Anyway, I think I am a bit out of that funk, as this blog would attest to. I am back on a computer, back to talking to people, back to the human race. Hell, I am sitting in a Starbucks in Santa Rosa, CA, inside a Barnes and Noble bookstore writing this. Surrounded by people. It's a bit refreshing.
What have I been up to the past two months of solitude? I haven't really been antisocial -- that was my attempt at sounding cool, like some introverted, J.D. Salinger-type author who can only take a moment or two to acknowledge people before burying my head back in the sand and hoping people forget me while I work on the next great American novel.
I spent a week in New York City at the end of March. It had been well over a year since I visited the Big City. It welcomed me a last gasp bitter chill of winter. I was caught walking between Ninth Ave and Seventh Ave in a rainstorm of epic proportions at 1am and spent the remaining days fighting the onset of a savage cold. I was in town for a dear friend's nuptials. It was a beautiful, 1920's themed wedding and offered me an opportunity to dress like a snappy gentleman. One of the guest told me I looked like a gangster on Boardwalk Empire, which I gladly accepted as the highest of compliments.
I'd be lying if I said that I did not miss New York City, even just a little. There was a sort of ease at being able to hop on a train and go where you needed to go. There was a comfort at knowing that no matter what you needed, you could find in the City if you just took a few moments to look. I needed a nice fedora for the wedding. I had something specific in mind. I had hunted around the Bay Area in a fruitless search. When I arrived in New York, I got my handy dandy smartphone out, went on Yelp, typed in Fedora, and twenty places popped up, from second hand thrift stores to vintage clothing. One, near the bottom of the list, was a shop on Fifth Ave near the Empire State Building that specialized in hats. I found the perfect hat, at an incredibly perfect price. As I walked out of the store with my giant hat box in hand, I thought to myself, "Only in New York City."
Because I went mid-week, many of my friends and former colleagues were toiling away in their offices, so I had quite a bit of spare time on my hands. In all that time, I whittled away the hours by doing what I like to do best. I read.
Thinking back my previous blog, where I talked about my relationship with Stephen King and how it was born in my wee youth, it got my mind on a nostalgic road, reminiscing on what I used to read as a child and a teen. I grew up in a household that owned every John Wayne movie available on VHS. My grandmother had shelves full of VHS tapes that she had recorded John Wayne movies on. When one would come on AMC, she would pop a tape in and press record and meticulously pause the recording when a commercial would interrupt the movie. Then, whenever she felt like watching Hatari, Hondo, or True Grit, she could just find the VHS, pop it in and press play.
Occasionally, she would record a non-John Wayne movie. I remember one evening I was watching a movie called The Ox-Bow Incident and about half way through the movie, I asked her, "Where's John Wayne?"
She looked at me a bit confused, and said, "John Wayne isn't in this movie. His name is Henry Fonda."
I thought she was joking. "John Wayne is in every western." I told her confidentially.
She laughed. I sat and watched that movie all the way through, wondering when John Wayne was going to make an appearance. If you know the story of The Ox-Bow Incident, you know its about a mass mob trying to lynch a man. As the string him up and he hands a letter to Henry Fonda to deliver to his wife, I knew that this was the moment John Wayne would come riding in and save the man and shame the mob. But he did not. In my young mind, I found that the fact that John Wayne had not come in and saved the day more devastating than the fact that an innocent man had been lynched.
After reading a couple of Stephen King novels, Cujo was the first, followed by Cycle of the Werewolf (which I picked up because it had pictures in it!) I decided that I was in a bit over my head with these types of books. The Lonesome Dove miniseries was a huge hit around this time, and surrounded by a family obsessed with westerns, I picked up my first Louis L'Amour novel. I can't remember which one to save my life, but I know in the following years, I probably read nearly all of his novels, as well as Lonesome Dove books, Max Brand, and Zane Grey. After I read my father's stash of westerns, I borrowed books from my uncle. Once I had gone through what he had, I borrowed from my grandmother. Although many of the books were formulaic, I loved them. I guess I felt about westerns as a spinster feels about Harlequin romances. There was a world beyond my reach, a world I wanted to live in and could not, so I escaped into the books and movies.
I recently picked up Westword the Tide by Louis L'Amour. I do not remember ever reading it as a kid. But I realized that as I picked up other books that I know I read, I don't remember them. I think as a 10 year old kid, or an 11 year old or even older, I may have been reading all these books, but not actually absorbing what I was reading. I wanted to read everything as quick as possible and move on to the next one. So, although I may or may not have read many of these books as a kid, it's like reading something new all over again.
Specifically talking about Westword the Tide, I have to admit it was quite a struggle to read. It was Louis L'Amour's first published novel (1950), and the story focuses on a wagon train heading west from Deadwood, South Dakota, into Montana. One of the organizers may or may not have nefarious plans of killing and robbing all the members of the wagon train and only the main character seems to see the bad guy for who he truly is. And all the while, the good guy and the bad guy are nearly coming to blows over a woman they both have fallen in love with.
It's a typical western, formulaic and to the point. Yet I found the book difficult to read. I usually will power through a book, despite how bad I feel it is. But this one was difficult. I put it down numerous times, not wanting to finish it, only to have it look back at me from its perch on the bookshelf, mocking me in a way for giving up on it. I finished it . . . and was not surprised by how it ended.
I found the second book Louis L'Amour published, The Riders of High Rock, but could not convince myself to attempt to read it. Instead, I picked up Larry McMurtry's Dead Man's Walk, his "first"novel of his Lonesome Dove Series, though it was the third novel he wrote in the series. It was a thousand times better than Westword the Tide, not formulaic in any way other than its about Texas Rangers and they are dealing with Indians. But making an appearance is the daughter of a Scottish noble, stranded at a leper colony in New Mexico. I don't remember a Louis L'Amour character at a leper colony, or John Wayne playing a Scottish Noble (though he did have an unfortunate turn playing Genghis Khan in a horrible movie called The Conquerer).
Has my love affair with the western, a genre I lovingly recall from youth, became jaded with age? I still enjoy a good John Wayne western, but even that was shaken recently by the Coen Brother's re-imagining of True Grit. It's so much better on nearly every level than the John Wayne version (which John Wayne won his only Oscar for Best Actor) that watching his performance in that film is almost laughable. He was playing his old stand by, drunken ornery cowboy with a heart of gold routine. I had a conversation with someone recently about why I thought the Coen Brother's version was better, and when I commented on John Wayne being a comedic character compared to Jeff Bridges' incredible portrayal, the man I was speaking with looked ready to strike me. I had blasphemed against John Wayne . . . how dare I! I backtracked a bit on my comment, and said what I meant was I disliked Kim Darby and Glen Campbell in the movie, but John Wayne was able to carry the film despite them. This seemed to appease him and saved me the trouble of trying to see through a blackened and swollen eye.
Nevertheless, what I found exciting as a child and teenager, I now find boring and (dare I say) trite. I moved on from Westerns for now, but plan on revisiting them in the near future. For now I will say ado, and hope to see you soon.
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