ATDTDA (12) - Cowboy/Wild West Poets & R-girls?

[bekah]

Pynchon doesn't really tell us much in this paragraph of seeming 
animosity toward the cowboy/poets.  Why?    Are these guys on the 
train really  "cowboy poets?"   I'd like to suggest that Pynchon is 
obliquely alluding to Charlie Siringo and his side kick Tom Horn.

Trying to keep this in relation to AtD:  (I shall assume you know the 
history of the Western cowboy and the railroad's  restructuring of 
the US map which was mentioned earlier in AtD).   Yes,  cowboys did 
sing and write songs and poetry which was very romantic, metered and 
rhymed.  Some of the old stuff is still around.

But the days of the cattle drives were short-lived.   By the late 
1880s they were essentially finished because the railroad stretched 
and branched to locations closer to the cattle lands (except in 
remote areas).   The cowboys either moved to town,  became miners or 
joined the Pinkertons (see below).     Only the miners remained to be 
industrialized and Pinkerton'ed out of existence.

Just about the time Dally is riding east to meet her mother,  Charlie 
Siringo,  an old working cowboy who joined the Pinkerton Agency was 
also riding the railroads in the area.   Siringo had been an 
authentic cattle driving  cowboy from 1870 - 1885.  When he retired 
from cowboy life he  wrote his autobiography, "A Texas Cowboy, "  the 
first autobiography of a working cowboy,  a classic,  and still 
available.  

Then Siringo  joined the Pinkerton's in Chicago and got transferred 
to mining country where he  was involved in the  miners' strikes and 
the difficulties of  "Big Bill" Haywood,  an IWW leader. 

**  Siringo  sometimes disguised himself as a railroad hobo but he 
was actually  seeking  information. 

He was accompanied from time to time by Tom Horn a Pinkerton 
assassin,  ex-gunman and bounty hunter who needed no disguise to look 
pretty bad.   Both of these guys had been involved in the 
apprehension of Kid Curry and Siringo helped chase Curry's buddy 
Butch Cassidy out of the country.

After retiring from the Pinkertons Siringo wrote other books 
including  "Two Evil Isms: Pinkertonism and Anarchism"  (1915 )   The 
Pinkertons harassed him for years over the title and they had Horn 
executed for participating in a robbery while employed with them 
(can't let a Pinkerton go to jail and blab).   Charlie Siringo and 
Tom Horn are whole stories unto their own:
  <http://www.thrillingdetective.com/eyes/siringo.html>.
<http://www.thrillingdetective.com/eyes/horn.html>
(also in Wiki)


Bekah
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