Kentucky Blues by Derek Robinson

 

He sighed, and smiled. ‘You have a worrying way of making everything sound simple,’ he said.

‘Well, it is simple. Either you live to enjoy or you live to regret what you didn’t enjoy while you had the chance.’

This 2002 novel is the only Frontier novel by a British author more noted for his aviation novels of the first and second world wars and…well, that is a crying shame as this novel is simply superlative.

We begin with the founding of a small border town in colonial Kentucky and we stay there through the Civil War, the Post-War Period and on through Prohibition.

This is not one of those “kitchen sink” novels that tries to shoehorn every bit of history into the page count to prove, “Hey, I did my research.” No Edward Rutherford or Michener here.

Mr. Robinson, keeps it small, keeps it human even when working against the backdrop of large events.

The novel is cynical, wise, redolent with flavor and brimming with a wry humor.

He can limn entire characters in a sentence, entire storylines in a paragraph.

‘Jeez, I dunno.’ Ruthie had a good chuckle. Nothing disturbed her. She never complained, never celebrated, never criticized, never praised. Sold from the auctioneer’s block when she was six. Three masters – one cruel, one loud but lazy, one dying and therefore indifferent – before Henry Hudd saw her at a bankruptcy sale, told her to strip, poked and prodded and squeezed her until he was sure she could breed, and got her at a knockdown price of two hundred dollars, with a lame mule that nobody wanted thrown in too. Three good husbands, all dead now. Seven children, all sold south, never seen again. Snakebit once, nearly died but didn’t. All luck, all chance. Nothing agitated Ruthie. What she didn’t understand made her chuckle. She chuckled a lot.

Tell me we don’t know Ruthie from the get-go from that.

The futility of war from the following.

The shots had attracted others from their regiment, and now that the enemy had been found, the two armies drifted into battle. The more they fought, the more they fought. Eventually about 28,000 men were shooting and being shot at. About a quarter of them got hit. At the end, General Bragg pulled his men out and went back to Tennessee, so he lost; but the Unionist army failed to chase him, so it didn’t win. Nobody won, least of all a seventeen-year-old from Spendthrift, who had only joined the army to prove to a neighbour’s daughter how brave he was. How brave was he? About average, it turned out.

Some novels will spend chapters on a downfall; Mr. Robinson spends two lines for a sardonic epitaph.

General Buck T. Masterman went home and concentrated on drinking himself to death. This was something he had a natural talent for, and he achieved it in only one year and forty-seven days, at the time a record for southern Illinois.

The claustrophobia of a small town made “smaller.”

That night the Cameron flooded its banks. By dawn, it was halfway up Main Street. Briefly, the rain turned to hail. Then it went back to rain again. It was too wet to get into trouble. Only place to go was Maggie’s. Only thing to do was drink, play poker, talk. Talk was cheapest, so a lot of it got done, until just about everyone had said just about all they knew to say, and said it so often the others knew what was coming and knew not to listen because it hadn’t been worth the wax in your ears last time around and nothing had happened to improve it since.

A room depicted more redolent than a photograph.

Charles went into the tavern, and found Frankie in her office: a back room that Maggie used for private poker sessions. A thousand bad cigars had lived and died here and their ghosts were in the air to prove it.

A backwoods trial setting that precedes an utterly entertaining episode of frontier jurisprudence.

The barn was full an hour before the trial was due to start. Many had come in from the surrounding countryside, bringing charcoal and barbecue. It was a holiday. The heat of bodies quickly built and all the doors had to be opened and kept open. Dogs and children ran in and out. There was singing, fiddleplaying, card-playing, even a little horse-trading. The barn smelled of sweat and overdone pork chops and the sour drift of cigar smoke and the sweet memory of ancient cow manure; Maggie had never had the floor properly cleaned. The noise was loud. It was one long fight to hear and be heard.

What sums up the many non-heroic souls that people this tale?

Boston found Doc Brightsides. ‘No offence meant,’ he said, ‘but why are you living here?’

‘It’s not so bad.’

‘Not so good, either. You’ve travelled, same as I have. America’s full of nowhere towns like this. I meet these people all the time. ‘Ain’t stayin’ here,’ they say. ‘Just catchin’ our breath. Soon’s we get two dollars to rub together, we’re off to find Happy Valley.’ Twenty years later they’re wearin’ the same overalls and they still haven’t mended that hole in the fence.’

An utter masterpiece for this reader. With no other Westerns in his oeuvre, I shall gladly plunge into his aviation tales.

I repeat, Superlative.

Black Saddle “Client: Travers”

 

This is the first episode of the two season ½ hour Western Black Saddle.

Our premise, ex-gunfighter Clay Culhane tries to turn over a new leaf and practice law.

Culhane is played by Peter Breck. Breck looks like a man who might be named Clay Culhane but, to this viewer at least, there seems to be little of the steely-eyed gunman or of the opposite nature, the man with a tortured past and a thirst for justice seeking new ways to apply that justice.

The fault may be the writing.

For a man committed to lawyerin’, jurisprudence is paid lip service so we can get to the neat and tidy 1950s third act gunplay.

Overall, mild familiar stuff.

Side-Note: We do have a young Russell Johnson as Marshall Gib Scott of Latigo.

Many of us remember Johnson as the “Professor” on Gilligan’s Island.

Based on this sample of a single episode, there is better nostalgia to be had.

The Game by Jack London

 

He lacked speech-expression. He expressed himself with his hands, at his work, and with his body and the play of his muscles in the squared ring; but to tell with his own lips the charm of the squared ring was beyond him. Yet he essayed, and haltingly at first, to express what he felt and analyzed when playing the Game at the supreme summit of existence.

“All I know, Genevieve, is that you feel good in the ring when you’ve got the man where you want him, when he’s had a punch up both sleeves waiting for you and you’ve never given him an opening to land ’em, when you’ve landed your own little punch an’ he’s goin’ groggy, an’ holdin’ on, an’ the referee’s dragging him off so’s you can go in an’ finish ’m, an’ all the house is shouting an’ tearin’ itself loose, an’ you know you’re the best man, an’ that you played m’ fair an’ won out because you’re the best man.

This 1905 boxing novella from the author of The Call of the Wild, White Fang, The Sea Wolf and many a fine Yukon and adventure tale seems right up the alley of a man such as myself.

Here are the boxes it checks…

One—It’s about old school boxing. Aces!

Two—It’s by Jack London. I am a fan of much of his Yukon work and consider his story “Love of Life” one of THE exemplars of survival fiction. [Reviewed by, yours truly here.]

Three—Stories by real life doers, that is, men and women who truly lived experiences always move me more than mere “I’ve read a lot in my day, now here’s me offering up a quilt of what I’ve read of other’s lived experiences.”

Four—The man offered up so many fiery quotes of Go! And LIVE! It is hard to choose one as a stand-in. So, here I go with several verbal spurs to Live. [None from this novel.]

“I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.”

“The function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.”

“Life is so short. I would rather sing one song than interpret the thousand.”

“The function of man is to live, not to exist.”

“It is so much easier to live placidly and complacently. Of course, to live placidly and complacently is not to live at all.”

“Limited minds can recognize limitations only in others.”

“You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.”

“I do not live for what the world thinks of me, but for what I think of myself.”

“Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes, playing a poor hand well.”

Jack London was a doer. A sailor, a Gold Rusher, a boxer, a… well, he did many things in his lifetime.

Here, he wishes to bring his own boxing experience to life.

Of this novel he has said, "I have had these experiences and it was out of these experiences, plus a fairly intimate knowledge of prize-fighting in general, that I wrote The Game."

So, with all of the above praise, how is this novel?

Unfortunately, rather weak. It has streaks of the London panache here and there, but it is also a bit heavy on the pulpy “He-Man & Adoring Female” side of things.

This is our female admirer on our “Hero”, London’s fictional stand-in.

“And yet, while it frightened her, she was vaguely stirred with pride in him. His masculinity, the masculinity of the fighting male, made its inevitable appeal to her, a female, moulded by all her heredity to seek out the strong man for mate, and to lean against the wall of his strength.”

Yeah, that’s a little…well.

What London overshoots in his male-female relationship he gets more than right in a few ring particulars.

We have this…

“They came to the hall, on a dark street-corner, ostensibly the quarters of an athletic club, but in reality an institution designed for pulling off fights and keeping within the police ordinance.”

·        We must not forget boxing existed in a long shadow of out and out illegal to quasi-illegal status for decades.

·        For more on this facet of history put your ears on our brief podcast on this very topic Illegal Boxing.

We have this common ring instruction of the time.

“Joe Fleming fights at one hundred and twenty-eight,” he said; “John Ponta at one hundred and forty. They will fight as long as one hand is free, and take care of themselves in the breakaway. The audience must remember that a decision must be given. There are no draws fought before this club.”

And we have such observations as this, which can only be written by one who has fought and learned that wasted emotional effort can be as debilitating as wasted physical effort. Something that many of today’s “action authors” never nail as, well, I doubt they’ve ever rolled or taken a shot.

“The effect was bad on Ponta. He became more frenzied than ever, and more impotent. He panted and sobbed, wasting his effort by too much effort, losing sanity and control and futilely trying to compensate for the loss by excess of physical endeavor.”

London loved the game of boxing, yet what he wrote here is not a love story. The Game is a bit grim and gritty.

It is said that Gene Tunney read this volume in the late 1920s and this contributed to his decision to retire.

True or not, I cannot say, but I can vouch that this is no love letter to boxing.

But that is not the reason for a minor thumbs down.

It is simply that the melodrama of the novel, the long sections that are not boxing, well, they lack the bald-face realism that London exhibits in his best work.

There is better boxing literature to be read, but kudos to Mr. London for stepping into the ring and gives a few glimpses of verisimilitude.

A Gentleman Detective by Richard Prosch

 

There are weird places like that, especially in west Texas where the wind carves craggy reeds of stone and scoops out horns that amplify the sound. Logan learned slowly, over a period of years, that his cabin sat in just such a natural spot, conducive to listening, the ultimate recipient of stacked echoes and suppressed. background buzz.—The Trails of Whisper Canyon

I call your attention to the ultimate recipient of stacked echoes and suppressed. background buzz.

Small “throwaway” observations such as these, this smatterings of poetic prose sprinkled here and there is what sets formulary fiction above itself.

Here we have an anthology of western tales [17 strong] from Spur-Award winning author Richard Prosch.

To my mind, Brother Rich straddles that gap of keeping the stick-to-your ribs comfort food of the genre alive while adding environmental details that call out to the Thoreau in many of us. [A call always worth answering.]

These tales remind me of the entertaining balance of Western-Mystery-“Twist-in-the-Tale” that the late Ed Gorman used to offer.

You will notice I referred to the author as Brother Rich. He is a man whom I’ve not had the honor of meeting in the flesh yet, but I still regard him as a friend.

Am I biased as to his output?

Likely, but let’s look to the evidence.

The next line is from the titular story “A Gentleman Detective.”

What always kept him awake was a cursed memory and a hard life.—A Gentleman Detective

One line, thirteen words and we already have a hint of the past of the character.

I also offer the following exchange as evidence that bias does not fuel my regard for this anthology.

The exchange takes place in the parlor of a boarding house. Its lazy charm and wry humor calls to mind the young Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Miss Thompson Continue to gush over Mr. Bail. “And aren't your bird carvings exquisite?”

Frank smiled to himself. Upon sitting down, he admired the small, pine rendering under Bail’s whittling blade.

Bail took Miss Thompson's compliment in stride. “Thank you, my dear.”

“What else do you carve besides birds?”

“I have a series of life sized ducks, a few miniature rabbits, occasionally I might carve a fish.”

“Oh, you're a fisherman, too?”

Bail said he was. When Miss Thompson clicked her knitting needles together with delight, Frank decided it was the lady who was fishing.

Fans of Gorman and appreciators of a fine Western tale, well, here’s some fine afternoon whilin’.

Wisdom of the West by Tom Browning

 

I wish I could find words to express the trueness, the loyalty to their trust and to each other of the old trail hands. I wish I could convey in language the feelings of companionship we had for one another.—Charles Goodnight

The full title of this volume is Wisdom of the West: Riding Trails & Telling Tales.

It is a compendium of Western Related “inspirational” quotes broken into loose themes.

I’m a sucker for such volumes but…I gotta say this book disappoints.

The quote offered from Mr. Goodnight is practically the only Westerner found within. Oh, we get a quote from Zane Grey, one from L’Amour, a Mark Twain or two, but the vast majority is cobbled from Victor Hugo, Shakespeare, Robert Oppenheimer and others not associated in anyway with the West.

This not to say Hugo, Shakespeare and others have nothing to offer in the way of wise words; it is to say that a title “Wisdom of the West” would seem, by definition, to be of the West.

I know as well as you that there are vast untapped resources of actual words of wisdom from Frontier America and it is a disservice to package a few handfuls of standard quotes from Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations and make claims that something about the specific magic that was and is the West has been made.

A truly disappointing volume to this reader.