Elmer Kelton: Essays and Memories

9 Elmer Kelton Speaks Out . . . On the History of the Western Novel

123 9 Elmer Kelton Speaks Out . . . On the History of the Western Novel Elmer Kelton At a meeting of the Chisholm Trail Roundup Writers’ Workshop on the TCU campus in June of 1990, the crux of the meeting turned on Patricia Limerick’s view of the American West contrasted with Elmer Kelton’s. Professor Limerick, one of the leaders of the “New West Historians” made the case outlined in her book Legacy of Conquest that the real history of the West had been disguised by generations of historians , western fiction writers, Hollywood movie makers, and folklorists. Her thesis is that “Indians, Hispanics, French Canadians , and Asians were at best supporting actors and at worst invisible. Nearly as invisible were women, of all ethnicities ” (Legacy 21). She made the point that writers, presumably like Kelton, had written volumes extolling the virtues of white males as pioneers and conquerors of the frontier. The concept of Manifest Destiny was a story of white males who tamed the land, drove off the Indians, and in effect ended the frontier that Frederick Jackson Turner wrote about in 1893. But the real story of the West is really a story that includes the women, the Chinese railroaders, the Hispanics, and other ethnicities. The legend of the white male conqueror is a story that captured the imagination of filmmakers, novelists, and Elmer Kelton: Essays and Memories 124 folklorists. The real story of the West is only now being “revised ” by the New West Historians. The following article, published in the winter 1989 issue of The Roundup Quarterly, is based on Elmer’s comments at the Chisholm Trail Roundup and reveals much about his approach to dealing with history in fiction. Editors Elmer Kelton Speaks Out . . . Roundup Quarterly New Series, Vol. 2, No. 2 Winter 1989 On the History of the Western Novel THE WESTERN HAD ITS BEGINNINGS with the “penny dreadfuls ” of Ned Buntline and others in the actual frontier period. It could be said to go back even to David Crockett and his almanac and the frontier tradition of the tall tale. But it really began to take on form with the Buntline period. These were usually tall tales of daring and heroism written about real people such as Buffalo Bill Cody and Wild Bill Hickock [sic]. They were almost always written by easterners, not by westerners . They were usually highly sensational, wildly implausible and heroic beyond all reason. They were also considered not respectable. In general, in polite literary circles today, the western is still not considered respectable. Unfortunately for us, we inherited too much from Ned Buntline. If you write a novel that is construed to be a western, no matter how good it is, it has two strikes on it before it ever goes to the plate. The traditional western as we know it today more or less crystallized just after the turn of the century with Owen Wister’s The Virginian. That book, in its time, was considered highly respectable. It was fresh and new, a great departure from the penny dreadfuls. It had a literary polish nobody had given the western before. It seems old-hat and clichéd today. That’s partly because literary Elmer Kelton 125 styles have changed, and partly it’s because so many westerns since have picked up and repeated so much from it. Too many western heroes have been the Virginian with a different name. Too many western heroines have been Molly the schoolteacher without much change except that she is Mary or Jane, and she may be the rancher’s daughter. Too many main-street shootouts have been a replay of the Virginian and Trampas. Much, much too often, western novelists have gone back not to actual history but to Owen Wister. It isn’t always that they have intended to. I suspect there are western writers today who haven’t even read The Virginian. But they have read and patterned their work after other western writers who did and do. What’s more, through the years this trend has been fostered and encouraged by publishers and by Hollywood. The West as they envision it often comes closer to The Virginian than to reality. They are most comfortable in this semi-mythical setting and don’t like to be troubled by deviation from it. I’ve forgotten the writer’s name, but there was one young fellow soon after World War II...