Richard S. Wheeler's Blog, page 11

For Those of Literary Bent

My favorite blog is that of Ron Scheer, and it's called Buddies in the Saddle. He covers books and films about the American West, broadly considered, and does so with acute insight. I always end up feeling rewarded by his posts, especially those with an historical aspect. He takes the frontier novel back to its roots.

In recent months he has been suffering from brain cancer, the removal of a tumor, and radiation. He has been writing about these things weekly, carrying us with him as he deals with the debilitation of mind and body wrought by ill health. He recently celebrated his 73rd birthday and wrote a beautiful column about the limitations that illness imposes on him. And yet, he keeps on going, giving his readers some of the most perceptive insights available to people with an interest in literature.

I hope people who enjoy Goodreads will explore Ron Scheer's fine work. He is a national treasure, and fills me with admiration.

Songs That Tell Stories

In the fifties, when I was growing up, songs told stories far more than they do now, when rhythm has replaced storytelling. I believe the storytelling in songs of that period affected my writing career.

I remember in particular Patti Page's sad song, The Tennessee Waltz, and Vaughan Monroe's sad song, Dance Ballerina, Dance, and Harry Belafonte's sad song, Jamaica Farewell. All three are about loss, deep loss. You can play them on YouTube.

Modern songs don't seem to catch the heart as much, because they don't tell a story.

Blanket

As part of my research into the fur trade, background for several novels and my Skye's West series, I became interested in the great Hudson's Bay Company, and especially their point blankets, heavy wool blankets they traded to natives and trappers for pelts. These were incredibly warm, and prized by people who lived in harsh climates. They wicked away moisture, were never clammy, and were much more comfortable than a buffalo robe.

I was telling friends recently about my nostalgia for the HBC blankets. When I was a little boy in the 40s my mother drew up a scarlet and black one to tuck me in at night. The thick, well-carded wool was a great comfort and induced a good sleep and deep security.

Well, today a package arrived from Woolrich, licensed by HBC to produce modern Hudson's Bay Company blankets, and in it was a gift from friends, a queen sized six-point blanket, scarlet with the black bands, a magnificent gift, and one I will use and cherish the rest of my days on earth.

I pulled it over me, feeling its gentle and healing force, and knew I am a lucky man, lucky in my friends, my heritage, my spouse, and my life.

After It's Over

What does one do with a literary career after it's over? I've been mulling that. It's unlikely I'll be writing any more, though that remains a possibility. Some people consider it an indicator of my decline; if I am no longer writing, it must mean my mind is slipping away. Maybe they are right.

I look back upon nearly four decades as a novelist, wondering what counts. There were plenty of fine reviews, some starred, and some good sales, but nothing approaching the sales of best-selling friends. So, yes, public commendation is a part of what made my life good.

But at heart, what I am proudest of, is simply surviving as a professional novelist all that time, making my entire living from it for all those years. It was my means, my support, and when the bank account ran low, my inspiration to produce, to do better, to be more aggressive about getting my titles sold to publishers, and eventually the public.

I have no pension. An independent novelist is not connected to some corporation that will send him a monthly check the rest of his life. Instead, I have what I saved and invested, some in an IRA, plus social security, and now my career as a novelist is supporting me in that fashion, and I am okay.

I am content with it. My name is scarcely known among readers of fiction, and yet I survived decade after decade, getting small contracts, writing small books, somehow going on and on and on. Examine any blog or journal devoted to popular fiction, mysteries, historical fiction, westerns, and you probably will not find me or my novels reviewed or noted or discussed or rated for popularity. And now, when I am pretty much house-bound, I have something good to remember and be proud of. They were published; they got me a living.

When Westerns Aren't

Years ago, when asked to blurb yet another gunman western, I realized something was absent: the West. There was nothing about the vast reaches of the West, its climate, its impact on people, its drought, its history, its tribes. The story I was reading may as well have been set in Peoria or Keokuk.

I realized that was true of nearly all the gunman-type westerns I had read in recent times, many of them written by people who had never explored the West or its distant valleys or its social codes or its impact on emotions. I also realized that I had always included the West in my western novels; it was omnipresent and a part of the story.

I resolved not to review ersatz westerns, in which the American West was missing from the very genre whose name it bore. I've stuck with that ever since.

Obsessive

A great song runs through my mind: This Nearly Was Mine, from South Pacific, with the voice of Ezio Pinza as loud and clear and mesmerizing as when I first heard him sing it on Broadway. I listen obsessively, the song returning over and over, both saddening me and lifting me.

I think maybe it is a sense that the marriage was not finished; that there was more to come, the best part, before Sue succumbed to the diseases that swept her away. I have never been so much in love.

First Vocation

Broadway musicals were in their heyday when I was in high school. They captivated me. I saw all I could, knew the music, knew the writers, librettists, composers, actors, singers, set designers, and all the lore. Writing musicals became my first great ambition.

While in high school, I wrote the book and lyrics of a three-act musical comedy called Big Bertha. It was about a suffragette. I don't know how I managed it. Writing the book and lyrics of an entire musical is a formidable task for an experienced adult. But such was my passion that I did it. My father, proud of me, got it typed and saw to its copyright. An agent thought enough of it to shop it around among composers. Nothing came of it, and I imagine a copy of it exists on some dusty shelf of the Library of Congress. I haven't seen it in over six decades.

It probably is awful, with the shallowness of a 17-year-old boy on view. But that isn't what interests me now. What drove me? How could a youth in the early 1950s achieve such a thing? My life is a mystery to me, but I do know that the ache to achieve was a factor that helped me succeed as a novelist much later.

As Winston Churchill famously said, Never give up! Never, never never give up!

Where Comfort Is

I find myself, in the great quiet of these gentle days, retreating into the songs and memories of my youth, much of it available on Youtube.

I play songs from Carousel, perhaps the finest musical play ever produced. If I Love You... What could be more beautiful? I return to Cole Porter's Kiss Me, Kate often, to absorb the music I grew up with.

By the time I was old enough to grasp politics, Paul Robson had been chased out of the country and was living in Moscow, but I love to play his Old Man River, the Jerome Kern melody from Showboat, and one of the most moving renditions ever recorded.

I play episodes of What's My line, hosted by the articulate and gracious John Charles Daly, and watch the panelists try to discover who the mystery guest is. Today it was Joe diMaggio.

It is a privilege to be old and have such memories.

What It Was

I am realizing now what the essence of my marriage to Sue Hart was. And it was the rarest of the bonds that make a marriage. It was companionship, friendship. Even now, I store the day's events away to tell her, and am wondering how she filled her day. Whether it was by phone or pillow talk or across a table, or side by side in a car, we wrought a daily communion that kept us close. I will always be thinking of the things I want to tell her, and will always want to hear about her own life.

A Voice I Never Forgot

In 1949 my parents took my to NY and I saw Cole Porter's Kiss Me Kate, original cast with Alfred Drake and Patricia Morrison. This song, drawn entirely from Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew, is offensive now because it advises the submissiveness of women. But it is the amazing voice of Morrison that captures me now; I saw this as a youth and now listen to it again with an aching sense of its beauty, even if it is not a song for our times and ideals. Those were actors and actresses then; there is nothing like that now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0w09...

Or this, also from the original show:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75P5d...