Book vs. TV: Craig Johnson's Longmire

TV tie-in

Maybe it's my meds making me grumpy, but I’m not a great fan of the TV series Longmire. Whatever TV touches usually makes a mess of it, and its manhandling of Craig Johnson’s original Longmire novels illustrates precisely why. 

First off, the ebb and flow of a neatly constructed plot from Johnson’s pen is chopped into fragments to fit into a TV hour and then once again squeezed between commercial breaks. Then the generous complexity of his situations and characters (as in this one, Death Without Company) is dumbed down with sex, violence, and visual stunts. 

Lost are (a) the novel’s pacing that gradually builds the elements of a puzzling mystery (the death by poisoning of an elderly Basque woman), (b) the page-turning suspense that rivets a reader in the final chapters as all the chips finally fall and action turns life-threatening (a manhunt in a blizzard), and (c) the wry, smart humor and understatement that come with Longmire’s amused first-person narration, which to me is the greatest loss of all:

Victoria Moretti didn't like being called handsome, but that's how I thought of her. Her features were a little too pronounced to be dismissed as pretty. The jaw was just a little too strong, the tarnished gold eyes just a little too sharp. She was like one of those beautiful saltwater fish in one of those tanks you knew better than to stick your hand into; you didn't even tap on the glass. 

By comparison, the TV series makes Longmire seem darkly angry, weakened and unfocused in part by grief at the death of his wife and in part by what seems like dread and self-doubt. He is a wounded warrior in the fight against crime.

Johnson’s Absaroka County and Durant, its county seat (claimed by the town of Buffalo, Wyoming, as its fictional double), are faithlessly portrayed in the A&E series with all its location footage shot in New Mexico, which with the multi-season run of Breaking Bad seems to be aggressively gunning for TV production projects these days.

The irony at the center of a Walt Longmire novel is his being an aging white male surrounded by women with more than a feminist bias or two, and an Indian friend more than a little proud of his heritage and impatient with Longmire’s relative ignorance of it. Yes, Longmire has the authority and the responsibility that go with the badge he wears, and he wears it as gracefully as he can. But the series writers would have us see him instead as an old-time Western lawman, like Gary Cooper in High Noon, tough and stoic.

Craig Johnson

Johnson makes of him an enjoyable, affable character, who makes you smile and can get you laughing. He’s intelligent and capable of wisecracks, as when he utters a Nebraska Cornhusker cheer: “Go Big Red, and a Big N for Knowledge.” Beleaguered, yes he is, but not seriously so. 

His wry observations of human foibles are sprinkled with quotes from Shakespeare, which go over the heads of his bewildered associates. And you appreciate his ability to get things done, even if it means slipping around the rules and drawing on a lifetime of learning how to second-guess and outsmart people likely to run afoul of the law.

My advice if you like the A&E series is not to pick up a Longmire novel. You will see how poorly Craig Johnson’s skill at storytelling is served by the hash TV makes of it. I probably should say “slick” hash, because it’s all done so smoothly you don’t suspect how cunningly unfaithful it is to the original. Or, sample a novel and see what you’re missing. What’s the worst that can happen? You may meet a Sheriff Longmire you like better and forget to put the book down again.

Death Without Company is currently available in print and ebook formats at amazon, Barnes&Noble, and AbeBooks.

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Image credit:

Author's photo, readwestfoundation.org

Coming up: TBD

Model behavior

Morning clouds

To be honest, there are days when I don’t feel like being a model cancer patient. This is one of them. The cause may be the meds I take or have taken. It may be lack of exercise or lack of sleep. Lately, evening movies from Netflix seem to have had a disturbing effect on sleep and dreams. Two, about people serving prison terms for crimes they did not commit, had me waking the next morning in a dark and troubled mood—one time with the weight of a heavy sadness in my chest. No arguing with that. Something was up.

Meanwhile, our doctors encourage both of us in the practice of mindfulness meditation. Sitting in the patio of a morning, I’m surprised how 30 minutes of it pass so quickly, when there was a time that a half hour of just paying attention to my breathing would have seemed interminable.

Glossary of frontier fiction: S(straddlebug – syringa)

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.”

straddlebug = tripod commonly constructed of three planks of wood with a settler’s name attached to notify others that a plot of land was being claimed by a homesteader. “And so at last they came to the land of ‘the straddle-bug’—the squatters’ watch dog—three boards nailed together (like a stack of army muskets) to make a claim.” Hamlin Garland, The Moccasin Ranch.

straddling = in poker, a bet made before cards are dealt. “Let us have a regulation ‘ante.’ No ‘straddling.”’ Ridgwell Cullum, The Story of the Foss River Ranch.

straggle = to wander off, stray. “It’s a day straggled from heaven, ain’t it?” Frederick Thickstun Clark, In the Valley of Havilah.

strangler = killer. “I don’t want no strangler work on this range, nor shootin’—unless deputy sheriffs do the shootin’.” Bertrand Sinclair, Wild West.

strapper = a big, strong person; a notably hard worker. “Man alive, jes’ look at that air gal’s shape! Ain’t she a strapper?” Frederick Thickstun Clark, In the Valley of Havilah.

Kate and Virgil Boyles,The Homesteaders (1909)

Brother and sister writing team, Kate and Virgil Boyles, followed their first novel Langford of the Three Bars (1907) with this one, both set on the South Dakota prairie near the Missouri River. The homesteaders of the title are also a brother and sister, Josephine and Jack Carroll. 

It’s the early 1890s, and their story concerns their difficulties as newcomers from the South, invading the open grazing lands of a nearby ranch, the 7-Up, whose foreman, Tom Burrington, takes an interest in them and falls in love with Josephine.

Plot. The central conflict in the novel involves a villainous troublemaker, LaDue, who lives on a wooded island in the river and cuts timber, as well as operating a ferry crossing. He takes a dislike to the Carrolls and tries to drive them away, stealing a cow and a calf and then hiring a Texas cowboy, Henry Hoffman, to shoot Josephine as she brings her brother’s small herd of cows in from pasture for the night.

Convergences

Morning coffee in my cowboy cup

This week saw a five-day course of chemo again which passed with no particular ill effects, and an increased dosage of anti-seizure meds. I’ve continued to get something called focal seizures—an ants-under-the-skin sensation in the left side of my face, which can develop into a throbbing in my neck and arm. 

One evening on another drug, to be taken in the event of a stronger seizure, I was knocked out so totally that I woke from the effects hours later with no memory of how I happened to be in bed, where my wife found me to remind me to take my chemo meds. I still have no memory. It was not a faint, but a complete blackout. Yikes.

Otherwise, the week saw me out walking in the mornings for 30 to 40 minutes, once with just the dog for company, and I stopped using the walker, relying on a walking stick for support. While my wife also reminds me that it is rattlesnake season, I ventured a ways into the desert, where I found another dog-walking friend from the neighborhood, and we were able to catch up on a lot of news.

Morning moon

My weight continues to jump under the effects of the steroids I’m taking to counter the swelling in my brain from radiation. At under 160 pounds when I left the hospital four months ago, I tipped the scales this week at 181.6, an increase of well over 20 pounds, and this despite the fact that food for me has basically no taste.

I saw the Cancer Center psychologist again this week, for an hour. She put me onto Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn, who is an articulate advocate of mindfulness meditation, with numerous videos at YouTube. Yesterday I spent an hour with his talk to a room full of Google employees, taking them through a guided meditation that made the practice more accessible and less confusing for me.

Glossary of frontier fiction: S(sponge gold – strabismus)

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.”

sponge gold = a noncohesive form of pure gold, used for dental restoration. “McTeague turned to her suddenly, his mallet in one hand, his pliers holding a pellet of sponge-gold in the other.” Frank Norris, McTeague.

spoon = a fishing lure. “Whether it’s with flies, spoons or minnows, castin’ or trollin’, or spearin’ or nettin’, Warry’s the expertest fish-catcher that ever waded the rapids.” Edgar Beecher Bronson, The Red-Blooded.

spoon = foolish, sentimental affection. “Stuart had a bad case of spoons.” Marah Ellis Ryan, Told in the Hills.

spoony = a fool or silly person. “Mr. Bruin fell dead; and the spoonies are handing down his hide to a numerous posterity.” Hattie Horner Louthan, This Was a Man!

sporting gentleman = a gambler. “Our sporting gentlemen are also men of education; you may find gentlemen of such education on every one of our steam-packets.” Charles Sealsfield, The Cabin Book.

spotted fever = typhus or meningitis; any of several diseases characterized by fever and skin spots. “The cook contracted spotted fever and died.” James Hendryx, The Promise.

spotted pup = rice pudding. “‘Close shave that,’ panted Glenister, feeling his throat gingerly, ‘but I wouldn’t have missed it for spotted pup.’” Rex Beach, The Spoilers.

spotter = a detective, an informer. “Know an engineering chap tramped the Sierras for a hundred miles dogged by a spotter from one of the railroads.” Agnes C. Laut, The Freebooters of the Wilderness.

Hamlin Garland, A Son of the Middle Border (1917)

First edition

Being a Nebraska farm boy, I grew up on a middle border between Midwest and West many decades after Garland. Yet I found much that was familiar in his memoir of rural life during the period of Western expansion, 1865 – 1900. By the 1940s, not that much had changed. 

Farm work was more mechanized, and gas-powered tractors had taken the place of horses. Improved roads and automobiles had shortened distances. But farm work was still hard, often grueling labor at the mercy of the elements. There was dust, manure, and mud, and whether bumper years or drought and crop failures, farm life was isolated and lonely.

Realism. Garland’s realistic portrayal of it—the beauty as well as the ugliness—collided with two different streams of thought about rural America in the early 20th century. One was a pastoral, bucolic, and picturesque vision of simple, wholesome living far from the corruptive influence of the city. Another was the go-west boosterism that coaxed settlers from the East and abroad to snap up free land and get rich as agricultural producers. Garland saw in his own family’s example the empty promise at the heart of both visions.

The Garland family

He came to understand that a nation’s culture thrived in its major cities, where books were published, talented artists gathered, and there was intellectual stimulation for freedom of thought. Those with heart and mind for such pursuits were deprived of them in rural backwaters. For Garland, there was only one such city, Boston, while Chicago was no more than a huge commercial center, and New York had yet to emerge as more than a crowded port of entry.

The lure of the West, as Garland came to see it, was even more devastating in its effect. His pioneering father moved west a total of five times, with time off to serve as a Union soldier during the Civil War. As a boy, Garland went with his family from their farm near La Crosse, Wisconsin, to a homestead community near Osage, in northeast Iowa. At the age of 10 he was plowing virgin sod there with horses.