Zany Grey

These days, when I'm not trying to move and get the cabin ready for summer visitors, refinishing furniture or blogging, I'm reading.  Usually the couple of books I check out each time I go to the Nederland library tide me over for two or three days until I can make another trip, return the completed books and replenish my supply.  One of the latest books I read was...

This author, Robert Harris, according to the book jacket, also wrote the Ghost Writer on which the Roman Polanski movie was based.  I highly recommend this book.  Some great dialogue between the American protagonist and his English business partner, provides insight into many of today's current financial topics, including hedge funds and what influences the stock markets, and is just a good all-around thriller but based on artificial intelligence.


However, sometimes I finish my up-to-date reading supply on a Saturday night with the horrific knowledge that the library isn't open on Sunday and I won't be able to re-supply until Monday.  Lately, I've been falling back on a set of Zane Grey books I bought last month at a small independent thrift store in Longmont for $1.50 each...

 
Colliers published these books, which were first copyrighted in 1931, so I'm assuming they might have been a book-club-type offering.  

My maternal grandmother had a glass-fronted bookcase filled with Zane Grey books and when I was eleven, twelve, thirteen, I devoured them and remember thinking they were "hot stuff."  

As an adult I still think Mr. Grey was a little kinky.  That Victorian (Edwardian?) thing, you know.  I wonder if the books' owner, Mr. Rousseau, found them so?...

I've read two of these and am about finished with a third...

With the arrival of summer, I find my morning routine going back to my pre-computer days here and take my coffee and a book out to the picnic table and read for a bit each morning.
 
In two of these Zane Grey books, young women, for one reason or another, are masquerading as young boys, but eventually they are "unmasked" by having their upper clothing torn off.  Focus is above the waist.  The difficulties of menstruation and urination for the heroine, surrounded by cowboys and living under rough conditions in the wilds of unsettled western United States while pretending to be male, are never addressed.  Bathing doesn't present a challenge because no one does it much.


Despite this disclaimer...

...which says, in part, "All rights in this book are reserved.  It may not be used for dramatic, motion- or talking-picture purposes....," I think early western movies and even early western T.V. shows, may have been, in fact, largely based on these books.  It's very easy to envision many of the scenes from the books.  Perhaps, to give Mr. Grey his due, that's because he was a good descriptive writer.  His accounts of cattle drives are truly evocative.  But I think it may also be because I saw a lot of westerns at the local movie house in the small Missouri town where I grew up before it burned when I was in fourth grade and probably never missed an episode of Gunsmoke or Rawhide after we finally got a television set when I was in seventh grade.


I have found the language usage and the changes that have occurred in it since these were written interesting.  The characters "ejaculate" a lot instead of simply "saying" something.  What appears to be innocent kissing is described as "making love."  I read a word this morning I have never seen in print..."anathematizing."  Obviously from the root "anathema"...but I had to look it up.  "Anathematize" means to curse or condemn.  It was used in a sentence to indicate the heroine was making a "silly falsehood" worse.  I have also found in this most recent book, West of the Pecos, a greater understanding of the accepted moral difference between outright cattle rustling and what was called "brand burning" or burning another design on top of an existing brand, both considered criminal, and branding unbranded cattle even though some might have been a new crop of calves that belonged with branded cattle.  The latter was done with a whoever-gets-there-first attitude and not considered criminal.


Grey's attempts to capture the sound of western dialogue failed miserably in my opinion.  Everyone sounds as if they were from Canada, saying "aboot" instead of "about."  Not sure what that was all aboot.  Men also frequently says "Ump-um" in response to someone else's comment.  I can't tell if that's an affirmative or a negative even in context.


The unabashed racism and use of today's politically incorrect terms in these books are very discomfiting, but do provide historic insight into what society accepted when they were written and perhaps the progress that has been made in the interim.

Anyway, even with the mouse damage...

...to Thunder Mountain (I wonder if that sizzling prose kept that mouse nest especially warm?), these have provided a measure of entertainment and I think I'll house them in the secretary when I get it painted.  Always good for a rainy or snow day here in the cabin.  Teddee