I am fortunate enough to offer this
thoughtful interview from a giant in the field, Richard Etulain. If you’re new
to his name, check out this of just some of his accomplishments.
Richard W.
Etulain, Professor Emeritus of History at the University of New Mexico, is the
author or editor of more than 50 books. Best known among his books about the
history and cultures of the American West are Conversations with Wallace
Stegner (1983), Writing Western History (editor, 1991), Re-imagining the Modern
American West: A Century of Fiction, History, and Art (1996), Telling Western
Stories: From Buffalo Bill to Larry McMurtry (1999), Beyond the Missouri: The
Story of the American West (2006), The American West: A Modern History, 1900 to
the Present (with Michael P. Malone, 2d ed., 2007), and Lincoln Looks West:
From the Mississippi to the Pacific (2010). He has been president of both the
Western Literature and Western History associations. He has lectured abroad in
several countries, most recently as a Fulbright Lecturer in Ukraine and at the
Basque University in northern Spain. He serves as editor of the Oklahoma
Western Biographies series for the University of Oklahoma Press and coeditor of
the Concise Lincoln Library for the Southern Illinois University Press. His
biography of Calamity Jane, The Life and Legends of Calamity Jane, appeared in
September 2014 and became a History Book Club Selection in 2015. It was also
named a Finalist for the Spur Award from the Western Writers of America. He is
currently working on a two-volume study of Billy the Kid, the life and legends.
In the discussion below, we corralled
the topic primarily to his newest book Ernest Haycox and the Western.
You are a noted historian of the
West, a prolific author, and from your writing one can feel a true love for the
source material and not rote academic dryness that one sometimes encounters in examining
this exciting and interesting period of American history. May I ask was there a
defining moment that drew your attention to the area?
My earliest years on a remote
sheep ranch in eastern Washington were hardly an intellectual feast. But
I did fall in love with books: the Hardy Boys, sports stories, and children's religious books.
Later, at Northwest Nazarene College (now University) in Nampa, Idaho, I
majored in English and history, double majors. I continued work in those
two fields in graduate school at the University
of Oregon, a PhD in American history with a minor field in American literature.
My doctoral dissertation on Ernest Haycox (the source of the new book ERNEST
HAYCOX AND THE WESTERN), which was completed in 1966, was an interdisciplinary
work in literary history on the career of a historical novelist who focused on
the Western. As I began my research and writing career in the late 1960s, I
built on my dual interests in history and literature. Most of my 54 books
deal with the American West, although I've done a bit of other work on
Abraham Lincoln and my ethnic group, the Basques. I've kept my feet
in both fields, having served as presidents of both the Western Literature and
Western History associations.
Your newest book Ernest Haycox and
the Western delves deeply into one of the best of Western fiction authors. Haycox
was once called the Dean of Western Writers, he was published in the best periodicals
and yet today, I am hard-pressed to find anyone who knows his work, let alone
his name. Why do you think this lapse in memory has occurred?
The highest points of interest in
the American West, in fiction and films about the region, were the 1920s and
1950s. Haycox launched his career in pulp magazines publishing on the American
West. His reputation rose rapidly in the 1930s and 1940s and apexed
in the 1950s and early 1960s. When traditional Westerns changed dramatically in
the 1960s and beyond--save for the spectacular popularity of Louis
L'Amour--Haycox's notoriety plummeted. He remained well known to writers of
Westerns, but that genre, generally, was pushed off the scene by other other
popular literary types.
Haycox’s work has depth and insight
that transcends what can often be formula in a formula ridden genre [as all genres
can be.] What do you think contributed to this depth and breadth of perception?
Ernest Haycox was not a brilliant
intellectual. Rather, he was a disciplined, energetic, and ambitious person—in everything
he did. He began writing short story Westerns in the early 1920s
because he saw that field as very open to his efforts. By the end of the
1920s and into the 1930s, Haycox's drive and pragmatic approach came clearly
into focus. To improve, to sell better, Haycox experimented with his
heroes, heroines, and historical content. A
never-stop-experimenting author, that was Haycox.
John Ford translated Haycox’s 1937
short story “The Stage to Lordsburg” into the classic film Stagecoach.
Having read much of Haycox’s work I am struck that Haycox and Ford both do the
small human moments well. The formal dance at a remote cavalry outpost, the
meeting of community for barn raisings, in short, the small moments of humanity
in these far-flung places. Do you think Ford was influenced by Haycox in more
than that single film, or was Haycox influenced by Ford’s handling of Western
material? Or, perhaps were two skilled craftsmen influencing one another?
John Ford's purchase of
Haycox's short story "Stage to Lordsburg" and its subsequent
use in the Ford-John Wayne blockbuster movie Stagecoach (1939)
was an amazing breakthrough for Haycox's career. I do not know of any other
Ford-Haycox connections. Haycox was not an inveterate reader of western
fiction, thinking he wanted to avoid the influences of other authors writing
about the West, and he was not much of a movie-attender, despite spending short times in Hollywood
working on film scripts.
Haycox often pits East versus West,
with the West a clear preference. Was this mere literary device or are we
seeing a true point of view that existed off the page?
Ernest Haycox was a clear-cut
chauvinistic westerner. Born in Oregon, gone for a short military stint
during World War I and in New York for publishing connections, Haycox married
an Oregonian, and together with their two children, they lived in the Portland,
Oregon, area until his death in 1950. The Western generally depicted the
western region as free and masculine, as much superior to an effete,
over-civilized East. Without saying so explicitly, Haycox personally identified with these popular
ideas. For example, in Haycox's first novel, Free Grass (1929), leading
male characters must return to or move west to find their positive,
refreshed identities.
He wrote weather very well. By that I
mean, man versus the elements. I call to mind the blizzard scene in his classic
Custer novel Bugles in the Afternoon or even the short-story “Deep
Winter.” I could also point to the story “Grasshopper Dance,” one can practically
feel the heat baking the flesh and parching the skin. Do you have insight on
personal experiences he may have drawn upon for this accuracy?
Haycox traveled widely in
Oregon, studying the climates, terrains, and families of the Oregon
subregions. Later, he also visited the Southwest and other places to see first
hand those sites he would describe. Anyone raised in the state of Oregon, with
its mild, very rainy climate, would be clearly aware of the shaping impact of
climate.
Haycox was able to pull off a rarity,
to my mind, in that he does the interiors of men and women rather well. His women
don’t feel like mere pawns, they possess their own motivations and even when
they are flawed they are not stick-figure “bad women.” I call to mind the women
he draws in The Adventurers as being occupied by these full-bodied
female characters. Do you know if he took pride in this ability, or to what he attributed
this even-handed insight?
Haycox's career was a journey
toward improvement and achievement. Early on in his pulp stories and
serials, he had trouble showing the personalities of his
characters, too often telling readers what those figures believed
or were. At first, his men were stylized heroes of Westerns, patterned
after the types that Zane Grey depicted or John Wayne played. His first
women in pulp fiction were minor, wooden types. In the 1930s in his Collier's
short stories and later in his serials, he experimented with what was
termed his "Hamlet heroes," meaning more reflective rather than
entirely active men. Concurrently, Haycox began to employ two types of
heroines: dark, brunette, and alluring women and virginal, blonde women. In his
final historical novels, Haycox moved well beyond the earlier, more stereotyped
men and women, and peopled these fictional works with full-bodied and more
believable central characters. Especially was this the case in The
Earthbreakers (1952) and The Adventurers (1954).
The author also does horses well. Not
simply the namechecking of breeds, I refer to how it feels to ride, how it
feels to be jarred by a bucking, stiff-legged, arch-backed animal. Did the
author have a great deal of experience with animals or is this yet another
example of talent drawing well?
Haycox knew farms much better
than ranches. As a boy, he lived on farms, and in his teenage years
planned to be a farmer. Even after he built a huge 30-room mansion in
Portland's elite Council Crest area, he followed his farming interests with a large
garden, many trees, and other plants and bushes. So, Haycox had to learn about
horses through his research. True enough, he became a skilled delineator
of horses and riders, an achievement the came via his reading rather
than through his personal experiences.
You being the expert, do you have
personal favorites among Haycox’s work?
I have three different favorites
among Haycox's writings: (1) my favorite traditional historical Western: Bugles
in the Afternoon (1944); (2) my favorite historical novel, The
Earthbreakers (1952); and (3) among his short stories, the so-called Mercy
family stories that appeared in Collier's and the Saturday Evening
Post in the late 1940s.
You have also provided insightful
commentary on authors such H.L. Davis, Jack London, Wallace Stegner and others.
What other authors besides Haycox would you guide Western enthusiasts towards.
By all means, assume ignorance of the genre and be as obvious or as obscure as
you desire, just who moves you and repays re-reading?
You have mentioned important
western writers in H. L. Davis, Jack London, and Wallace Stegner. I have
a high regard for the writings of these authors. I would add to that list
the writings of Willa Cather, John Steinbeck, Ivan Doig, and Larry
McMurtry. All are superb novelists dealing with the
American West.
You have written a staggering amount
of Western history and other non-fiction on the subject. I know our focus here
is fiction, but if you had to provide a single title of your non-fiction to
introduce readers to this aspect of your work what would it be?
I suppose my most important
book--at least for general readers--is Beyond the Missouri: The Story of the
American West (2006). It is an overview of western history from earliest
human settlement up to the twenty-first century. My book that has
attracted the most attention among specialists in western literature and
history is Re-imagining the Modern American West: A Century of Fiction,
History, and Art (1996). It won the book-of-the-year award
from the Western History Association. Besides the Haycox book, which
appeared in September 2017, I have a coauthored another book, with leading
western historian Glenda Riley, Presidents Who Shaped the American
West, forthcoming in February 2018. I am currently at work
on a two-volume biography of and reader's guide to the famous western
outlaw Billy the Kid. I hope to complete that project in early
fall 2018.
Sincere thanks to Mr. Etulain for
taking the time to offer such considered answers. I heartily urge all interested
in Western fiction and/or Western history to plunge into his work, the time
spent is enjoyable and repays greatly.
And by all means, if you’re not already
an Ernest Haycox admirer, I envy you in reading him for the first time.