(00:00:02) Oh bury me not on the Lone Prairie. These words came (00:00:12) low (00:00:15) and mournfully from the pallid lips of the youth who lay on his don't know if you can still say it and this is one of the things we're going to try to answer in this special hour of midday, but for most of this Century, the cowboy was the American hero Lusty Lonesome rugged rangy big-hearted stoic and hungry and not only did the cowboy inspire a generation kids and their violent sometimes racist games not only did he Inspire hundreds of songs and movies that he provided the raw material for thousands of books many of these books yellowed and torn and spending their lives on the Shelf at Grandpa's cabin might best be left there for a day when the rain is too heavy to bring in the dock. But many of these books can stand shoulder to shoulder with what highfalutin College professors might consider the best American fiction, who knows maybe a cowboy book. Yes a western might be that great American novel The long hairs have been searching for for so long but haven't yet found in this hour of. Midday. We're considering that corner of American literature known as the Western novel. My guests are Lauren DS tlemen Western writer vice president and incoming president the Western writers of America and author of The Wister Trace classic novels of the American frontier. Mr. Estimate. Thank you for joining us John. Thank you. And I also welcome to the studio familiar voice to all of you lafe anger author and reporter for Minnesota public. Radio's Main Street Unit life. Thanks for coming in. Glad to be here John. We encourage your calls to we're going to read from a number of westerns talk about why they've made such an impression maybe even consider how Hollywood treated the Western so pull up a chair and a radio get Your knife and a stick to whittle and call us at 6'5 12276 thousand in the Twin Cities 6512276 thousand or 1-800-222-1292. The one you'd call from the cabin 1-800 to for to 2828. Give us your thoughts about the Western novel. We're going to start with what Scholars consider the seminal Western novel The Virginian by Owen Wister life. If you could give us a taste, I'd love to I'll set this up a little bit first earlier in this chapter in this is early in the book The narrator who is from Back East has witnessed The Virginian the hero of the book being called a profane name and he the easterner has been stunned to see that this was all in good humor, and that no offense was taken. It was now the Virginians turned to bet or leave the game and he did not speak at once. Therefore Tramp has spoke your bet you son of a the Virginians pistol came out and his hand lay on the table holding it, uh named and with the voice is gentle as ever the voice that sounded almost like a caress but drawing a very little more than usual so that there was almost a space between each word. He issued his orders to the man Tramp us when you call me that smile and he looked at trumpets across the table. Yes, the voice was gentle but in my ears it seemed as if somewhere the bell of death was ringing and silence like a stroke fell on the large room all men present as if by some magnetic current had become aware of this crisis in my ignorance and the total stoppage of my thoughts. I stood stockstill and noticed various people crouching and perform the developing trantridge sit quiet. So the dealer scornfully to the And near me can't you see he don't want to push trouble. He's handed Tramp has the choice to back down or Draw his steel then with equal suddenness. And he's the room came out of its strangeness voices and cards the click of chips the puff of tobacco glasses lifted to drink this level of smooth relaxation hinted to more plainly of what lay beneath then does the surface tell the depth of the sea for Tramp has had made his choice and that choice was not to draw his steel if it was knowledge that. He sought he had founded a no mistake. We heard no further reference to what he had been pleased to style amateurs in no company with the black-headed man who had visited Arizona berated a novice at the cool art of self-preservation one doubt remained. What kind of a man was Tramp has a public back down is an unfinished thing for some Nature's at least. I looked at his face and thought it Sullen but tricky rather than courageous. Something had been added to my knowledge. Also. Once again, I had heard applied to The Virginian that epithet which Steve had used so freely the same words identical to the letter but this time they had produced a pistol when you call me that smile. So I perceived a new example of the old truth that the letter means nothing until the spirit gives it life. Wow, Lauren DS lemon, it kind of makes anybody give up. Hope of ever being able to write anything. That's good reading something like that. You know, it's a brilliant passage. I don't think that you can point to another book in English that created a mythology and most of the things that we think of when we think of the the classic Western came almost wholly out of The Virginian lines, like when you call me that smile this country ain't big enough for the both of us we out of town by Sundown the idea of the straight up fast draw shootout. All of these things came came completely out of the mind of own Western this one novel. What was it about this novel and some people have said it is the most widely read American novel. What is it that grip the public that inspired so many writers. I think a lot of it had to do with wooster's approach. He approached it. Not for Point of view of an Insider but from the point of view of an easterner to whom all this was new and he's looking at the West with the same wide eyes that we are he's treating it as a foreign country an alien land whose language and customs and dress are entirely new to him. And and as he learns as we as we learn from this one passage as he learns little by little line by line what the West is all about. So do we and you have to identify with that kind of person I think if we did this from the point of view of The Virginian who is effectively a giant would be very difficult to identify with this character. It's like it's the reason that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle gave us. Dr. Watson because Sherlock Holmes was just a little bit too tall too bright and intellect for us to approach and this is a very friendly character and someone who we kind of approach as not quite as intelligent as we are. We like to thank so. We think Where one or two lines ahead of our wide-eyed narrator and that's that's incredibly important when when you want to really get into a novel and believe what's going on but was the this is written in 1903 1904 actually published in 1902 are about to celebrate the hundredth anniversary on a couple of years. Yeah. We didn't most of America know what the West was like did they have a lot of first hand or at least secondhand experience? How come they needed this translator? In other words? Not a whole lot that. This is the this is the period before the automobile. The automobile was just beginning to come in. A lot of people did not have a chance to travel very far outside their own areas that trip of 40 miles was a major undertaking at this time. Most of what they knew about the West they'd read through the quickie dime novels of Ned Buntline and Prentiss Ingram and a number of others who had gone out west and some indeed isn't had never been west of the Hudson and began whipping up all these tall tales about I wish I think this is the first time in this novel that we had somebody trying to well. There's a lot of Mythology about it. He also tried to place it in a realistic context so you can and and rather than treat this as just a swashbuckling yarn like an old pirate story or a German horror pamphlet of the 16th century. He created some living living breathing individuals and I think all of those things came together in this for the first time it was a very much the first person out of its kind in life. This is actually a goodbye to the old west. Oh absolutely. It's part of the part of the charm of the the Western to me is that most of the westerns you read our goodbyes in a way the heroes are generally Have an air of tragedy about them from Shane to The Virginian all the rest and he's saying goodbye in this also to this this time of Honor. I think he paints everything and kind of what in Browns and Golds and it's an Autumn book kind of I don't know if I'll elaborate on that John. I know you want me too. I know he's consciously saying goodbye even in as epigraph to the book. He mentions that that even as even as I write I'm paraphrasing you even even as I write these characters this time has gone and Vanishing and life as a writer as a reporter. What is it that strikes you about the way Owen Wister tells the story and what he writes. Well for one thing the writing is plain. It's not cute like a lot of current Day writing tends to be and the narrator as mr. Esselman said is revealing new ideas to you as he's learning them himself. He's just finding out what the big West is about. He's from the East he's finding out that a profanity in some cases might be almost an endearment and at other times it's just a profanity. Also the language is very very plain and not constricted. I think by the same kind of social paranoia's that constrict our language today. It is 17 minutes past noon. You're listening to midday on Minnesota Public Radio. We are paying homage to a perhaps. I don't say forgotten but underappreciated corner of American literature that the Western novel and if you'd like to get in on the conversation, six, five, one two, two seven six thousand. If you've got a gem of that genre give us a call six five one two, two seven six thousand. Let us know what it is and and why you like it or 1-800 to for to 2828 toll-free 1-800 to for to 28 28. If you'd like to talk about some of the themes that westerns bring up in that that need addressing give us a call. Mr. Esselman. I'd like to ask what you think Owen Wister is qualities as a writer or Observer were that made him. So right for the job We had a fascinating background. He had a musical background and a legal background as well. And I think musical background has a great deal to do with the rhythms that are writer creates one of these when he's creating his phrases and when you read whiskers work, The Virginian and Lynn McLean and the other many other stories, they wrote it was enormously popular writer and it's time you get to recognize a very musical quality to the writing and an office and almost deceptive Simplicity. He has the same quality to his writing that I would like to thank Joseph Conrad had as well you're reading it and and the phrases just seem to fall in front of you and you begin to realize after a while that that is drawing you into this this very alien world he knew very much what he was doing. I think it came out of these these rhythms that are learned as a musician and I think the the definition that he brought to it I think came very much out of the legal training. This is all hindsight. It's easy. Look at someone's background and and analyze and until where he picked up this and where he where he got that but Talent is something you're born with skill is something, you know you acquire and it's very much a magic quality. And and none of this may make sense in the end the reality he was just flat-out a good writer. I wonder about The Virginian as as kind of an American Hero is it is it fair to say that this was the start of the long time in America when the cowboy was the American hero, I think so. I think we can look at this as at least a maturity of that Vision. We've seen him beginning to come up around the edges through the the the tall tales that were told about Buffalo Bill and Wild Bill Hickok and the newspaper articles that people read into yeast about what took place at the near the okay Corral in Tombstone and things like that. But this is the first time that all this was whipped together into into one Kota. To it's a the the American Cowboy is a very potent image and he often assumes a disguise and the in the 18th century was a minute man the 19th century. He was the cowboy of the gunfighter 20th century. We've seen was a private eye 20th first century coming up. We'll see him as a Spaceman but they're all basically the same person. It's just lone figure coming in from Left Field not connected with any organized Authority whom we can we can place our trust in our faith and and he will clean up his little corner of what can be a very corrupt world the idea of the gunfighter riding in from out of town to clean up the the corrupt town and turn it over to its citizens. It's a very potent image and we'll see it in all these different Mythic characters. It's very much an American revolutionary idea. So we don't have to really say goodbye to the Cowboy. We just have to see him and not chaps now not on the trench coat anymore, but In a spacesuit, he keeps coming back. I think I'll keep writing back is too potent an image not to come back to us in the way that we most like to see him which is which is aboard a tall horse with a big hat on his head or her head or you know, whatever race or different ethnic background he or she may come from now, we're beginning to realize something that the West always knew that the American West was made by was created and conquered by and lost by both sexes and and every ethnic and racial group we can we can command. It's 22 minutes past noon. You're listening to midday and Minnesota Public Radio. We're talking about the Western novel and Michael is on the line for Minneapolis. So life get ready to do that Cormac McCarthy reading. (00:15:07) Okay, Michael. Hello. Yeah. Hi are you doing? (00:15:11) And yeah, hi. Thanks. Thanks for calling up. (00:15:14) Yeah, I'm on my cell phone here. I'll try to make it brief but enjoy your program to start off with a listen to you as much as I can thanks are able to and yeah, I read it Cormac McCarthy. I haven't really read that many westerns. But Jesus went just really cut my imagination the the brothers and the novel and the grittiness of of the story and and it wasn't a real happy ending either but I mean just just the way he describes, you know, everything was just really really good. I really enjoyed it. You're talking about all morning what you guys thought about it or if (00:15:51) you're talking about All the Pretty Horses. Yeah. Well, thanks for calling up great. I just happen to have a copy of All the Pretty Horses in front of me. I was just hoping and praying I get a chance to read something out of it. This is one of my favorite books. Yeah, let's let's let's hear a little bit of it and then mr. Estimate you can take a take a shot at what it is about Cormac McCarthy if you like, so Go ahead life what I love about this passages is the way he writes about the land and people moving across it. They rode together last time on a day in early March when the weather had already warmed and yellow Mexican hat bloomed by the roadside. They unloaded the horses at McCullough's and rode up through the middle Pastor along Grape Creek and into the low Hills Creek was clear and green with trailing Moss braided over the gravel bars the road slowly up through the Open Country among scrub Mesquite and know Paul they crossed from Tom Green County and to Coke County the cross the old schoonover road and they wrote up through broken Hills dotted with cedar where the ground was cobbled with Trap Rock and they could see snow on The Thin Blue ridge's a hundred miles to the north is scarcely spoke all day. His father rode sitting forward slightly in the saddle holding the reins in one hand about two inches above the saddle horn. So thin and frail lost in his clothes looking over the country with those sunken eyes as if the world out there had been altered or made suspect by what he'd seen Ovid elsewhere as if he might never see it right again or Worse did see it right at last. Mr. Estimate Cormac McCarthy, that's beautiful passage. A I always love to hear McCarthy being read aloud. He he's like one of the one of the great storytellers of the old days that you just wanted to hear that oral tradition passed down and down through the generations The rhythms and the the quality of the writing is that just tremendous and depthless this McCarthy represents the direction at the Western is heading and really the direction that it has to go in order to survive Worcester is tall Heroes have had their day and the we can't ask the American public the reading public or their movie-going public to accept these people dusting themselves off again and stepping down that street once again to it to test each other's faster Oz the direction that McCarthy is pointed. It's the way toward the historical actual West which is a far more fascinating and complex place. Mythology ever made it out to be and if you look at the history of the true classic westerns, they have all tended to reflect some quality of the real West which was which was a unique place in history and some of what equality to the writing their traditional What's called the traditional Western which is basically the two guys meeting at High Noon in the middle of the street and everybody saying I reckon and spelling you why uh is going by the wayside now and I think it's high time. I don't think they're really good writers really ever went that direction. So this is a larger vaster broader course at the Western of said for itself and it is now Galloping headlong toward American literature and I applauded all the way there's a certain rather prolific and prominent Western writer of America who back in 1987. I think did a little tongue-in-cheek poking fun at some of the conventions of Western fiction while the Same time. He addressed some of the historical facts of the Aaron and painted a pretty realistic picture of some of the more romantic stories that have come down and been told and retold if I could just read a little excerpt from this particular book why it used a Bowie knife to with a low point in his nod yellow pencil stub Wild Bill told me cauterized a Cheyenne Lance wound once by pouring black powder into it and setting it a fire McMasters said the just once I hope to meet an Indian fighter who never did that to hear him. There were more powder spent on closing wounds and opening them doc said Wild Bill was a lying Yankee. I heard he was going blind from the clap when that Swamper capped him in Deadwood. Why and Doc had been baiting each other all evening. There's no new game with them and it never failed to stand McMasters scalp on and he changed subjects. Who are you writing to Sadie and her I'm sorry, who are you writing to Sadie? Her next? This one is for Clum and the Epitaph a newspaper Turkey Creek. Jack will carry them in when I spell him. You're telling it you killed Curly Bill. It was Curly Bill God damn it. I'm not questioning that only that he was killed he fell down into pieces if he was not killed. It was a fair imitation. He signed his name with an extra flourish and folded the sheet in thirds. So here Lauren D estimate author of bloody season from 1987. You're touching on the journalism. You're touching on the some of the Romantic Legends of cauterizing with black powder and you're telling a straight story here. Yeah, the mythology was was beginning to be put together even then and this is the kind of thing that we've we've seen in our own day. When a lot of our organized crime figures are starting to pattern themselves after characters. They saw on the Godfather or read about in the book The Godfather and on the Range a lot of these were Characters they read the dime novels and the began to began to act like that and and they began to believe the tall stories that they themselves are told and stand this is a fine example of Life imitating art. So yeah, I had these guys poke a little bit of fun of that because he's a genuine Frontiersman. It wouldn't be fooled who wouldn't fool around with that too much. And also I was dealing with a very controversial episode in the in the story of a Wyatt Earp and the days following the the gunfight of the okay Corral about whether or not it was actually Curly Bill that he had killed in that gun fight that took place in this in this dream. So even then they're beginning to raise those questions the problem with writing about real Western history. Particularly Western history is you're faced with either a dozen eyewitness accounts. No two of whom agree or no Accounts at all, and then you have to kind of fall back on a popular mythology and give it a realistic twist. Let's take another call. Andrea on the line from st. Paul andreea (00:22:18) have enjoyed this discussion, and I think you really don't need any Collins because the discussion by the gentleman is just so interesting, and of course, I'm very elderly and I remember the old westerns that were really Classics I agree, and I think they were just mishandled by some of the movie people, but I just wanted the gentleman to make a comment and I'll hang up. What about our earlier Western writers and Louis L'Amour and I'll hang up. All right. Thanks very much for (00:22:51) calling andreea. I think aluminum or was writing. Well, when did he start taking a crack at westerns? 5000 what working you have early fifties? Like I think I think a Hondo is 53 car. She was riding pulp westerns before that. Yeah. So how does he compare to the early Western writers? I think for me Louis L'Amour is earliest westerns are his best. I think if you if you read books like Hondo and flint and high Lonesome and a handful of others. I think you get some real truly authentic Western writer writing by an authentic professional who had sharpened his teeth writing for the pope Market back in the 40s later on. He became a brand name and it began to imitate himself. This is something we've seen a lot in literary history Hemingway did the same thing began to parody himself in a while. They were search began to begin to fall apart, but nobody can take away those early four or five books. I think they're all found the classics of the genre. Mr. Esselman if Cormac McCarthy is sort of moving the Western in the way that it has to go to survive. What's your sense of who is reading westerns now? That's that's how it's difficult to break die. I think that's that's broadening. There was a time as Recently as the 1950s when men women and children already westerns. It was that that popular and then it went and then the genre went into into a clips for a while with with with the speed of other events, but it's something we keep coming back to I can't think of a genre that's been declared dead more often than the Western but I think now actually I think the we're getting back to that concept of that that very broad demographics and it is because of the quality of the writing and the fact that it isn't just just male oriented and it isn't just stuck in that ghetto between the end of the Civil War and the closing the frontier in 1890. We're seeing westerns it took that are set in the prehistoric West Kathleen O'Neal gear and Michael gear who are anthropologists and archaeologists are writing wonderful novels about Indians 10,000 years ago, and we're seeing a lot of people writing contemporary Western some of Cormac McCarthy stuff is contemporary. And we're seeing stuff step 2 even in the future West what kind of a science fiction twist so that I think that that even time isn't a factor anymore and certainly gender is not a factor and to some degree geography isn't and really wasn't when you figure that all the The Works of Fenimore Cooper. Most of those Frontier Works took place in Upstate New York. So the westons very much a state of mind. I think the fact that more and more writers are beginning to Encompass that and realize that there's something intrinsically Western about a western that doesn't necessarily have to do with time period or geography or the people that you're dealing with that just broadens the concept and and broadens the guidelines so that it's a form that can be made to say anything about anything and I think that's that's always going to appeal to the widest popular, uh possible audience. It's 12:33 about 27 minutes before one o'clock time for us to get a look at news from Greta. (00:26:09) Him good afternoon. John a grand jury in Maryland has indicted Linda Tripp on two counts of violating State Wire trap tab law drip secretly recorded phone conversations with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky, Maryland prosecutors. Say that violated state wiretap law, which forbids intercepting phone conversations without the other party's consent trip is the only Central figure in the Lewinsky scandal currently facing criminal charges investigators with the national Transportation. Safety board. Say wreckage from John F. Kennedy. Junior's playing shows no signs of in flight breakup or fire officials also say the engine appears to have been working when the aircraft plunged into the sea the board also says 75% of the plane has been recovered including A Primitive recording device, but the instrument was destroyed by the impact Kennedy his wife and sister-in-law all died in the crash police. Say the notes allegedly left by Atlanta gunman Mark Burton contain details about why he may have gone on a shooting spree at an Atlanta business complex Henry County police chief. Mercer says the notes were in the Suburban Atlanta home where Barton's wife and two children were found dead. Yesterday Mercer says in a computer-generated notebaert and describe killing his wife and children Tuesday and Wednesday by hitting them in the head with a hammer and Mercer says police have found the hammer. They believe was used yesterday shooting rampage left 13 people dead and a dozen injured in Regional news officials with northern states power company a warning that there could be additional power outages today due to the heat and humidity and as p is urging customers to once again cut back on their electricity use today a company spokeswoman says that generating plants are performing well, but they are running at full blast and is p is also buying energy to keep up with the demand the forecast for the state of Minnesota has a heat advisory in effect for the southern third of the state today. It will be hot and humid Statewide with a Chance of afternoon thunderstorms in central eastern and North Western Minnesota high temperatures ranging from 80 in the Northwest 298 in the far south looking at conditions around the region at this. Our Rochester reports Sunshine 89 degrees International Falls cloudy skies and 78 Duluth cloudy skies in 89 and in the Twin Cities, mostly sunny skies a temperature of 91 a dew point of 80 with a heat index of 110 degrees John. That's a look at the latest news. (00:28:26) Thank you very much Minnesota public radio's Greta Cunningham. It's midday and Minnesota Public Radio genre' be here with lay a finger in the studio. He's a Main Street radio reporter from Minnesota Public Radio. But he's also a novelist stylist one of our better writers and okay. He doesn't like praise your one of our worst writer's life. Thanks for having you on as a bad example. So that's not nice. It doesn't work and take its price and Lauren D estimate is with us. He's a just outside is actually in Ann Arbor joining us from wom Lauren DS term in Western writer vice president at the Western writers of America their incoming president. He's also author of The Wister Trace classic novels of the American frontier but he's written a lot of westerns and a lot of detective fiction as well. Again, he's in the studio. And in Ann Arbor. I wanted to talk about movies for just a bit because well they're they're pretty don't want to get too far off the track so to speak but they're pretty important part and when we consider westerns, I want to hear just a little of one of the best western movies in my opinion Red River directed by Howard Hawks Stars, John Wayne and Montgomery Clift among others. It's basically a retelling of mutiny on the Bounty Wayne as leader of a giant cattle drive out of Texas Montgomery Clift is his adopted son. Wayne won't take a shortcut his men of heard about and he's growing less and less rational when men start deserting the drive. He has his remaining men hunt them down and bring them back Laredo and teeler have just been brought back after. Deserting. (00:30:11) All right, um Taylor you signed on for the drive you signed on to finish it. That's right. We did is we little beans and flour and cartridges besides being deserters your common thieves. Well all might see a dime the law. You're a thief you to Taylor. Anything more I know what you're going to do to us. But first I want to tell you something. No, I had you're crazy. I've been drinking and you ain't been sleeping. If you ain't crazy your skin close toward you through know you want to get this herd to Market. Well, so do all of us. There's a good way to Abilene, but you won't listen to that know you want to drive new Missouri when you get the hi-low and Jack against you I ain't through yet. Miss her don't belong to you. It belongs every poor hoping and praying Cattlemen in a whole wide State. I shouldn't have run away. I should have stayed and put a bullet in you. I signed a pledge sure, but you ain't a man. I signed it with you finished. Yeah, now you can get your Bible and read over safety assurance. I'm gonna hang you. No, you're not why you're not going to hang them. Oh, stop me. I will. (00:31:35) Tune in next time when we find out if Matthew Garth will stop his adopted father from hanging Laredo and teeler Lauren DS lemon. What do you think of Red River? Oh, I love that movie. I got so caught up in that. I wanted to listen to it all the way through to the end as many times. Do I've seen it. It's a gorgeous film. It's a wonderfully done and this is the the western movie at at its absolute best at it flew in the face of all the conventions all of the the assumptions that are often made about the Western being a long candid sub literary form its complexity as many different levels and it offers a very complicated multi-layered view of what could be a very complicated time. And I know that it's that it's supposed to be the frontier retelling of mutiny on the Bounty, but I didn't root for Charles Laughton and Mutiny on the Bounty and I rooted for John Wayne all the way through Red River even when he was wrong. I mean, he was still John. In and it gets at not to be pedantic here, but it gets at a real a very big issue in the speech that one of the Outlaws made Outlaws, but the dessert is made in the in the beginning of that clip about it being so important to get that herd to the train to take that shortcut that the the cattle don't just belaunde to John Wayne, but to all the people who are trying to make a living out in the west. It's a pretty important. So it's in that particular passage to I think is that is an excellent definition of what fanatic means it's been said that a fanatic is someone who doubles its efforts when he's forgotten his aim and John Wayne his aim is to get the cattle to Market. But even when he's presented with what looks like proof of the fact that you can get there by a shorter route. He's already committed to that long route. Originally had in mind and he will not be diverted from that path. That's a fine example of fanaticism and action how have westerns fared generally though. So this one which I think was a Saturday evening post. It started off Life as a Saturday evening Post article. We like it. We like Red River but in general how they fared when they get translated from book to the screen and generally pretty well in many cases particularly with something like that since this is the period when many great westerns were being based on on short stories, which is something we don't see too often nowadays short stories being turned into into theatrical Motion Pictures. What they would often do is add different layers and levels to what in the beginning might turn out to be very simple story high noon started out as a very simple story of a frontier Marshal going up against us some bad guys called the Tin Star by Eugene V Cunningham. A good story but it has nowhere near the complexity of the power of a movie like high noon and same thing with the Red River and things like that. So often in a case like that the movie will actually be an embroidery and an improvement on the short story. Of course many other times there have been there have been times in this this is obviously not not just restricted to the Western when the theatrical equivalent could never approached the the power of the novel. I think it's true in the really fine complex Western novel called warlock by Oakley Hall, which is a Roman à clef about the gunfight at OK Corral with all the names change and it gives them a chance to play around a bit with history and he tells that story through an epistolary fashion through letters and journals to give us a very full and complete view of the kind of things that go into a 30-second shootout and I and all of the repercussions are take place. Afterwards and they attempted that at the attempt in the 50s to make that into a motion picture of the same title warlock with the Henry Fonda and Richard Widmark and Anthony Quinn. And while it was a very brave attempt to get this very multi-layered novel into two hours of playing time It ultimately failed because it came up being very talky and not quite what people expect of a western and it just is probably this was a novel that could have been done as a TV mini-series, but there's no way that you can cram it into two hours and approach anything. Like what was in the other Pages a novel specifically speaking novelist has a great deal more space to tell a story and then Hollywood does doesn't it seem like most of the great western films are are 30 or 40 years old. I'm trying to think besides Unforgiven, which I liked a lot of a recent western that a person could classify as a really good movie. I don't think anyone West Silverado wasn't too bad Silverado. Add was it a classic? No? That's it's a minor classic. It said I think the logical class I guess I had a lot of Mythology and yeah, I think that's what heard it. I should stop because I don't want to get too far afield on movies. Let's bring Allison into the conversation from Minneapolis Allison. Thank you very much for calling. Thank you for waiting. (00:36:55) Yeah. Thanks a lot. I'm so happy to be a part of this conversation. I'm a big fan of western novels. I was a Wrangler first many Summers out west during college and got a little taste of the other modern cowboy life, whether it's you know, a little bit of the authentic stuff and a little bit of the pure tourist attraction aspect of it and I was fascinated to learn as a side comment that really the tourist attraction of the West goes all the way back to the particular kind of way and that tells like Cody Wyoming and turn it into something of a tourist attraction. But what I wanted to ask you about was the great classic by Larry McMurtry Lonesome Dove And there's a lot of books that we can talk about that are just wonderful wonderful plays on the western theme, but you know, you can't just pass by Lonesome Dove and I wanted to find out what your thoughts are about that. And also about when you're talking about the direction of the western novel is I always think of Lonesome Dove is really almost a piece of historical fiction and that because there's I think a continuing Timeless affection for historical fiction among readers. Really the Western is never going to go away as long as it as long as it goes along that that path as well. I'll hang up and listen. (00:38:12) Thanks Allison. Thank you very much for calling up a Wrangler calling us Lauren D estimate. What do you think of Lonesome Dove? I agree very much for that. Matter of fact. I was going to bring up Lonesome Dove and we started to talk about movies that have been made in recent recent years. And of course Lonesome Dove was a television miniseries based on mcmurtry's book, but telling it backwards starting with that with a miniseries. This is a an undertaking that that both saved. Concept of the miniseries which is about to fall into disrepute. Thank goodness. Someone ended up into that far. That's right, and and and and to in many cases saved the Western because of all the levels that that it undertook. I had the opportunity. I got the assignment from TV Guide to cover the filming of Lonesome Dove and the portion that they were filming north of Santa Fe. So I got to watch this at close hand got to see some of the key scenes being being photographed. I remember when I first set foot on the set. I saw Danny Glover ride by wearing dietz's crazy quilt pants from the novel and soon as I saw that I said, this is going to be a classic and and I was right and then going back to Larry McMurtry. Here's a novel The First Western novel to win the Pulitzer Prize since a be Guthrie's the way west I think in 1948 and I think opened the door to a whole and and showed that the direction that the Western can go that come up McCarthy has gone into and Barbara Kingsolver. And in so many other really fine wider writers of worldwide repute. It's a very complex tail. It's a very sweeping tail and when you come out of a reading of this very long book you feel that you've lived through the entire period classic period of the frontier and feel and you can feel those things that you will it will take Pages just to tell us about how westerners and south southern Texas feel about rattlesnakes and things like that. The detail work there is absolutely first-rate just a splendid Splendid novel actually. I think I think that Robert Louis Taylor won the Pulitzer in 1958 for the travels of Jaimie mcpheeters. I stand corrected had to point that out is one of my favorite books and speaking of John's got a passage here 19 61 Larry mcmurtry's first novel an amazing first novel is called Horsemen passed by it was made into HUD this kind of ties all our themes together here and I'm just going to read a little bit from the forward when I knew Granddad was in bed. I went back to the windmill and stop the blades so I could climb up and sit on the platform beneath the big fin around me across the dark Prairie. The lights were clear. The oil Derricks were lit with strings of yellow bulbs like Christmas trees. The lights were still on in the kitchens of the Pumpers cabins Little Green Top Shack scattered across the plain each one propped on a few stacks of bricks 12 miles away to the north the red and green yellow lights of Thalia shimmered against the dark. I said above it all in the cool Breezy are that swept under the windmill blades hearing the rig Motors / and the heavy trucks growl up the road above the chattering of the ignorant Rhode Island Reds. I heard To whippoorwills the ghostly Birds. I never saw calling across the flats below the ridge sitting there with only the wind and the Darkness around me. I thought of all the important things I had to think about my honors my worries my ambitions. I thought of the wild nights ahead when I would have my own car and could tear across the country to dances and rodeos. I picked the boys. I would run with the girls. We Woodrum. I kept happy thinking of all the Reckless things that could happen in the next few years some nights. It stormed out on the Range and I watched the little snake tongues of lightning flicker against the clouds when I was clear enough, I could see the airplane beacons flashing from the airport in Wichita Falls. That's from Larry mcmurtry's first novel from 1961 Horsemen passed by which they made into HUD and mr. Estimate. I wanted to ask you this is a novel about moral degradation. This is a very nice kind of elegiac passage boat, but No, Western Heroes here, except maybe possibly for the kid who's telling the story right? There aren't I think what aside from the setting what makes this novel of Western is the fact that the very concept of Western ism is something that's very that's uppermost in the minds of most of the characters in the story and they they're conscious of the fact that they're they're they're they're charged with living out. What's basically a literary tradition that may not exist may never indeed have existed but they're kind of locked into these into these roles of of upholding what's beginning to look like a an archaic system of honor and a man keeping his word and one man at stealing another man's woman, but and and I think it's a novel that shows how far the modern world can fall a field from something and and a set of Is that they're very possibly was always in danger of being violated and it ends at any given time but I have so much to do with the concept of how people see themselves in the west and still continue to see themselves. They think of themselves differently from the way people in the East think about themselves and that's that's what I mean when I say if something is intrinsically westerns kind of a concept a way of seeing this story set in the 50s, I think what point did writers start telling the story of the modern West. Oh that's hard to say I think in a way Wister was because he was writing about a West that still to some degree existed but I think we're we see a lot of people coming up post-war. I think right now, I'm thinking of Max Evans particular who give us the rounders and the high low country which was made into a just and excellent towering motion picture this year just out on video now and I recommend it to everyone I watched it for the first First time the other night and it's absolutely wonderful and it's a novel about people coming back men coming back from World War Two and taking up their jobs that they left behind is Cowboys and still trying to do things the old cowboy way because this is what the Christian tradition was all about. And the main thing was to at one point. I Woody Harrelson's characters main character named big boy. He Josh is his friend. He says he's now that I'm in charge of the outfit. He says it's it's a lot cheaper. We're going to lose a lot less fat off these cattle if we put them on trucks and taken to the Railhead rather than driving them the old way and the guy stares at him and that little boy laughed in his face. I think no big boy, I think name of the character. I apologize big boys and even Woody Harrelson's character. He laughed in his face and he said had you going there for a minute didn't I said, there's might be more profit and put them in trucks but a lot more fun driving them to wonderful wonderful woman. That's had think this that I think exemplifies. What I'm talking about is the idea of putting Western ISM ahead of even They because that's the way it should be done. Let's go to Eddie on the line from Woodbury. Thanks for calling. Midday, Eddie. You're on the (00:45:44) air. Thank you very much. Say when what I'd like you to like you to comment on this aspect of these early Westerns. It seems to me that what if nothing else it glamorized the handgun in those early those early handguns that these Cowboys use these six shooters. They were really dangerous weapons for the shooter. I mean, sometimes they explode in their hands. The ammunition wasn't all that reliable. But the writers of the western stories have glamorized the handgun and that has come down to us more than anything else I think and I'd like to hear your comments. So I'll hang up and (00:46:25) listen right any thank you for calling up. I think it's some degree. I think that's true and it is a distortion what we tend to forget now in the face of the mythology is that they recognize the problem of the proliferation of deadly weapons in the old west and most of the major cities out west had a very strict anti Firearms regulation when you see real photographs of westerns, and I just posed Studio you are veld, you will very seldom see exposed weapons most of them carry concealed weapons because they didn't want to give up their weapons, but it was against the law to be caught with wearing a firearm in town. You had to check them that the at either the the Marshal's office or whatever place of business. You stop to do your business and pick them up again, when you left town this time convinces wider became a became a law man because he was first and foremost a businessman. He wanted to make money off the places he went to and he and he tied up the plate the the all of the economic interest in the town that he possibly could he saw himself as a kind of a frontier Donald Trump, but he realized they were very wild places he had to protect his interest with Firearms, but he can only carry a firearm legally if you became a law man, so he became a Lawman so he could carry a gun so we could protect his business interests and make a profit. But that was that was recognized a very real concern on the frontier and I think True that the the concept of solving your problems with violence has been had been propagated to some degree through the Western. I don't think it's anything really new if you look at literature going at literature and dramatic going back to Shakespeare. I've always thought that Hamlet would have solved a lot of problems if he killed his uncle in the First Act. Mr. Esselman we've had the call about about the Firearms westerns have been criticized for a lot of things in recent years and you've written in the Wister Trace something I'd like you to refer to hear a comment on and that is this sentence lesser artists seething with Democratic outrage have sought to press contemporary Eastern values on a period and society that Wister Knew Too Well to attempt to influence That's true from time to time. You will see very politically correct westerns. I think the one that that that Springs closest to mind right now was what was the the Jane Seymour television show something MD. So are you all ready? It's already Fading Into memory now highly politically correct Western pressing very much our modern values. And what was a very different time. The Western has has often been accused of many things that it was that it was not guilty of I think the western movie particularly has been it's become almost a given now to say that the western movie during the classic period was with racist and was anti-indian and yet I have a for the last 10 years. I've had a standing offer in the western writers of America of a reward of $1,000 for anybody who can give me a list of ten a list major westerns from the classic period I'm saying between 18:35 and 1950 in which Indians played a part in which the script did not take the Indian side for at least a few lines during the action the idea of treating the Indian as as a faceless Savage to be exterminated was not something that was current in Hollywood at any time and every time they do some new documentary about Westerns on television and try to show how racist they were. They almost always lift quotes from the mouths of obvious bigots characters who are represented as bigots and try to present that as the Persona of the Washington himself and it just just was never true Miss. Morstan is may be guilty of a good many things but not that I need to start wrapping up. We have just a couple of minutes left. I wanted to ask mr. S Tolman if you're worried that the Western is going to die out. I mean if you look at the racks of westerns a lot of written by dead, man That's true. But I think the very fact that the Western rack itself is evaporating as the sign of the healthy change. If you look at the works of Cormac McCarthy and Larry McMurtry and Barbara Kingsolver and Jane Smiley were effectively doing westerns. Now, you'll see them in the general fiction rack and this is what the Western has been inspiring to from. It's beginning to be considered authentic American literature and to get out of that ghetto. So I'm just as happy to see that ghetto Fall by the wayside great. It's been great talking with you. Thanks very much for coming on the show. Thanks, John Lauren DS Tillman Western writer vice president of the western writers of America and author of The Wister Trace classic novels of the American frontier. He was in Ann Arbor at the Studio's of w, uo m laughs anger. It was a pleasure. My pleasure John. Thanks, and you are a good writer. Nana. I just sit there and take it. That'll do it for this hour of. Midday. Stay tuned for Talk of the Nation. Did you ever (00:51:43) see when we begin to die? (00:53:01) Midday coming to you on Minnesota Public Radio with the help of Sarah Mayer and Cliff Bentley this week. (00:53:10) on the next All Things Considered vice president Al Gore campaigns in the Twin Cities and bashes the Republican tax plan that story on the next All Things Considered weekdays it