More magazine adverts from 1907

Since the set of these I posted last week was a big hit with readers, I'm adding some more. The McClure's cover at the right is from 1901, a wintery scene with washed out colors and clouds of steam and smoke lifted by a wind against a gray sky.

I like that the illustration is divided into three parts, with utility poles to the right and left and straight power lines connecting them across the top. A study in verticals and horizontals that frames a snow-covered field and gives a chilly effect.

It occurs to me that The New Yorker continues this tradition of cover art today, while being full of similar content underwritten by full page ads. Big difference in the newsstand price, though. Ten cents vs. $7.99.

Here they are. Most interesting to me is the suspenseful drama portrayed in the Smith & Wesson ad. Then, for pure whimsy there's the ad for phonograph records, with the silhouette of a madcap dancer (be sure to read the copy for this one, too.)

Older readers here may recognize the Pullman porter serving up Cream of Wheat. Note also that Welch's Grape Juice is being sold as a health drink and that Kellogg's Corn Flakes cost more west of the Rockies.

One year

Rain on the prickly pear

Today marks an anniversary of sorts. A year ago I was just out of surgery, most of a malignant tumor removed from my brain, I was yet to meet the oncologists who would get me started on chemo and radiation. Mostly I was amazed that I felt few effects from having my cranium cracked open, my gray matter invaded by a team of neurosurgeons I hardly knew, then stapled back together, soon to be sent back home.

My memories of that time are marked by the sound of cactus wrens outside my bedroom, chattering away each morning as I welcomed the new day, sometimes after an endless night of dreadful dreams and sleeplessness. I read Anne Lamott’s little book about three kinds of prayer (thanks, help, wow), which made me both laugh and cry. And I marveled at the flowering plants sent by a family friend. Here we were alive together.

Elmer Kelton, Texas Showdown

This book is actually two short novels by Elmer Kelton, first published in the 1960s and reissued under one title by Forge in 2007. Pecos Crossing, originally titled Horsehead Crossing (1963), appeared under Kelton’s own name, while Shotgun, originally titled Shotgun Settlement (1969), was published under a house pseudonym, Alex Hawk.

First off, Elmer Kelton is one of my top-10 favorite western writers. He wrote with a strong sense of history and an informed awareness of the West Texas terrain, its flora and fauna, and its weather. I find it easy to believe in his characters. They are not just convenient types but possess an emotional depth that makes them three-dimensional.

Adverts from McClure’s Magazine (1907)

Every work of fiction tells us something about the audience and the times it was written for. Today, however, we may have trouble picturing the readers of early frontier fiction. For many of us, they were the parents of our grandparents—or even their parents—adults before the end of the 19th century, dependent on a horse-drawn technology and an agrarian economy.

From the movies and TV, we know what the Old West itself is supposed to have looked like, but it’s harder to imagine that period of time around 1900 when frontier fiction emerged as a genre—though they were clamorous years, as the Gilded Age dissolved into the Progressive Era (imagine the white-haired Mark Twain morphing into Rough Rider Teddy Roosevelt).

Soup

Aerial ballet (more pics below)

Turns out the dread I felt about my first infusion as I started into the drug trial at UCLA was unnecessary. Though the procedure lasted 90 minutes, it was mostly a nonevent. Dripped into my bloodstream by way of an IV was not chemo but something called a monoclonal antibody (Avastin), developed to restrict blood flow to tumors and discourage them from growing.

Already approved by the FDA for treatment of cancer, it has been shown to be effective after 6 months in 45% of cases like my own. So while the odds are roughly the same as the flip of a coin, they’re not actually that bad when you consider the alternative. Other trial participants, randomly selected as I was, receive the test drug(s), so they will fare better or worse than me—hopefully better, for the sake of all concerned, current and future.

Geoff Dyer, But Beautiful: A Book About Jazz

I guess you’d call this creative nonfiction. A former colleague recommended this book to me after reading some of my thoughts on the life-affirming and health-inducing aspects of listening to jazz as I deal with a visitation of brain cancer. The great irony is that the joyous practice of improvisation in smoky clubs of the bebop era was so virulently self-destructive for its musicians.

In Dyer’s evocative and impressionistic character sketches of several of its iconic figures (Lester Young, Bud Powell, Chet Baker, Art Pepper, Ben Webster, Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus) we witness mostly downward trajectories, as drugs, prison, racism, alcoholism, mental illness, and violence take their toll. Whether or not you think of them as survivors, you come to understand that the music they invented and played was an act of defiance and subversion in the face of demons both internal and external.

Now available: How the West Was Written, Vol. 2 (1907-1915)

David Cranmer over at Beat to a Pulp Press has just announced publication of Vol. 2 of my book series, How the West Was Written. It continues the chronology of western writers that began in the first volume with Mary Hallock Foote's The Led-Horse Claim (1883). Here is a short description of the new volume from its introduction: 

During the years 1907–1915, frontier fiction boomed with new writers, and the success of Owen Wister’s The Virginian (1902) began to make itself felt in their work. That novel had made the bestseller lists for two years running. With the continued popularity of Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West show, and the appearance of one-reeler westerns on movie screens, many featuring the adventures of Bronco Billy Anderson, the cowboy hero was becoming an established mythic figure in the public imagination. 

New writers capitalizing on this interest begin to emerge in numbers and include Zane Grey, Dane Coolidge, Charles Alden Seltzer, William MacLeod Raine, and Eugene Manlove Rhodes. Fans of cowboy westerns will find this book's discussion of these storytellers of particular interest.

Meanwhile, for writers of popular fiction, the frontier was also a subject for exploring ideas drawn from current public discourse—ideas about character and villainy, women’s rights, romance and marriage, democracy and government, capitalism, race and social boundaries, and the West itself. With each new publication, they participated as well in an ongoing forum for how to write about the West and how to tell western stories.

Taken together, the chapters of this book describe for modern-day readers and writers the origins of frontier fiction and the rich legacy it has left us as a genre. It is also a portal into the past, for it offers a history of ideas as preserved in popular culture of a century ago that continues to claim an audience today.

Currently available at amazon for kindle and in paperback. Also in paper at Createspace. Order both volumes from amazon here.

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