The Wild West

[rich]

Hi Paul--

MCMurtry has another review in the latest issue of the NYRB on the Texas
Rangers myth

'

Gary Clayton Anderson, author of this thunderclap of a book, lives in
Norman, Oklahoma, which is just a hop, a skip, and a jump from Texas, far
too close, I would think, for a scholar who has now suggested that the Texas
Rangers—our heroes, our protectors —are pretty much the moral equivalents of
certain paramilitary units from the former Yugoslavia—Balkan death squads,
in effect. If I had made that comparison I would immediately check out the
housing situation in Spitzbergen, where there's lots of dark to hide in.
Certainly I would settle as far as I could get from the Texas Ranger Hall of
Fame and Museum, which is in Waco, Texas, a very short distance itself from
the famous ranch house where it was once suggested that Laura Bush sweep the
porch.

Already Byron A. Johnson, director of the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and
Museum, has come out fuming, in a review that accuses Professor Anderson of
being ignorant of a host of disciplines and study areas that he ought not to
be ignorant of.[*] <http://www.nybooks.com/articles/19297#fn*> Why is Byron
A. Johnson fuming? Probably it's because *The Conquest of Texas: Ethnic
Cleansing in the Promised Land, 1820– 1875* is the most intense and
persistent attack on the character of nineteenth-century Texans, including
the Texas Rangers, that I have ever read'

Later in the review he mentions this:

'A few tough-minded studies, nearly as critical of the Rangers as Gary
Anderson's, have appeared: Charles H. Harris and Louis R. Sadler's *The
Texas Rangers and the Mexican Revolution: The Bloodiest Decade, 1910– 1920*is
unsparing in its treatment of the Rangers; *Gunpowder Justice: A
Reassessment of the Texas Rangers* by Julian Samora, Joe Bernal, and Albert
Pena is also important, since it gives the Chicano point of view.'
Interesting to see if AtD connects Revolutionary Mexico with the Texas
Rangers in any way

Rich


On 9/6/06, Paul Mackin <paul.mackin at verizon.net> wrote:
>
>  *
> *
>
> Mindful of the strong hint that Against the Day will contain significant
> elements of Wild West "tradition," and also of Paul N's earlier posts   I
> thought this list of books would be of interest. They were the basis for an
> August 10, 2000, New York Review of Book's essay by Larry McMurtry bearing
> the title "Inventing the West."
>
>
> *A Newer World: Kit Carson, John C. Frémont, and the Claiming of the
> American West*<http://service.bfast.com/bfast/click?bfmid=2181&sourceid=41397204&bfpid=0684834820>
> by David Roberts
>
> Simon and Schuster, 320 pp., $25.00
> *The Lives and Legends of Buffalo Bill*
> by Don Russell
>
> University of Oklahoma Press, 514 pp., $22.95 (paper)
> *Buffalo Bill's Wild West: Celebrity, Memory, and Popular History*<http://service.bfast.com/bfast/click?bfmid=2181&sourceid=41397204&bfpid=0809032430>
> by Joy S. Kasson
>
> Hill and Wang, 320 pp., $26.00
> *The Business of Being Buffalo Bill: Selected Letters of William F. Cody,
> 1879-1917*
> by Sarah J. Blackstone
>
> Praeger, 320 pp., $26.00
> *The Real Wild West: The 101 Ranch and the Creation of the American West*
> by Michael Wallis
>
> St. Martin's, 672 pp., $21.95 (paper)
> *The Life and Legacy of Annie Oakley*<http://service.bfast.com/bfast/click?bfmid=2181&sourceid=41397204&bfpid=0806126566>
> by Glenda Riley
>
> University of Oklahoma Press, 252 pp., $24.95
> *Annie Oakley and Buffalo Bill's Wild West*
> by Isabelle S. Sayers
>
> Dover, 89 pp., $8,95 (paper)
> *Will Rogers*
> by Ben Yagoda
>
> University of Oklahoma Press, 409 pp., $18,95 (paper)
>
> (Interestingly, before getting down to the American stuff, the essay
> quotes Eric Hobsbawm on the basic nature of this type of "tradition," which
> was not confined to the American Wild West." (The Invention of Tradition).
> "The object and characteristic of "traditions," including invented ones,
> is invariance. The past, real or invented, to which they refer imposes
> fixed, (normally formalized) practices, such as repetition."
>
>
> McMurtry goes on to say, "It's a sad, but, to my mind, inescapable fact
> that most of the traditions which we associate with the American West were
> invented by pulp writers, poster artists, impresarios, and advertising men;
> excepting, mainly, those that were imported from Mexico, whose *vaqueros*had about a three-century jump on our cowboys when it came to handling
> cattle. I don't know at exactly what point a skill becomes a "tradition," or
> equipment and apparel (ropes, wide-brimmed hats) become "apparatus," but
> many of the skills associated with American cowboys were Mexican skills
> moved north and adapted to Anglo-Saxon capabilities and needs. Now, pulp
> fiction lacks much, but it doesn't lack what Professor Hobsbawm calls
> invariance. (The editors of *Ranch Romances* would just call it the
> formula.)")
>
> Made me think of that GR passage about their being only one of
> everything.
>
> One Westerman, one pard, etc etc.\
>
>
>
>
>
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