Top 10 westerns for 2013

Here in no particular order are the best of the westerns reviewed at BITS in the last year. (Click through on the titles to read the complete reviews.)

The Wild Bunch (1969)

Preview audiences reportedly were roused by such strong reactions to this film that many left the theater in protest. Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch immediately won a reputation for its graphic violence. Because of or in spite of that, it quickly found a place on most western fans’ top 10 list. Over 40 years later, it remains a powerful and absorbing story.

Monte Walsh (1970)

There’s an elegiac tone to this story of aging cowboys. The glory days are over for the men who used to ride the open ranges, and now they are hanging on to whatever work they can find in a shrinking rural economy. Distant corporate owners make the decisions about how the ranches are run. What used to be “money” is now “capital.”

Nevada Smith (1966)

Steve McQueen starred in this rambling movie set mostly in the West. Its central character goes by different names until almost the end, when he calls himself “Nevada Smith.” The film was a prequel, based on a character in Harold Robbins’ 1961 potboiler, The Carpetbaggers. That novel had been made into a film in 1964, the character of Nevada Smith played by Alan Ladd  as a Tom Mix-style cowboy actor.

Top 10 recent frontier fiction for 2013

While a chief interest here at BITS continues to be early and mid-century frontier fiction, we also enjoy following recent developments in the genre. Below is a listing in no particular order of ten novels and short story collections that got thumbs up during 2013. (Click through on the titles to the complete reviews.)

Trails of the Wild

This collection of western stories from David Cranmer’s Beat to a Pulp imprint is a welcome addition of new short fiction to the genre. As followers of his online zine already know, Cranmer has a fine eye and ear for picking writers with a gift for storytelling.

Mark Mitten, Sipping Whiskey in a Shallow Grave

This is a heckuva western novel that more than lives up to its unusual title. Mitten knows the conventions of the genre and then turns them inside out to create a sprawling narrative that ranges all over the state of Colorado. The cast of characters includes working cowboys, the worthy citizens of several Rocky Mountain settlements, and the members of an outlaw gang.

Loren D. Estleman, The Master Executioner

Published in 2001, this novel captures something of the sobering mood of that year. It’s about life and death and choices with unexpected consequences. Not really a story, it’s a character study of a young man emotionally marked by wartime atrocity. A Union soldier, still in his teens, he is witness to a clumsy and ghastly execution by hanging.

One sentence journal, Dec. 22 – 28

Back from surgery

Time marches on . . .

12/22, Sunday. I do not recommend catching a plane out of Grand Island, Nebraska, in the morning darkness of 6:40 a.m. with the rental car registering 15 degrees on the dashboard and you’re stepping out onto the parking lot into a breeze straight off the northern prairie.

12/23, Monday. A postponed anniversary is observed tonight with candlelight, wine, homemade pizza, and reflections on 48 years together.

12/24, Tuesday. Still half on Nebraska time and swilling down Robitussin at regular intervals to subdue the effects of a recent visit to the winter virus belt, I have to keep remembering that somehow it got to be Christmas Eve.

12/25, Wednesday. Amused as I realize in the middle of opening Christmas gifts that both of us are already reading our new books.

12/26, Thursday. The mountains all in shades of velvet blue today, and I’m traversing streets named for Dinah Shore and Ginger Rogers to the hospital in Rancho Mirage named for a five-star general, Eisenhower, to retrieve the star of my own brief life who waits in surgery recovery for a ride back home.

12/27, Friday. The microwave stages a comeback after going dead on Christmas Eve, expiring with one last word “WARM” on its control panel, then waiting for me to discover two days later that somehow the plug had mysteriously worked its way out of the outlet.

12/28, Saturday. When you’re in your sixth day of a cold, you find your focus drawn to chicken soup recipes, getting out the slow cooker, and rummaging in the kitchen for ingredients.

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Image credit: Ron Scheer

Coming up: Top 10 recent frontier fiction

Glossary of frontier fiction: G(gad - going tick)

Below is a list of mostly forgotten terms, people, and the occasional song, drawn from a reading of frontier fiction, 1880–1915. Each week a new list, progressing through the alphabet, “from A to Izzard.”

gad = a goad; point or stick used for driving draught animals. “He poked ’er in the ribs with the butt o’ his gad.” Frederick Thickstun Clark, In the Valley of Havilah.

Gainsborough portrait

gag = a deception. “No, ma’am; you don’t run any such gag as that on me.” Dell Munger, The Wind Before the Dawn.

gage d’amour = a pledge of love; a love token. “I fancy Mrs. Belknap thinks as you thought,—that it was a gage d’amour.” Charles King, Dunraven Ranch.

Gainsborough hat = a woman’s broad-brimmed hat resembling those shown in portraits by Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788). “Mrs. Ballinger was with her in gorgeous raiment, as usual, this time I think some sort of a figured silk in soft pink and blue with a wide Gainsborough hat.” Patience Stapleton, Babe Murphy.

Man in gaiters, 1901

gaiters = shoes or overshoes extending to the ankle or above. “‘What’s the matter with these old shoes?’ she exclaimed, turning about with a pair of half-worn silk gaiters in her hand.” Frank Norris, McTeague.

gaillardia = an American flower of the daisy family, cultivated for its bright red and yellow blossoms. “The gold of yellow midsummer light dyed in the asters and sunflowers and great flowered gaillardias and golden rod, with an odor of dried grasses or mint or cloves.” Agnes C. Laut, The Freebooters of the Wilderness.

galley-west = askew, confused, lopsided, scattered

Gailardia suavis

in all directions. “That scheme was knocked galley-west and crooked.” Bertrand Sinclair, Raw Gold.

galligaskins = loose trousers, leggings. “Some of the infantrymen got tired of sewing up three-cornered tears in their galligaskins.” Frederic Remington, John Ermine of the Yellowstone.

gallinipper = a stinging or biting insect. “That what I'm payin' you for, you blame gallinipper!” Jackson Gregory, Under Handicap.

Boy, single gallows, 1840s

Galloway = a Scottish breed of beef cattle having a coat of curly, black hair. “Again it was a black steer that was released—a hornless galloway, as wild as a native buffalo and as fleet as an ordinary horse.” Kate and Virgil Boyles, The Homesteaders.

gallows / gallus = a pair or one of a pair of suspenders (braces), to support the trousers. “A full-lipped, full-blooded little urchin, his trousers held up by a single gallows, stood beside her.” Willa Cather, The Troll Garden.

gally = distasteful, impudent. “It’ll be good riddance of bad rubbish. They’re too gally.” Eleanor Gates, Alec Lloyd, Cowpuncher.

gambade = a leap or bound. “What I ought to do now is to gambade after him.” S. Carleton Jones, Out of Drowning Valley.

Ten-best forgotten books of 2013

Every Friday, book lovers gather at Patti Abbott’s blog where links to their reviews of favorite “forgotten books” are posted. Many of the books are from pulp fiction and genre writers of the mid-twentieth century.

My contributions are mostly reviews of westerns and frontier fiction, some dating back 100 years. Looking over the past 12 months, I’m picking ten of them that were my “best of the year.” Here they are in no particular order (click through for my reviews):

Max Brand, Destry Rides Again (1930)

Loren D. Estelman, This Old Bill (1984)

Robert J. Conley, The Saga of Henry Starr (1989)

Willa Cather, The Troll Garden (1905)

Gertrude Atherton, Perch of the Devil (1914)

Oakley Hall, Warlock (1958)

Francis Lynde, The Grafters (1904)

A. M. Chisholm, The Boss of Wind River (1911)

Max Evans, The Hi-Lo Country (1962)

John Reese, The Blowholers (1974)

For more of Friday's Forgotten Books, click on over to Patti Abbott's blog.

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Coming up: Glossary of frontier fiction

Christmas wishes

This whole CD has been my companion during this Christmas season, cycling through random mode on my car stereo.

I wish you a holiday season that is mellow as Oscar Peterson's music. May the days bring all you hope for and a new year full of promise.

The Appaloosa (1966)

Marlon Brando, for some reason, has never seemed an easy fit in western movies for me. His face and his voice are so deeply grounded in On the Waterfront, Guys and Dolls and, later, The Godfather. He seems to have wandered far from home when he shows up on the frontier, as he does here.

Whether it is he or a double in the opening shots, riding across the vast western landscape, it looks like someone who has never been on a horse before. Muttering his lines as he stops by a church for a confession in an early scene, he seems to be trying on a character that is beneath his range as an actor.

Donning a huge brimmed sombrero and serape to recover an Appaloosa stolen from him by John Saxon in the first reel, he begins to bristle with menace. It’s almost like watching the Hulk pop out of Bruce Banner’s shirt. His steely determination is pitted against the grinning arrogance of Saxon and his pistoleros. While Saxon’s grin is malicious, Brando’s is blood curdling. For all that, he’s still not a character this side of villainy we expect to find in a western.

Marlon Brando

Plot. The plot of the film is simple, almost like a fable or folk tale. Diffident and soft-spoken, Brando returns from “the war” where he killed men and “sinned” with women. Saxon wants to buy his horse for a girlfriend (Annjanette Comer). When Brando refuses to sell, Saxon steals it and heads into Mexico. Brando follows and is taken prisoner by Saxon. In a suspenseful scene the two arm wrestle for the horse, the loser to be stung by a deadly scorpion.

Comer helps Brando flee with his horse, eager herself to escape the clutches of Saxon, who follows them into the mountains and attempts an ambush. Brando, exhibiting his skill with a rifle, puts an end to Saxon on the snowy mountain slopes and returns to the U.S. side of the border. A friendly Mexican family waits there to welcome him back.

Three stars. The widescreen cinematography of the title sequence is almost breathtaking. We see the desert Southwest and a small lone figure riding horseback across the terrain. Camera work in the rest of the film, however, gets to be awkwardly self-conscious. Almost invariably there is someone or something between the camera and the action, sometimes nearly filling the screen. At times the film seems more style than content.