Wednesday's Western: The Best Western Novels Not Nominated, continued....

Last week, I left off with 1969, the year of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Wild Bunch, which was something of a turning point for the western as it had previously been known in publishing circles.  Conventional westerns of the 1950s, with the simplicity of their white hat/black hat duality, were going out of fashion even among the ardent followers of the genre.  Novels once on the cutting edge became mainstream.  Movies were based on novels which in turn affected the writing of new novels.

The Spur Awards, which had previously ignored more sophisticated westerns such as The Professionals and The Wild Bunch, grudgingly now began to reflect this change and so the literary quality of Spur winners was on the rise.  The best traditional western authors were happy to change, helping to expand the definition of "western novel."  Publishers of conventional westerns saw their sales fall.

In 1970, Clifton Adams won the Spur Award again for the second year in a row with The Last Days of Wolf Garnett, a conventional vengeance western.  Not nominated was Elmore Leonard's excellent western, Valdez Is Coming, which was made into a very fine film the following year.  Not nominated was Tony Hillerman's The Blessing Way, the first in a long series of good ones.

In 1971, the winning western novel was Elmer Kelton's The Day The Cowboys Quit, which I reviewed here (link) some time ago.  This was Kelton's best novel and a break from the Kelton's previous novels and the general standard of Western Novel winners of the past.  Based upon historical events and character-driven, it also dealt with ideas.

Not nominated was Dee Brown's non-fiction Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee, first published in January, it went through 13 reprintings by October, 1971, and was selected by bookclubs across the land, a sign of the social consciousness of the times.

In 1972, the Spur Award went to Lewis B. Patten for A Killing In Kiowa, a reactionary tribute to the old guard (or perhaps given as something of a lifetime achievement award).  Patten was long a hacker of standard and sometimes pulpy westerns, turning out over 90 books under several names.  At least this one was a passable adult western.  To judge by the others I've seen, he wrote mostly YA novels or simple-minded variations of cliched revenge tales, "shit-kicking" action yarns with stock characters.  The best thing that you can say about them is that they were loyal to the old conventions.  Some of his tales, such as Gene Autry and the Ghost Riders (1957), will last long as artifacts.

Western movies led western books in innovations that year with Joe Kidd, Jeremiah Johnson, and Ulzana's Raid, among many others.  The naturalism of Vardis Fisher's Mountain Man brought to film was refreshing, and there was an interesting true story behind Elmore Leonard's Joe Kidd.  

In 1973, Elmer Kelton won again with The Time It Never Rained, another character-driven novel involving ranch economics and the independent western attitude vs. bureaucratic policies.  Ideas and realized characters were becoming more important than happy endings--or so it seemed.   Among those not nominated was Clair Huffaker's epic,  The Cowboy and the Cossack, which I reviewed here (link) a while back.  Also not nominated that year was Tony Hillerman's cross-genre western/mystery, Dance Hall of the Dead, but his day would come.

(to be continued....)

Wednesday's Western: The Cowboy and the Cossack by Clair Huffaker

Mulling over both Casablanca and Vertigo, in light of what Wendy Lesser pointed out:  that the audience sees more there than what is on the screen.  In a different context, this is true of Casablanca as well, for many of those in the 1942 audience must have already seen Bogart as Sam Spade in 1941's The Maltese Falcon.  So when, early on in Casablanca, Peter Lorre begins a conversation with Bogart, saying "I know you hate me," the audience isn't told what for exactly, but those who have seen The Maltese Falcon must automatically think back to Peter Lorre's lowlife character there.

These characters play to a commonly held type, wavering between a universal mythic archetype and a politically motivated and fashionable stereotype.  Audiences want their opinions verified, but every time movies are cast to type, they reinforce the fiction that such typing is always true and necessary.

Humphrey Bogart was two inches shorter than Ingrid Bergman, who said that they always had him stand on something when the two of them were to be filmed face-to-face, to give the illusion that he was the taller of the two.  Such things are done to conform to typecasting. 

The pulp westerns often fell into genre cliche relying on type, with a preponderance of thinly drawn characterizations.  As political fashions have evolved, fewer and fewer stereotypes have appeared in mainstream westerns, fiction reflecting the times.

Which brings to mind a western which is remarkable for its use of type:  Clair Huffaker's 1973 novel, The Cowboy and the Cossack.  The plot works both with cliche and alternatively very much outside of it.  The plot is a marvelous work of original imagination concerning a cattle drive across Russia.  But the main characters could have stepped out of the television show, Rawhide, or any of several books about cattle drives, for instance Benjamin Capps' The Trail to Ogallala (Texas Tradition Series) or We Pointed Them North: Recollections of a Cowpuncher.

The Spur Awards of 1973 do not mention The Cowboys and the Cossacks, either in the main category or the YA category.  Elmer Kelton's best novel, The Time It Never Rained, won that year.  Several of Clair Huffaker's westerns were made into interesting movies--including the cattle-drive movie, Cowboy, which starred Glenn Ford and Jack Lemmon, and The War Wagon starring John Wayne and Kirk Douglas--among others.    The fact is, although Clair Huffaker wrote a number of fine westerns, he never did win the Spur Award.  

I'm not sure how many people read Clair Huffaker's book in hardcover, but the first edition, illustrated by Brad Holland, is a treasure to behold.  I first read it right after it came out.  It seemed to get good reviews everywhere, and if a movie had been made from it back in 1973, it would have had just the right edge of political correctness.  Made now, it might seem too politically correct, too corny--or too YA maybe.

It is a hell of a tale, though, and the opening scene, in which the cowboys herd the cattle from ship to shore, is one of the best in western cattle-drive lit, anywhere.  It is not a deep novel, but the first-person narrator is a cowboy poet whose western voice is clean-cut and comfortable.