful analyses of authors, works, and traditions, even though the overall focus or thesis isoccasionally stretched, as in the chapters about Remington and Schaefer. Chapter one provides a fascinating discussion of the dime novelists, and chapter two offers a fine articulation of Wister’simprovements on Cooperian conventions and his devia­ tions from dime novel formula. The discussion of Remington is engaging in iself, but it labors too hard to bring his work into the focus of the book. Chapter three returns to the central interest of authors working within the constraints of commercial production, tracing Zane Grey’s “muted rebellion” (p. 91), the tension between classicist and hack in Max Brand, and the “interplay between author and formula” (p. 123) in Ernest Haycox. This chapter is right on target, like chapter one. Chapter four contains a good discussion of Alan LeMay’s three major works, and it explores Louis L’Amour as the quintessen­ tial mass-market paperback writer who uniquely practices salesmanship and self-promotion in his own work. The discussion of Schaefer, however, pursues a different line of inquiry from the main thesis, and it doesn’t fit well. Luke Short would have fit in quite well here. Chapter five, on anti-Westerns, isbrief but effectively balanced. Generally, the book offers succinct, comprehensive views of selected authors, and it reflects good work in synthesizing background material. In dis­ sertation style it is frequently derivative and heavily reference-noted, but it delivers fresh perceptions on individual works and authors, and it has a read­ able prose style. This book has not exhausted the subject of popular Western fiction, but it has made a significant contribution, and it should become a standard reference work. JOHN D. NESBITT Eastern Wyoming College The Best of the West. Edited by Joe R. Lansdale. (Garden City: Doubleday, 1986. 178pages, $12.95.) Contemporary literary techniques frequently illuminate traditional and modern western fiction themes in this collection of twelve stories, a poem and Reviews 57 a teleplay from the Western Writers of America. Ranging from pulp magazinestyle adventures to folk traditions and fantasy, these tales are most diverting when exploring unfamiliar literary territory. Resolutely traditional are Jeff Banks’s“Making Money in Western Bank­ ing” and Elmer Kelton’s “A Bad Cow Market.” The former, with its bandit who plans one last big bank stick-up before retirement, iseffective only because of its O. Henry-type climactic twist. The latter introduces the commonplace theme of the superiority of rural life over urban, as an impoverished rancher contemplates moving to San Antonio. More compelling is the excellent “Night of the Cougar,” by Ardath Mayhar, in which an almost supernatural beast stalks a backwoods woman with two young children. Equally haunting is Neal Barrett’s “Sallie C” with its strange desert hotel, kept by Pat Garrett, the man who shot Billy the Kid, and peopled with stranger inmates: Orville and Wilbur Wright; eleven-year-old Erwin Rommel, the future German field marshal; and the Kid himself, not dead at all but helplessly paralyzed by Garrett’sbullet. Hackneyed dialogue and stereotyped characters mar William F. Nolan’s “The Night Hawk Rides,” a teleplay about a Zorro clone protecting ranchers from wicked Mexicans in early Texas. It isnovel only in form. Brian Garfield’s “At Yuma Crossing” is vastly superior in artistry and psychological depth. The desert junction of the Gila and Colorado Rivers pro­ vides the setting for a wandering loner, a “Gringo...