Book Around the Corner

• The Big Sky by A.B. Guthrie (1947) French title: La captive aux yeux clairs.
• Skeletons by Glendon Swarthout (1979) French title: 11h14. Translated by F.M. Watkins. Revised by Marc Boulet.
• American Marchlands by Lance Weller (2017) French title: Les marches de l’Amérique. Translated by François Happe

Somehow, I ended up reading three westerns almost in a row, one I abandoned, one I loved and one I liked.

I’ve wanted to read The Big Sky by A.B. Guthrie even since I read Indian Creek Chronicles by Pete Fromm because it was influential in his decision to take this job in the Idaho wilderness. Guthrie also coined the Big Sky name to describe Montana, it was a must-read!

So, of course, it was high on my list of books to buy during out summer trip through Montana last year. Meaning I have the book in English and phew! what a difficult read it was. I struggled until page 175 out of 386 and gave up. The story of Boone, Jim and Dick didn’t grab my attention either.

We’re in 1830, the three men head to the frontier to become mountain men. It’s a hard and dangerous life.

While I liked the descriptions of the nature of that time in the Missouri river, before the Homesteads Act of 1862 changed everything, I didn’t see where the story was going. Was there any purpose to this journey? I didn’t engage with the characters because they lacked of depth. Not much soul-searching in The Big Sky, just plain western stuff, unless it happens in the 200 pages I haven’t read.

The descriptions of Native Americans are outdated and made me ill-at-ease, even if they are probably consistent with the time. Both times: the 1830s and the 1940s. Add to that the language hurdle, the book remained untouched a few weeks in a row until I finally called it quits.

Our Book Club choice led me to Skeletons by Glendon Swarthout. It isn’t openly a western but it is one. And I had a lot of fun reading it.

The main character and narrator is Jimmy, a famous children book author. His hero is a fly who hops on planes and has adventures around the world. Jimmy dresses like John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever and drives a Rolls Royce:

This morning I wore a double-breasted suit of Glen Urquardt plaid in pink and gray with Duke of Windsor vents, tailored by Zegna of Italy. My silk jersey shirt was a shocking pink Pucci, my tie a mauve foulard silk with coordinated pocket square, my shoes black calf half-boots by Alan McAfee of London. Oh yes, and I had a hat—a Tyrolean velour with a badger brush. “My God,” she said. “New York,” I said.

The man says of himself that he’s a coward and he has a laugh-out-loud brand of self-deprecating sense of humor.

Our Jimmy has a weakness: his ex-wife Tyler. When she asks him to leave his comfy New York apartment to go to Harding, New Mexico and investigate the death of her lover, he accepts, against a promise of renewed nuptials and a happily-ever-after with her.

The said lover had been sent to Harding to elucidate the disappearance of Tyler’s grand-father in the 1910s, when New Mexico had just become a state and was trying to turn a new leaf and leave behind the “Frontier vibe” and its “everyone makes their own law with their fists or their gun.” Is it real case or a wild goose chase imagined by a nutty femme fatale?

Jimmy is beside himself with fear but does the job, with lots of mishaps and funny comments. Sometimes it felt like a Belgian comic book. The cold case of Tyler’s grand-father is actually a hot potato and when Jimmy starts poking around, people try to kill him too.

The plot is quite interesting and Jimmy’s voice is utterly funny, like here, when he gets hit on the head:

When it happened I was somehow not surprised. I saw the traditional stars and was aware of a huge cranial hurt but before I blacked out I had time to say to myself why of course, Butters, my boy. You’ve read enough whodunits to know that detectives and private eyes are ALWAYS being hit over the head and knocked out. It’s a requirement of the genre. So now you’ve been hit over the head and you’re about to go blotto—so what else is new?

He only wants one thing, to solve the damned case, win the girl and ride to the New York sunset as he puts it:

“Sorry,” said I. “I must live for the sake of American kidlit. From where the sun now stands,” quoth I, “I will sleuth no more forever. I am getting the hell out of the Wild West and going gaily back to the dear dogshit sidewalks of New York City with Tyler Vaught. I will never even take in a Western movie again.”

This is a hugely engrossing and entertaining read and I’ll agree with Jimmy “Good writers never die,” (…). “Only their copyrights expire.”

Many thanks to Gallmeister again for bringing my attention to Glendon Swarthout. His Bless the Beasts and Children was memorable and his unique attempt at crime fiction is a success too.

Now let’s move to the last of these three westerns. Published in 2017, American Marchlands by Lance Weller is set at the same period of time as The Big Sky. The book covers three decades from 1815 to 1846 on the American Frontier.

Tom Hawkins leaves a poor farm in Illinois after his father’s death and goes west. He travels with his friend Pigsmeat, whom he met again on the road. Pigsmeat ended up leaving their hometown for different reasons and they were happy to reunite. They are drifters, they go from one place to the other with no other plan than survival. They have no real goal until they meet Flora.

Flora is a slave with a fair skin and a strong will. Her owner, Boss, keeps her prisoner at his house as a sexual interest. She’s intelligent, he teaches her how to read and she soon reads everything she can and betters herself. When Boss dies and his estate crumbles, she becomes at the mercy of his son. When the son dies, she hires Tom and Pigsmeat to bring his corpse kept in a lead coffin and salt to his family in Monterey. Her aim is to be free.

Contrary to what I read of The Blue Sky, the characters in American Marchlands have depth. Tom suffers from debilitating migraines and left Illinois after violence and death crashed upon their home. Pigsmeat enrolled in the army to fight Indians in Illinois and his encounter with violence changed him. And Flora is a strong-willed woman.

All the characters in American Marchlands are confronted with violence at a young age: the violence of slavery, the violence of war, the violence of hard fathers, the violence of the earth that tries to reject their attempts at dominating her with their plows and fields. And the ultimate violence of the non-choice: to kill or to be killed, that isn’t a question.

Survival means resorting to violence and the country was built on that prerequisite.

I’m sorry to report that Lance Weller doesn’t have a publisher in English for American Marchlands; you need to read it in French if you’re interested in it.

Westerns isn’t my favorite genre, I sort of fell into it with Gallmeister books and reading books set in Montana and Wyoming. The best one I’ve read remains Lonesome Dove and Skeletons comes right after. It’s totally different but I really recommend it as an entertaining summer read and it would make an excellent film. And the best book I’ve read about The Frontier is Fools Crow by James Welch.