Reading Like I Was A Kid Again

“Tom!”

No answer.

“Tom!”

No answer.

“What’s gone with that boy, I wonder? You TOM!”

No answer

You guessed it; I am rereading Mark Twain’s, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Authors often get into deep discussions about book openings, this one is rather unique. It really doesn’t tell us anything other than either Tom is not there or he is not about to answer. Simple, but it made me keep reading when I was a kid and it kept me reading now.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is an 1876 story of a young boy growing up along the Mississippi. The story is set in the fictional St. Petersburg, inspired by Hannibal Missouri,  where Twain grew up.

Tom Sawyer lived with his Aunt Polly and his half-brother, Sid. Tom dirties his clothes in a fight and is made to whitewash the fence the next day, as a punishment. He cleverly persuades his friends to trade him small treasures for the privilege of doing his work. This is the most well know scene in the novel and often portrayed on the cover.

Tom also falls in love with Becky Thatcher, a new girl in town, and persuades her to get "engaged" by kissing him. But their romance falls apart when she learns Tom has been engaged before. Shortly after being shunned by Becky, Tom accompanies his good friend Huck Finn to the graveyard at night. There the two witness the murder of Dr. Robinson. And the adventures continue.

So how did Twain write this story? I think this quote tells us.

“I conceive that the right way to write a story for boys is to write so that it will not only interest boys but strongly interest any man who has ever been a boy. That immensely enlarges the audience.”
- Letter to Fred J. Hall, 10 Aug 1892

Twain also ended this work in a most unconventional way, with a post script he entitled, conclusion.  This conclusion started with the words, “SO ENDETH THIS CHRONICLE.”

It was an early work, maybe he wanted to add this final touch instead of, the end.

If you haven’t read Twain for a while, might be time.

“The difference between the right word and the nearly right word is the same as the difference between lightning and the lightning bug.”   Mark Twain

 

 

A Western For Everyone

Much like the murder mysteries I also love, you can be certain that one thing will happen in a traditional western novel, someone will wind up dead and someone is going to pay.

Many of today’s best sellers are based on social problems, relationships, sex, stress of work and daily lives. Readers like this type of material as best seller lists will prove. But traditional western readers, like me, probably would have a tough time reading a western based on working too hard and trying to buy better things than the neighbors.

But one of the things that make the genre so special is that there is room for almost anything in westerns. Romance, mystery, sci-fi, steampunk, fantasy, historical and shoot-em-ups all have a place on the western shelf. I have read some western-science fiction, many historical, one steampunk, a western fantasy or two and yes, a few that were classified as western romance, but I still like the shoot-em-ups best.

My personal choice in westerns – something with a good mystery element, set in mountain man or cattle drives, now that’s some fine reading.

-And On Another Note-

Just finished reading Lawrence Block’s, The Burglar Who Counted Spoons, I am a huge Block fan and this was another terrific book in the series. He is my favorite mystery writer, great stories, told with humor and remarkable writer imagination.

Just started Richard S. Wheeler’s, An Accidental Novelist - A Literary Memoir, this is a must read, can’t put it down.

Write it and Retire - Rich and Famous

In every walk of life there are people who flash brilliantly for a short while never to return. It’s interesting to look at people in the creative arts and how they sometime will back off after reaching early success. Although some of the following authors wrote a few short stories a novella or two, or as in Pasternak’s case, a lot of poetry, none wrote another novel. Why not? Some hated the limelight, others were afraid of criticism, others turned their talents elsewhere. Not sure anyone in today’s world would give up so quickly after writing a best seller.

How many of these famous, one novel and out people, have you read?

Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

Boris Pasternak, Dr. Zhivago

Margaret Mitchell, Gone With the Wind

Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

Anna Sewell, Black Beauty

Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

J. D. Salinger, The Catcher In The Rye

What do you think, if you wrote the big one would you just hang it up and live off the riches and glory of that novel?

Mountain Man James Clyman

To casual readers of the early American west the name James Clyman may not be known. But it is because of Clyman that we know as much as we do about the mountain man period. Clyman kept journals and many years later wrote the story of his time in the Rocky Mountain West. Clyman had what he called, “a smattering of education,” but from the mountains, at that time, he was well educated.

Clyman was born in Virginia in 1792, grew up to be a farmer, fought in the war of 1812, later worked as a store keeper and surveyor in Indiana and Illinois. In 1823, at the end of a surveying job, he found himself, at age 31, unemployed and unmarried in Saint Louis where he met William Ashley, a meeting that changed his life. 

Clyman joined the Ashley party, became a mountain man and stayed with Ashley until 1827. During this time he fought the Arikara, saved the life of two famous mountain men, Jed Smith and Sublette, and walked 600 miles across Wyoming and Nebraska, packing a rifle and only 11 bullets. The long walk must have been enough for Clyman. He moved back to Illinois and set up a store in late 1827 or early 1828. When the Blackhawk War broke out in 1832 he joined up.

The war may have whetted his appetite for adventure or danger and he soon went back west. This time he lasted three years before moving far west and settling permanently in the Napa Valley in 1845. Clyman lived another 36 years, passing away in 1881 at the age of 88.

James Clyman’s book, Journal Of A Mountain Man, edited by Linda Hasselstrom and reprinted in Win Blevins, Classics of the fur Trade Series, is an invaluable read for those looking for fur trade information. There are so many terrific stories of mountain man life in this book, I wish I could tell them all, and in this book the truth is stranger, and a great deal more exciting, than fiction.

Mountain Men and History Lessons

Watching a football game on television Saturday, Wyoming V. Utah State, as part of the promo they mentioned Jim Bridger and the fact that he was the first white man to visit the Great Salt Lake and the first into Yellowstone. Bridger may very well have been the first non-Indian into the Great Salt Lake Valley, at least I and many other western historians believe that. But the first into Yellowstone, I don’t think so.

John Colter, like Bridger, a Virginian was much more likely to have been the first into Yellowstone. It is most unlikely the two ever met and very possible that Colter was in Yellowstone while Bridger was but a toddler with a birth date in 1804.

Bridger became a legend in the west and Colter seems to have just slipped away into history. Colter left the west by 1810 and never returned, leaving a legend in the making, unmade.

Colter never lived long enough for people to believe any of his tales of Yellowstone. He died of Jaundice in 1813 leaving behind $124 and change. But then the story of the almost a legend in the west turns bizarre. He was buried on Tunnel Hill near present day Dundee Missouri. In 1926 his remains, along with the remains of five or six others, were dug up during a railroad excavation of the site. All were dumped somewhere nearby, buried in an unmarked embankment.

Not a very fitting finish to the first white man in to Yellowstone.

Reading a One Hundred Year Old Text

Sometimes history can be entertaining. I spent years trying to make history come alive and be relevant to today’s kids. Maybe I missed the point, I should have just made it up, or most of it anyway.

I am researching/reading a Wyoming History book published in 1918. Historians have widely panned the work, as too much fiction and not enough fact. I don’t find that true for much of the text, but some of it does read more like the society page of a hundred year old weekly than it does true history.

When the author described one member of the legislature, as one who didn’t like to speak in public, not sure we have any politicians like that anymore. It made me want to read on. Not many history books have punch lines, this one does. He goes on to say that this particular law maker was more concerned with the, after the secession was over day, than he was the law making process of the work day. The punch line – “the longest speech he ever made in his years in the state legislature, was, ‘I make a motion we adjourn.’ Now that is some pretty good history.

I.S. Bartlett    History of Wyoming, published 1918

https://openlibrary.org/books/OL13493080M/History_of_Wyoming.

Head Scratching Research

Have you ever started to research and got more, way more than you wanted? I taught Wyoming history for many years and always found the following to be head scratching, but fun.

Remember one of the first puzzles you put together as a kid, sure we all do? It was the wooden map of the United States. Just find the shape of the state and put it in the correct place, which was properly embossed into the cardboard or wood backing for young learners. Every state had a unique shape and this made learning where each state was located fast and easy. But wait a minute, hold on here, what about Colorado and Wyoming, they are square, or almost so, properly rectangles. How did they get their rather non-unique shape? Not sure about Colorado as I am a Wyoming guy, but as for Wyoming.

Wyoming is the only state whose territory was taken from all four of the major land accusations of the United States. Parts of Wyoming have been claimed by five different countries and parts of Wyoming came under the rule of a dozen Spanish kings between 1479 and 1821. Not that it’s important but there were four kings named, Charles, four Phillips and four named Ferdinand.  

France also ruled parts of Wyoming under kings, Francis One and two, three Henry’s, Charles IX and four guys named Louis. At long last the little Emperor himself, Napoleon, gave up the French claim to Wyoming when Jefferson made the greatest land purchase in history, the Louisiana Purchase, in 1803.

Wyoming was also part of:  Utah Territory, Washington Territory, Nebraska Territory, Colorado Territory, Dakota Territory, and Idaho Territory.

It took thirty boundary changes to come up with the present day shape of Wyoming, an almost square rectangle- ahh, the government at work.

Oh- then we named it after a valley in Delaware.

Wyoming where mule deer sleep in your front yard, bear’s wander through local parks, elk, moose and pronghorn outnumber the people, mountain views are everywhere and people ski in the morning and play golf in the afternoon. It really is like no other place on earth.

It’s good to be back.