Western Experience
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Books and Author Information | Theme Essay
Books and Author Information:
- Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner
- Brave Cowboy by Edward Abbey
- A Bride Goes West by Nannie Alderson and Helena H. Smith
- Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather
- Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions by John L. Deer and Richard Erdos
- Letter of a Woman Homesteader by Elinore Pruitt Stewart
- English Creek by Ivan Doig
- A Tramp Across the Continent by Charles Lummis
- Buffalo Girls by Larry McMurtry
- The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
- Billy the Kid: A Short and Violent Life by Robert Utley
- The Man Who Killed the Deer by Frank Waters
- People of the Valley by Frank Waters
- Fools Crow by James Welch
- The Virginian by Owen Wister
- Yonnondio by Tillie Olsen
Theme Essay
[This essay is adapted from the "Mapping the West" theme brochure developed for Idaho Let's Talk About It by Dr. James Hadden, Boise State University, 1986.]
The West. For many the West is more than a direction found on a compass, even more than a geographical location found on a map. The word carries connotations, snippets, and images from a host of sources that all go into making up an imaginative collage of the West: a water hole from a Louis L'Amour novel; a Remington statue; a line ("Smile when you say that") from Wister's The Virginian; the ubiquitous over-the-bar painting of "Custer's Last Stand"; a postcard of a jackalope; a dim flicker from a Saturday afternoon movie when Roy, or Gene, or The Duke rode into town in the first reel, sized up the problem, saved the day, and rode off into the sunset in the last reel.
The works chosen for this series don't fit this traditional or mythic mold of the West, but they do reflect the West. While they don't challenge our larger-than-life view of the West in the way that Cat Ballou or Thomas Berger's Little Big Man does, they add to and enrich the picture by giving us different, and perhaps even new, experiences.
The chosen books have historical settings from the 1850s (Death Comes for the Archbishop) to the 1970s (Angle of Repose); a variety of geographical locations from the Southwest to the Rocky Mountains to California; and physical landscapes encompassing desert, mountain, valley, and plains. They focus on a variety of individuals--some representing the traditional western character: cowboy, heroine, outlaw, homesteader ; some not so traditional: Roman Catholic priests, the downtrodden, and a normal middle class family; and a variety of cultures: white European, Native American, Hispanic.
Within this diversity, however, a common thread runs through the books: the ways in which individuals confront and deal with an alien culture and a sometimes inhospitable land. Whether depicting the pursuit of the American dream, attempts to start a new life, or struggles to hold onto traditional ways, the books in this series help create a fuller, more complete picture of the complexities, ambiguities, and contradictions that ultimately make up the West. They may be "the lasting lines...to be looked on again and again."
Angle of Repose (1971) is a Wallace Stegner novel about faith, trust, and the "continuities of history." Lyman Ward, the grotesque narrator-protagonist, is alienated from the present. To escape the traps and betrayals of the present, Ward explores the lives of his grandparents so, as he says, "I don’t have to live on my own." Through his exploration of his family history, Ward is finally brought full circle: he must live in his own present because, he discovers, the past was not any simpler or more secure or more idyllic than the present.
Book Reviews and Information on Wallace Stegner
Billy the Kid: A Short and Violent Life (1989) is a narrative by Robert Utley that examines American history, American myth, and the great legend of Billy the Kid. Utley, a well-known historian, examines the life and pursuits of Billy the Kid and through this narrative, provides a story based on biographical information.
Brave Cowboy (1956) is a narrative written by Edward Abbey that tells the story of Jerry Bondi who is struggling as a single parent while her husband serves jail time for refusing to register with the draft board. Jack Burns, the brave cowboy, has a plan to solve all of Jerry’s problems. But, Jack finds himself getting into trouble and encounters adventure as he must now run from justice.
Book Reviews and Information on Edward Abbey
A Bride Goes West (1942 )is a collaboration between the experiences of Nannie Alderson moving West to Montana, and the writings and ideas of Helena H. Smith. The novel describes Western historical events and looks at the obstacles the Alderson family had to struggle to overcome. Alderson not only had to readjust her life in a new environment, but she also had to help her children make these crucial adjustments.
Buffalo Girls (1990) examines the myths and legends of Western history. In the novel, the legendary, Calamity Jane, looks at the differences between her life and other legends that derived from the frontier. Calamity Jane must move through a self-discovery process and as McMurtry portrays this, Calamity Jane appears to be a real woman instead of a legendary figure. In McMurtry’s novel he addresses not only issues of American myth and legend, but also America’s values and idealistic images.
Book Reviews and Information on Larry McMurtry
Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927 ) is a novel by Willa Cather in which two Roman Catholic priests from lush "civilized southern France move to the arid regions of New Mexico to "convert the lost souls" of the Indians and Mexicans who populate the area. The novel quietly depicts the various cultures that exist in the American Southwest and sympathetically shows the values and history of each.
Book Reviews and Information on Willa Cather
English Creek (1984) is the last book in Ivan Doig’s series, This House of Sky. In this highly evocative novel, Jick, the narrator-protagonist, tells the story of the summer when, as he says, "things came apart." Much like Lyman Ward in Angle of Repose, Jick sorts out his family’s past and his attachments to that past, as well as his place in it.
Book Reviews and Information on Ivan Doig
Fools Crow (1986) is a novel by James Welch that examines the struggles of Indians in the West. The novel is set in 1870 and revolves around the Blackfoot Indians, a small tribe in Montana. The Indians must struggle to maintain their identity, land, and traditions as the white men threaten the area. The main character, Fools Crow, has the ability to foresee the future and know that they must find some way to fight back or regain what they feel rightfully belongs to them.
Book Reviews and Information on James Welch
Letters of a Woman Homesteader (1913) is a selection of letters written by a woman homesteader, Elinore Stewart. The letters span a four-and-one-half-year period (1909-13), during which Stewart worked as a housekeeper for a Wyoming rancher. Blessed with a literary background, a finely tuned ear, a sharp eye, and a delightful writing style, the letters are as warm, as witty, as descriptive and as alive as they were in 1909.
Information on Elinore Pruitt Stewart
The Virginian (1929) is an American classic that tells the story of a cowboy known as the Virginian. Struggling on the Wyoming frontier, the cowboy must fight the enemy and find a way to win over the woman. The author, Owen Wister, used hi own experiences journeying out West to write passionately and realistically about the West as compared to the East. Wister saw the West as the answer to many moral dilemmas and a means to a great story.
Book Reviews and Information on Owen Wister
Yonnondio (1974) by Tillie Olsen, is a "novel" of the thirties, and it reflects the depression that fostered it. It is the story of the Holbrooks' pursuit of the American Dream as they move from a coal-mining town in Wyoming to a ranch in South Dakota to a slum in Omaha. Olsen shows, in a highly impressionistic fashion, the dream rooted in the Holbrooks: "An edjication is what you kids are going to get. It means your hands stay white and you read books and work inan office." She also shows the dream constantly being denied. Yonnondio is the story of grinding poverty and its effects on the members of the family: the cruelty it creates in the father; the pain and depression it creates in the mother; and--what is perhaps most horrible--the crushing of the children, particularly Maisie, who creates an imaginative world that she jealously guards from intrusions by the outer, the real, the nightmare world.
Book Reviews and Information on Tillie Olsen
Western Experience Author Information and Book Reviews
Information on Edward Abbey
This informative website includes biographical information on the life and death of Edward Abbey. It provides direct quotes from Abbey, quotes from notable sources on Abbey as an author, and gives additional sources to find out even more information. http://www.utsidan.se/abbey/bio/index.html
The following is a short review of Edward Abbey. http://www.riverart.com/books/abbey.html
For more information:
People Weekly, June 25, 1984 v21 p58(5)
Book Reviews of Brave Cowboy
This website provides reviews, gives other readers’ comments, and discusses the availability of the novel. http://www.utsidan.se/abbey/books/ea/brave_cowboy.html
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Information on Willa Cather
The Willa Cather Foundation is the official website for the Foundation, located in Red Cloud, Nebraska, Cather's childhood home. The Foundation is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to preserving and promoting understanding and appreciation of the life, time, settings, and work of Pulitzer Prize-winning author Willa Cather.
The Willa Cather Archive is a joint project of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries and the College of Arts & Sciences, created in 1997to provide a rich, useful, and widely-accessible site for the the study of Willa Cather's life and writings.
Resources for Death Comes for the Archbishop
In this review Scott Hirsch gives Death Comes for the Archbishop, a 10. He comments on the novel’s accuracy of the Southwest and Cather’s narrative style. http://bookideas.com/reviews/fiction/archbishop.htm
Notes on Death Comes for the Archbishop by Dr. Joseph C. Murphy, Department of English Language and Literature, Fu Jen Catholic University, Taiwan.
"Art in Willa Cather's Fiction: Death Comes for the Archbishop"
The extent to which Willa Cather was interested in and influenced by art has been carefully documented by Polly P. Duryea in her 1993 dissertation Paintings and Drawings in Willa Cather's Prose: A Catalogue Raisonne. On this website, Dr.Dr. Kathleen L. Nichols, Professor of English at Pittsburg State College (2006) has gathered images of the art identified by Duryea and selected quotations and commentary from her dissertation.
Masterpieces of World Literature, Edition 1989 p175(5)
Updated January 2007
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Information on Ivan Doig
Ivan Doig was born on June 27, 1938 in White Sulphur Springs, Montana. He was the son of Charles Campbell and Berneta (Ringer) Doig. On April 17, 1965, Ivan Doig married Carol Muller. Doig now lives in Seattle, Washington. Doig has integrated his knowledge of this area of the United States into a number of well-known books, including the memoir This House of Sky; Landscapes of a Western Mind, Winter Brothers: A Season on the Edge of America, and the 1996 novel Bucking the Sun, Heart Earth, English Creek, Dancing at the Rascal Fair, and Ride With Me, Mariah Montana comprise Doig’s fictional trilogy, also taking place in the Northwest United States.
http://www.ivandoig.com/
Ivan Doig's web site.
Find an online Reader's Guide for English Creek (click on the list of titles on the left sidebar).
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Information on Larry McMurtry
The bookreporter.com website features Larry McMurtry.
Larry McMurtry: A Critical Companion (available online in full text) provides a biography and anaylsis of his work.
Read about Larry McMurtry's Dream Job.
From "Authors on the Web" website, answer trivia questions about Larry McMurtry.
From USA Today, read an article about McMurtry's interest in Buffalo Bill Cody.
Book Reviews of Buffalo Girls
- Buffalo Girls. (book reviews) David Hiltbrand.
- Buffalo Girls. (book reviews) Margaret Carlson.
- Publishers Weekly, August 24, 1990 v237 n34 p54(1)
- Buffalo Girls. (book reviews) Sybil Steinberg.
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Information on Tillie Olsen
http://mockingbird.creighton.edu/NCW/olsen.htm
This site has a brief biography, a bibliography, interviews and commentary on the author.
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Information on Wallace Stegner
Wallace Stegner was a well-known American writer, a recipient of a Pulitzer Prize, and the winner of many other awards. During the 20 years that he ran the Stanford University writing program, he was influenced by writers like Larry McMurtry and Edward Abbey and Ken Kesey.
This website from the Wallace Stegner Environmental Center features a fact sheet, biography, sidelights, and writings of Stegner. http://sfpl.lib.ca.us/stegner/wallace.html
This well developed biography was written by James Thalman from the University News Service. http://www.alumni.utah.edu/continuum/winter95/stgmain.html
Book Reviews of Angle of Repose
Angle of Repose (1971), is a novel based on the story of nineteenth-century illustrator and writer Mary Hallock Foote, and provides Stegner's most complete statement of his West. Stegner grew up on the Montana border and this environment, used as a setting in many of his novels, stories, and essays, became part of his very mind and being. Angle of Repose offers Stegner's best imaginative vision of this locale. The novel has much to say about the uncompromising character of Stegner's West, a place that yields its resources only to those who recognize and respect its integrity. But for those westerners, Angle of Repose points with equal authority to the resources within the human mind in its interaction with the physical environment. One such adjustment that establishes Angle of Repose as more concerned with the territories of the mind than the physical territories of the West is the book's structure, which relies on a sequence of multiple frames.
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Information on Elinore Pruitt Stewart
Dr. Susanne K. George, Professor of English at University of Nebraska at Kearney provides links to three articles on Stewart.
www.unk.edu/departments/english/george/Stewart/Stewart.html
For further reading:
Susanne K. George, The Adventures of the WOman Homesteader: The Life and Letters of Elinore Pruitt Stewart. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992.
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Information on James Welch
This website gives biographical information on Welch. http://www.lopezbooks.com/articles/welch.html
Publishers Weekly, Oct. 5, 1990 v237 n40 p81(2)
Book Reviews of Fools Crow
This library link gives a short annotation of the novel, as well as information on the appeal of the novel. http://www.addison.lib.il.us/6hisfic.htm#w
"In his third novel, Fools Crow, Welch re-creates the traditional Blackfeet way of life, emphasizing it spiritual dimensions and mysticism in the persons of the old medicine man Mik-api and the young warrior Fools Crow, who ultimately chooses to become Mik-api’s apprentice. In this novel, Welch mixes historical characters with fictional ones, achieving an ethnologically accurate as well as fictionally convincing portrayal of the Blackfeet people. The daily lives of the tribe are balanced against the increasingly threatening and divisive incursions of the white men into Indian territory. The traditional way of life provides a source of spiritual strength, dignity, resolve, and purpose in the face of adversity for young Fools Crow, in dramatic contrast to the weakness and self-doubts of the central characters in the previous novels. Above all, in this novel Welch demonstrates the positive aspects of the traditional Blackfeet way of life, aspects that make preserving what can still be preserved of it worthwhile. (Roth, John K. "James Welch" American Diversity, American Identity: The Lives and Works of 145 Writers Who Define the American Experience, Henry Holt & Company: 1995.)
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Information on Owen Wister
This website gives the biographical history of Wister from his birth to his writing experiences. It also provides a short annotation for his novel, The Virginian. http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/owister.htm
Owen Wister is an American author, born in Philadelphia in 1860. He graduated from Harvard and then took trips to the West. This gave him material for his short stories and for his greatest success, The Virginian (1902), a novel about Wyoming cowhands. He wrote several biographies, including one in 1930 on his friend Theodore Roosevelt. His other books include the novel Lady Baltimore (1906) and the short stories "Lin McLean"(1898) and "Jimmyjohn Boss " (1900). His collected works, in 11 volumes, appeared in 1928. The journals of his Western travels from 1885 to 1895 were published in 1958 as Owen Wister Out West.
Book Reviews of The Virginian
This website gives some background information as well as readers’ responses to the novel, The Virginian. http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/phil4back.html
The Virginian has been described as the ancestor of the Western. The scene is Wyoming in pioneer days. The hero, never named, provokes the enmity of a local bad man named Trampas. The novel includes the Virginian rescues a New England schoolmistress from a stage coach that has been taken over by a drunken driver. Eventually the two get married. The novel's climax is a the scene constituting the first known "walkdown" in American literature.
Wister, an admirer of Theodore Roosevelt, had followed Roosevelt's advice to go to Wyoming and there began writing stories set in that locality. He dedicated The Virginian to Roosevelt. Everitt Cyril Johnson, a ranch hand with Wister, claimed to have been the original for The Virginian. But according to Wister himself, in a preface to the 16th edition of his book (1928), the hero was a combination of several persons he had known in Wyoming. Wister's book undoubtedly influenced writers of Western stories, plays, movies, and radio scripts, and the Virginian became the image of all cowboy heroes. The novel was dramatized in 1903 and was performed for ten years in New York. Several movie versions have also been made.
Excerpts from Benet's Reader's Encyclopedia of American Literature, Edition 1, 1991 v1 p1093
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