Western Book Roundup
Ruth McLaughlin’s “Bound Like Grass” Wins the Montana Book Award
This year’s Montana Book Award winner is Ruth McLaughlin’s moving memoir, Bound Like Grass: A Memoir from the Western High Plains (University of Oklahoma Press). The prize committee praised it for its “acute observation,” honesty, and beautiful writing. The committee also named four honor books published in 2010:
Everything by Kevin Canty (Nan A. Talese)
Goodbye Wifes and Daughters by Susan Resnick (University of Nebraska Press)
The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn by Nathaniel Philbrick (Viking)
Visions of the Big Sky: Painting and Photographing the Northern Rocky Mountains by Dan Flores (University of Oklahoma Press)
The winners will be honored at the Montana Library Association conference in Billings on April 7. McLaughlin will do a victory lap at several bookstores in Montana: in Bozeman at the Country Bookshelf on March 29, in Hamilton at Chapter One Bookstore on March 30, and in Missoula at Fact and Fiction on March 31. All readings are at 7 p.m.
Also in the Roundup: Boise’s Alan Heathcock launches Volt, Benjamin Percy reads in Denver, and three Western bookstores are in the running for the Bookstore of the Year Award.
[more]New West Book Review
Bierstadt Meets Bigfoot in Jonathan Evison’s “West of Here”
Deep into West of Here, Jonathan Evison’s entertaining, expansive novel of Western American settlement and its aftermath, a contemporary parolee named Timmon Tillman finds himself “forced to concede that his fate was inextricably linked in the most arbitrary ways to things and people and events he’d never given a thought to.” This idea serves as a sort of a structural thesis statement for the book, whose action jumps between the late nineteenth century beginnings of Port Bonita, a fictional town on the Pacific coast of Washington state, and the down-on-their-luck residents of the town in 2006, many of them descendents of the early settlers. The ties between the two sets of characters start out loose and gradually tighten as Evison expertly weaves an array of seemingly disconnected plot threads into a panoramic tapestry.
Jonathan Evison will discuss West of Here at the Tattered Cover (Colfax) on February 28 (7:30 p.m.), at the Boulder Book Store on March 1 (7:30 p.m.), at The King’s English in Salt Lake on March 3, and at several events throughout Washington and Oregon this spring.
[more]A New Take On Old West Lit
The Five Most Important Works of Mountain Man Fiction
Out of the five most significant works about mountain men, Hollywood managed to turn four into disappointing movies. Those four (according to a 1999 Western Literature Association survey and surveys by The San Francisco Chronicle, Hungry Mind Review and Heath American Literature Newsletter) are The Big Sky by A.B. Guthrie Jr.; Lord Grizzly by Frederick Manfred; Mountain Man by Vardis Fisher; and Wolf Song by Harvey Ferguson.
Song of Three Friends by John G. Neihardt is the fifth work. It is a poem rather than a novel, which might explain why Hollywood hasn’t mangled it into a film version.
One problem in writing “regional” books, as all western writers know, is that readers expect authenticity. Where a character in a Hemingway novel can “pull a heavy, ugly revolver from his pocket,” in a western novel he’s expected to draw a “Colt Single-Action Army with 7’ barrel.” Graham Greene’s readers don’t care if he calls a horse a “mount,” but in a western it had better be a Barb, Arab cross, buckskin gelding or a well-muscled roan showing mustang blood.
Western Book Roundup
Bankrupt Borders to Close Several Western Book Stores
Last week, Borders Books filed for bankruptcy and announced the closure of 30 percent of its stores. The stores slated to close include six in Colorado (in Boulder, Dillon, Littleton, Aurora, Greeley, and Grand Junction), two in New Mexico (Santa Fe and Albuquerque), two in Utah (Murray and Logan), and one in Montana (Bozeman). The Wall Street Journal put together a chart of the closing stores here.
Meanwhile, EdRants.com offers a list of independent alternatives to the closing Borders stores, with the mileage between the closing store and the existing indie bookstore. In Colorado, there are indie bookstores close at hand in every city with a closing Borders. Editor’s Note: A previous version of this article stated there were no independent bookstores in Grand Junction, Colo. In fact, there are two: Twice Upon A Time Bookshop at 2885 North Avenue and Grand Valley Books at 350 Main Street.
Also in the Roundup: Emma Donoghue in Aspen, the Los Angeles Times Book Award finalists announced, and Jonathan Evison brings his book tour to Colorado and Utah.
[more]New West Book Review
Cabin Building Drives Couple Toward Tragedy in David Vann’s “Caribou Island”
David Vann’s accomplished debut novel Caribou Island is the latest addition to a sub-branch of Western American literature that has surged recently: the house building horror story. Sarahlee Lawrence’s memoir River House details her Sisyphean struggles to build a log cabin in central Oregon, a quest that drives her relationship with her father to the brink. Last month, Annie Proulx published her first memoir, Bird Cloud, about her efforts to build a dream house on a remote plot of Wyoming land. Even though she wasn’t doing the building herself, Proulx also seems to have sacrificed some measure of her sanity and ultimately considered the enterprise a failure.
Now comes Gary and Irene, the discontented married couple at the center of David Vann’s compelling tragedy. They’ve lived on Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula since they were in their twenties, when Gary quit his graduate studies in medieval literature because he wanted to move to Alaska. Now in his fifties, feeling the sting of dreams deferred, he decides it’s time to build a cabin on the remote Caribou Island and live out there, as he always planned they would before raising children and making a living got in the way.
[more]Western Book Roundup
Literary Gender Imbalance Uncovered by VIDA is Reflected in Western Lit
For some time I’ve noticed that the majority of the books submitted to me for review are written by men, a ratio I’d estimate at five books by men for every one book by a woman. I noticed this discrepancy particularly among the big six publishers—very few of the books set in the West produced by major publishers are written by women. I am more likely to find books written by women from small and academic presses. I wondered if this male dominance was just a Western thing.
As I read and enjoyed books regardless of the gender of their authors, I also noticed a disturbing trend, a formula that Western books by major publishers included again and again: a depiction of horses plus violence against women in books written by men. Usually these authors are compared to Cormac McCarthy, either in the blurbs or the jacket copy. I realize it weakens my argument not to mention these books by name, but I don’t want to single out anybody, because I think each writer chose to use these elements for personal, artistic reasons, and I don’t blame any of them for it. But I just may have been a wee bit crankier in my reviews of these books.
I began to dread reading books with horses on the cover. Sure, on the outside, it’s all the pretty horses, but on the inside it’s going to be all the beaten, cowering women.
Also in the Roundup: Denver Center Theatre Company to adapt Helen Thorpe’s Just Like Us, Books Editor Tom Walker leaves the Denver Post, David Abrams writes about the thriving Idaho literary scene, and Casper College hosts its Humanities Fest.
[more]Western Writers
An Interview with Eleanor Brown, Author of “The Weird Sisters”
Denver writer Eleanor Brown’s winning first novel, The Weird Sisters (Amy Einhorn Books, 336 pages, $24.95), was published in January, and since then it has received glowing reviews from NPR, People, the New York Times and the Boston Globe, and it has impressed the people who matter most—readers—who propelled it onto the New York Times Best Seller list this week. The Weird Sisters tells the story of three Midwestern sisters, Rosalind, Bianca, and Cordelia (better known as Rose, Bean, and Cordy), named after Shakespearean characters by their Shakespeare scholar father. The sisters return home to a quaint university town in the midst of career, romantic, and financial struggles when they learn their mother needs treatment for breast cancer. The family often communicates through quotations from Shakespeare, and much of the book is narrated in the charming collective “we” voice of the sisters. I interviewed Brown via email about the Denver literary scene, her Shakespearean research, and her unique narrative voice. Brown will discuss the origins of her book at the Lighthouse Writers Workshop’s “The Story of a Book” on February 19 at 910 Arts in Denver (910 Santa Fe Blvd., 7 p.m., free), along with Harrison Fletcher, Jackie St. Joan, and me. Next month Brown’s book tour will continue with stops in Washington, California, Colorado, and more.
New West: How long ago did you move to Denver, and what brought you here? Do you have any impressions about the literary scene in Colorado?
Eleanor Brown; [Writer J.C. Hutchins and I] moved to Denver in September of 2010, so just a few months ago. Having lots of friends in the Denver area, we had been visiting for years, and I’d wanted to live here since the first moment I stepped on the soil. The weather, the views, the kind, friendly people—it was just the kind of place I’d dreamed of. Add to that a thriving literary community personified by Lighthouse Writers Workshop and Tattered Cover, and it was a natural fit.
[more]Western Book Roundup
Happy Birthday Neal Cassady, Oregon Book Awards, and The Writers’ Round-Up
Denver Mayor Guillermo Vidal proclaimed Friday “Neal Cassady Day” in honor of the famous Beat muse’s 85th birthday. As William Porter wrote in his informative profile of Cassady for the Denver Post, “Not bad for a kid who grew up in Larimer Street flophouses, did time in jail and bragged about boosting 500 cars by the time he was 20.” The Mercury Café hosted a party to celebrate the birthday of Cassady, the model for the charismatic Dean Moriarty figure in Jack Kerouac’s On The Road. Porter listed the many works of literature that feature Cassady, including Keruoac’s Visions of Cody, Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl,” and Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Cassady is also the subject of a new documentary, “Neal Cassady: The Denver Years,” by Denver’s Heather Dalton. Anyone who aspires to be a film producer can help Dalton fund the project on Kickstarter.
Also in the Roundup: David Vann at the Tattered Cover, a literary fundraiser for Patagonia Public Library, the Oregon book award finalists were announced, and Craig Lancaster continues his book tour.
[more]New West Book Review
Ruth McLaughlin’s “Bound Like Grass”: A Montana Farm Memoir
Bound Like Grass: A Memoir from the Western High Plains
By Ruth McLaughlin
University of Oklahoma Press, 184 pages,
In her tough and moving memoir Bound Like Grass, Ruth McLaughlin records her family’s history of farming wheat and cattle in Culbertson, Montana, near the North Dakota border. This book serves as an elegy and a monument—without it, there would be no remaining sign of the family’s Montana existence, and few, if anyone, would remember McLaughlin’s two deceased sisters. McLaughlin’s grandparents homesteaded in eastern Montana, her parents continued farming in a mode of spectacular frugality and grim defeat, and McLaughlin and her three siblings grew up there in the ‘50s and ‘60s, only to put as much ground between them and Culbertson as possible.
McLaughlin’s single surviving sibling, Dwight, headed to California the first chance he got, but Ruth, who now lives in Great Falls, was more bound to the land, visiting regularly even after her parents died, until someone bought the property and burned down all the structures, effectively erasing all signs that their family had ever been there. As McLaughlin puts it, “Our family had a ninety-seven-year fling here; now we are gone. Ten have been left behind, including six children, planted in two cemeteries.”
Ruth McLaughlin will read at Chapter One Books in Hamilton, Mont. on March 30.
A New Take on Old West Lit
The Five Most Important Cowboy Novels Ever
Old West or New West, our novels tend to get categorized by subject. Mountain man novels, ranch novels, cowboy novels, Indian novels, pioneer novels, historical novels, homestead novels—the list goes on and on. Once in awhile this leads to confusion, like talking about books in a Wyoming saloon and saying that Annie Proulx wrote a cowboy novel. Ooops.
Which are the best of the cowboy novels? I don’t know. (I can’t tell you which of my kids I like best, either.) Here are five important ones:
1. Owen Wister’s The Virginian
You know the classic shootout in the street, good guy and bad guy facing each other with sixguns? It became a cliché, but it began in The Virginian.
The Virginian demonstrated that you could have a darn good cowboy book with no cows in it. It has long discussions of democracy and aristocracy, but there’s also romantic sparks flying between The Virginian and the schoolteacher Molly Wood. There’s good humor, too, such as The Virginian’s story about the cowboys who gave up cattle to raise frogs for eastern restaurants.
