The Tainted Archive - The Essential Westerns

Essential reading here - The Archavist is planning a months worth of interesting Western reading. He has started with his Top Ten western movies and books to see and read.
There is a link on the side panel - so head on over there.

The Western - an overview

There was an item on Bill Crider's blog about a bunch of British female novelists writing 'porn' under different names. The first comment to appear suggested that the British should stick to what they wrote best - westerns.
I take that as a compliment as I hope that other Britsh writers will.
The western, as we know it, has been around for - what - 149 years?
Names like Lariat Lil, Fred Fearnot or Denver Dan may mean nothing today. Same could be said of authors like Edward Sylvester Ellis.
Ellis found fame by writing westerns for the publishers Beadle & Adams of New York in 1860.
And just about everybody knows about Beadle's dime novels that cost 5 cents - 30,000 words in a small 160 page book. (About the size of a Black Horse Western these days - though the word count is a touch higher).
Mention of Beadle prompts that the most famous of their writers was Edward Zane Carroll Judson better known as Ned Buntline.
There were those who jumped on the bandwagon and produced magazines like 'Wide Awake Library' and 'The Buffalo Bill Stories'. The British were not far behind producing 'penny dreadfuls' that today would be regarded as 'pirate' copies for which the original American writer would not receive a cent. Another British book was produced by a Frenchman, Gustave Aimard, which went under the title of 'Aimard's Indian Tales' - it proved to be a hit.
The influence of the western spread so that the writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle would bring it up in the Sherlock Holmes story 'A Study In Scarlet' and return to the theme in 'The Valley Of Fear'.
The inner story of 'A Study In Scarlet' - which involves two children being found and brought up by Mormons - would influence the writing of the classic western 'Riders Of The Purple Sage' (1912) by Zane Grey.
Also, in 1860, as the western 'novel' was born, so to was Owen Wister who would write 'The Virginian' with it's background set against the Johnson County war.
By the 1930s the Western, as a novel, had gone out of fashion. The Depression had set in but the Western was in the cinema - so if people weren't reading they were watching.
If the Americans weren't reading Westerns - the British were and they had a hero in British writer Oliver Strange's ten 'Sudden' novels that were written between 1930 and 1940.
After the Second World War the Western novel picked up again with the likes of Ernest Haycox, W.C.Tuttle, Frank C. Robertson and Louis L'Amour.
For a while the novel and the western movie co-existed with novels being turned into films and vice versa. Then the book and the film encountered a new kid on the block - television. As the western writer, Elmore Leonard, says: "Television killed the western. The pulps were mostly gone by then too, the market was drying up."
Although Elmore Leonard turned his attention to writing crime novels he did not give up on the western genre. One of his later stories written for the Western Writers Of American anthology 'Roundup' was 'Only Good Ones' which was filmed as 'Valdez Is Coming'.
The 1960s saw the emergence of a new kind of western movie - the spaghetti western and in it's wake came the first of a new kind of western hero - George G. Gilman's 'Edge' books.
George G. Gilman was the pen name of the English writer Terry Harknett who had already written the novelisation of 'A Fistful Of Dollars' and 'Hannie Calder'. 'Edge' was at the spearhead of a group of British writers that included John B Harvey, Angus Wells and Laurence James. Shelves that had been dominated by Louis L'Amour gave way to the likes of 'Herne The Hunter',
'Apache', 'Jubal Cade' and 'Hart The Regulator'. Very often these books were written by The Piccadilly Cowboys in collaboration with each other. Others like Bodie, Edge, Steele and Hart had just the one writer.
Like all good things the western went on the wane - yet again.
This time though it covered all media - books, movies and TV.
The western is dead - or so they say. I say they can't make a coffin big enough let alone arrange a funeral.
The influence of the western has always been there. Take a look at the movies, the made for TV films and some of the novels that are read. In the words of the German western writer G.F. Unger - the story is the same it's just that the weapons are different.
Over the past few years I do believe that the western has evolved. Series like 'Longarm', 'Slocum' and 'The Gunsmith' are still going strong. The western has wandered into the realms of detective fiction - James Reasoner's 'Wolf Head Crossing' is an example. Even into Sci-Fi/Fantasy if you count David Gemmell's Jon Shannow books.
Americans like Robert J. Randisi, David Robbins, Jory Sherman and Peter Brandvold and others still fly the western flag.
And for the British? The British are still in there with American, European, Australian and the New Zealanders who write for the only UK publisher of westerns - Robert Hale Ltd - Black Horse Westerns.
Here you will find the likes of David Whitehead, Lance Howard, Elliot Conway, Chap O'Keefe and Rory Black. New writers like Ross Morton and Matthew P. Mayo along with first-timers Jack Martin and Terry James - all writers who believe in the Western.
The one thing that is coming back to me is that demand for these westerns, over the past three or four months, has exceeded the supply. When something like that happens it sounds like a resurgence of interest.
Throughout the history of the western it has 'died' and been revived - like everything else it has gone through cycles but has never gone away.
In 2010 the western novel will celebrate it's 150 anniversary - it would be good to celebrate yet another comeback.

Friday's Forgotten Books: Gently Go Man by Alan Hunter

GENTLY GO MAN

by

Alan Hunter

First Published 1961

Alan Hunter was born in 1922 in Norfolk where he died in 2005. His first Superintendent George Gently book 'Gently Does It' was published in 1955 and continued through over forty novels.

'Gently Go Man' is set, as are most of the Gently novels, against a Norfolk background.

Johnny Lister had been to a jazz club with his girlfriend. On their way home they meet with an 'accident' and Johnny is killed. Evidence shows that it may have been murder and that Lister's girlfriend's ex-boyfriend was the offender.

The local policeman, Detective Inspector Setters thinks that he has everything tied up but others call in the yard.

Enter the pipe smoking Superintendent George Gently from the comfort of his lodgings in North Finchley. He sits in his black Rover 75 at one end of a straight stretch of road known as Five Mile Drove in the middle of which is a solitary tree - Gallows Tree.

Gently drives up the road and accelerates pushing the car towards the ton - and within those few minutes he understands several things.

'Gently Go Man' is set amongst the young sixties rockers and presents a fairly accurate picture of the lifestyle and personalities. Throughout the book is another 'narrator' who speaks his own thoughts on the police investigation that lends another observation to the proceedings.

Alan Hunter admired Georges Simenon's 'Maigret' and George Gently operates in a similar fashion. He gets to the offender by talking to people and by observation until he gets to the truth. In short Gently is a good old-fashioned copper in a good old-fashioned detective novel.

The BBC did film this book - but I don't think that anyone read the book. The only things that the BBC production and the book had in common was the title and the main character.

A pity really as this is a really good story (as are all the Gently books) and not as cut and dried as the original investingating officer, Setters, thought.

Alan Hunter's George Gently belongs to that era when detective novels were just that.

Broken Trail

Made for TV in 2006 - Starring Robert Duvall, Thomas Haden Church and Greta Scacchi.

Written by Alan Geoffrion

Directed by Walter Hill

The film is set in 1898 and combines two facts of the American West. While the British were buying American horses in Wyoming, so Chinese girls were being brought in from the West Coast to serve as prostitutes.

The film opens with 'Print' Ritter (Duvall) looking up his estranged nephew Tom Harte (Church) with the news that Harte's mother had died and left him nothing. However, Ritter does have an offer for his nephew to help drive 500 horses along the Oregon trail to Wyoming - horses that are needed by the British Army in their war against the Boers in South Africa.

It is a chance for Harte to make something of his aimless life and make some money for himself.

As they journey along they pick up an aimless drifter 'Heck' Gilpin (Scott Cooper), a 50 cent prostitute down on her luck called Nora Johns (Scacchi) and a wagon load of Chinese girls destined for a whorehouse with whom communication is difficult until the timely arrival of a Chinese cook.

The various storylines weave together very well and when the 'bad guys' turn up they do so in a natural way. The leader's job is to get the Chinese girls back - for which he will be paid - and get his girl, Nora, back at the same time. It is only when he realises that there are the horses for the taking in the process that his character becomes darker.

This is a film in the vein of 'Open Range' and 'Lonesome Dove' with stunning photography and scenery - and the sight of those horses on the move are, probably, some of the best.

Although Robert Duvall takes top billing it is Tom Harte's character that takes centre stage in what has to be one of the best made for TV movies.

Peyton Place and Grace Metalious

This was going to be my Friday Forgotten book.

In 1959 I was given a book token as a prize for an English composition that I had written. I spent all of 3/6d on a book because the cover had a picture of a High Street that looked like the one in the Kentish village of Farnborough (near Orpington that is). Not the best reason for buying a book but - .

The Friday English lesson at school was a reading time. We took in our own books and just sat and read for 40 minutes.

So when I took 'Peyton Place' to school I got ribbed because I was reading a women's book. That was until I showed them a couple of pages. This, in turn, caught the attention of our teacher, a very religious man, who wanted to know what was causing amusement. When he discovered the source he told me that I was not to bring 'that sort of filfth' into his classroom again.

So back to that but - I learned that the events of the book and the picture on the cover put the contents not just in small town America but on my doorstep as well. That the aspirations of Allison McKenzie and the abused lifestyle of Selena Cross happened here as well as over there.

Grace Metalious was born in the Franco-American mill town of Manchester, New Hampshire in 1924 as Marie Grace De Repentigney and died in a Boston hospital of liver failure in 1964 aged 39.

She was born into poverty and lived that way despite marrying George Metalious at the age of 18 in 1943. They had known each other at school and he was training to become a school teacher. Together, they had three children but Grace was something like an obsessive writer who asked neighbours to look after her children or sent them out play while she laboured at her typewriter.

In 1955 she sent a manuscript titled 'The Tree And The Blossom' to the agent Jacques Chambrun who had represented W. Somerset Maugham and the 'Shane' author Jack Shaeffer. He, in turn, passed it to various publishers until it hit the desk of Lippincott's manuscript reader, Leona Nessler, who liked the story but it was passed up by the publishers.

When Leona Nessler went for a job interview with Kitty Messner, the President of Julian Messner Inc, she mentioned the book to her and Kitty said that she would take a look. Instead of passing it on Kitty Messner read it herself and saw, immediately, the potential.

The title was changed to 'PEYTON PLACE' and in the first month sold close to 100,000 and was already on the best seller lists a week before it's release on the 24th September 1956. It went on to sell over 12 million copies.

1957 saw the toned down movie open in the US something that was virtually unheard of with an unknown author with a new book on the stands.

PEYTON PLACE

The book follows the fortunes of aspiring writer Allison McKenzie, the illegitimate daughter of Constance McKenzie who had an affair with a married man and returned to Peyton Place as a 'widow'. Also, there is Selena Cross who works in Connie's shop and is Allison's friend. Selena is the victim of abuse and incest by her step-father, Lucas Cross, and witness to the abuse of her mother Nellie.

The Cross family live on the 'wrong side of the tracks' a place that is shunned and that nobody wants to get involved with. While Selena is branded as 'a girl like that' the man-hunting immorality of 'respectable' Betty Anderson is acceptable.

As a result of all this immorality, incest and abuse it is Selena Cross who gets pregnant by her step-father. A caring Dr Swain arranges an abortion and forces Lucas Cross to leave town. When Nellie, Selena's mother discovers the truth she hangs herself and, in a memorable, it is Allison who discovers her.

The end of the book may have that feel good feeling but it is the bulk of the book that is full of well-drawn real people that lives on.

In the original typescript Grace Metalious had to change Lucas Cross from being Selena's father to step-father as it was thought that America was not ready for full-blown incest. Well, there are enough clues in the book that shows the author's original intentions.

On it's publication 'Peyton Place' was considered so outrageous that it was banned in Canada and some American States and small groups and church leaders jumped on the band wagon to let everyone know that the book could corrupt the children.

Still in the UK the morality groups had something different to get worked up about - 'Lady Chatterley's Lover'.

For Grace Metalious success reads like one of those that tells the rags to riches story. In fact, she could not handle the success and the subsequent novels - 'Return To Peyton Place', 'The Tight White Collar' and 'No Adam In Eden' were not as good. There were flashes of 'the real' Grace Metalious observations but they were few and far between. It is as though she had already put everything into one book.

She died in 1964 just before the release of the watered down soap style TV series.

Despite it all 'Peyton Place' has a place in fiction history that should not be forgotten. In many respects it was a first in many ways and it, definately, is not just a woman's book.

Rebel Run by Jack Giles

REBEL RUN by Jack Giles
Black Horse Western published by Robert Hale Ltd - 1985

The Island.
It was supposed to be escape proof, even more so as it was Confederate prisoners of war who were building their own cage. The Commandant worked them hard enough so that they would be too tired to try anything.
Then Van Essen, a Confederate artilleryman, arrived. He had already broken out of two prison camps and was looking to make the next one third time lucky.
The Commandant had other ideas so he assigned Van Essen to a workforce that consisted of cavalrymen. Men with a reason to treat the new arrival with mistrust and suspicion. For they had their own plans and Van Essen was an added complication.
Escape was the one thing that they had in common and when they got out the whole Union Army would know they were on the loose.

Probably, the most frequently asked question is that with my memory loss how did I view my books.

So from this unique stand point I thought that I would do a review of a couple of my own books.

For starters REBEL RUN is not a standard western - that is if it can be classified as a western at all as all the action takes place in the Eastern states during the American Civil War.

I suppose, in many ways, that a book like Rebel Run would have been inevitable at some stage. My interest in the American Civil War dates back to my schooldays as did my passion for the World War Two escape books like Pat Reid's 'The Colditz Story', Charles McCormac's 'You'll Die In Singapore' and Paul Brickhill's 'The Great Escape' - books that are still on my bookshelf.

The book opens with a view of the island and 'pans' back to the privations of the rough and ready prison camp where the reader meets Van Essen. Van Essen was a Sergeant with the Virginia (Rockbridge) Battery and was taken prisoner at Cedar Run on the 9th August 1862.

At the beginning of the book Van Essen comes across as tough and cynical and will use anybody in his own bid to escape. Very much the loner and the outsider he is placed with a group of cavalrymen who hold a grudge because they are the victims of 'friendly' artillery fire. They, also, have their own escape plans. In charge of the cavalrymen is Sergeant Dave Becker who makes it clear from the start that despite their equal rank while Van Essen is with them he will take orders.

Eventually, they do escape and become a fighting unit when they come across a battery of cannons heading for the Union front line. It is here that Van Essen takes charge and the relationship between himself and the cavalrymen begins to change. They destroy the cannons but are persued.

As they debate on how to cross the Union lines so a curious twist of fate occurs as the Confederate Army comes to them in the shape of Rodes Division as it sweeps up the relaxed Union troops of Howard's XI Corps near Hazel Grove.

And I like the last line - it has a double meaning.

So what do I think of it. Well, it was the first Jack Giles book that I read after my stroke. On the plus side it made me want to read more books by that author. There is a downside in that the early confrontation between the two sergeants - well, it's rather stock - but it does get lost in the progression with the action sequences and none of the characters were there to make up the numbers and all had personalities.

I was, also, intrigued by the historical detail that when I got the Internet I decided to check it all out. This, in turn, was an eye opener for every Battery, Division, Regiment and Corps existed and was where it is said it was in the book. As are the farms and Hunting Run that are mentioned. And all that research had been done before the Internet existed.

So, if anyone wants to read a Jack Giles then I would say start there with 'Rebel Run' - a western that isn't a western.

Beat To A Pulp

The world of e-zines and online publishing is a completely new world to me.
So when David Cranmer wrote to say that it was a pity that so many of these 'magazines' were closing I thought that I might miss out. Against that trend David has started up his own magazine BEAT TO A PULP with stories editted by Elaine Ashe.
The opening story 'The Instrument Of Their Desire' by Patti Abbott is the story of an elderly lady recalling an incident from the Depression in 1931. It certainly set the benchmark with this warm and emotional story.
What I like about this magazine is the diversity - the reader just doesn't know what sort of story that will be published each week. It is rather like reading an anthology by O. Henry who wrote so many different types of stories.
In contrast to the first story there is 'A Man Called Masters' by Jack Martin - a western that is a cut above with it's attention to some small details. For example, the use that the hero puts a tin pot to when he is stranded in the desert. This is Jack Martin's first published western - his 'The Tarnished Star' will be published as a Black Horse Western in June of this year.
This week's story is by Charles Gramlich called 'Whiskey, Guns And Sin'. An action packed piece that touches a lot of buttons for me. How can I put it - spaghetti westerns mixed with those of the Piccadilly Cowboys meets Hell Ride with a dash of Sin City graphics. The only thing that disappointed me was that, like all good stories, it came to an end.
The total list of stories so far are:
'The Instrument Of Their Desire' by Patti Abbott
'Hard Bite' by Anonymous-9 (worth reading - a little unusual)
'Disimpaction' by Glenn Gray (gives an new meaning about being up to the armpits)
'A Man Called Masters' by Jack Martin
'Backing The Stakes' by Kieran Shea (read it - hate to say anything that would act as a spoiler)
'Whiskey, Guns And Sin' by Charles Gramlich

The link to this magazine can be found on the panel.