Richard S. Wheeler's Blog, page 15
April 23, 2014
The Honorable Cody
Back in 2005 Sunstone Press published my novel about Buffalo Bill Cody. It didn't sell well, and I retrieved the rights and have republished it as an e-book.
It is an affectionate portrait of the man who was once the best-known person on earth. It is also probably the finest of my biographical novels. It revolves around the startling struggle to turn his grave into a tourist attraction, a struggle that was eventually won by the owners of the Denver Post, who planted the old showman on Lookout Mountain, outside of Denver-- far from where Cody himself wished to be buried.
I'm hoping to introduce The Honorable Cody to a widespread readership for the first time, and with that in mind, I'll keep its price at ninety-nine cents until the end of May.
It is an affectionate portrait of the man who was once the best-known person on earth. It is also probably the finest of my biographical novels. It revolves around the startling struggle to turn his grave into a tourist attraction, a struggle that was eventually won by the owners of the Denver Post, who planted the old showman on Lookout Mountain, outside of Denver-- far from where Cody himself wished to be buried.
I'm hoping to introduce The Honorable Cody to a widespread readership for the first time, and with that in mind, I'll keep its price at ninety-nine cents until the end of May.
April 13, 2014
Drawing Close
I read each day to my wife, who is in a nearby assisted living place. She has short-term memory loss, and it has become difficult for her to grasp what she is reading from books or newspapers. But she fully enjoys our reading sessions. We laugh together when I read a funny passage from a novel, and our responses are often the same. I've read to her novels by a couple of authors and she enjoys them.
There has been an unexpected and sweet thing about this. The reading is drawing us closer than we have ever been. Her gaze, as I read, tells me she is not only processing the story as it spills from my lips, but also tells me this is some sort of communion, old hearts drawing close, touching each other in ways that never existed all the years we have been together.
For her, each reading session is a high point of a long slow day. The drifting time is suddenly broken with story, with characters pursuing their lives, and we are caught up not only in the story, but in our own small world.
The attendants see us and smile. Sometimes they listen to the story as they help my wife, Sue, with food or other bodily matters. Sometimes they delight in the novels, and ask about them.
There is an invisibility about the old; the world belongs to the young, and we see the young staring through us, past us, staring toward vital people who have futures, and we are not seen. And that can be lonely. But as we share a novel, in Sue's room, we are visible to each other; we are closer and happier than ever, and we drive the darkness away.
There has been an unexpected and sweet thing about this. The reading is drawing us closer than we have ever been. Her gaze, as I read, tells me she is not only processing the story as it spills from my lips, but also tells me this is some sort of communion, old hearts drawing close, touching each other in ways that never existed all the years we have been together.
For her, each reading session is a high point of a long slow day. The drifting time is suddenly broken with story, with characters pursuing their lives, and we are caught up not only in the story, but in our own small world.
The attendants see us and smile. Sometimes they listen to the story as they help my wife, Sue, with food or other bodily matters. Sometimes they delight in the novels, and ask about them.
There is an invisibility about the old; the world belongs to the young, and we see the young staring through us, past us, staring toward vital people who have futures, and we are not seen. And that can be lonely. But as we share a novel, in Sue's room, we are visible to each other; we are closer and happier than ever, and we drive the darkness away.
April 10, 2014
More Monk
Each day I read to my wife a couple of chapters from one of Lee Goldberg's Monk novels, based on the TV series about the obsessive-compulsive San Francisco detective Adrian Monk.
My wife, Sue Hart, is in an assisted living place three blocks from my home. She spent half a century as an English professor, specializing in Montana literature and other fields, before her short-term memory began to fade.
She loves the Monk novels. She had been unfamiliar with them until I started reading them to her in her room, and now she laughs and smiles right along with me, as I spin out the story for her.
There is a genius to the Monk novels. Mr. Monk is crazy and outrageous-- but we don't laugh at him, because there is the pathos about him, and what we feel is tenderness toward him, no matter how peculiar he seems.
These reading sessions, which light up my wife, have made me aware of how gifted Lee Goldberg is as a novelist and storyteller. There is something about reading a story out loud, and catching the response, that tells me more about the work than if I had read it silently to myself. And it is telling me that Lee Goldberg is a splendid storyteller with a great sense of the human condition.
My wife, Sue Hart, is in an assisted living place three blocks from my home. She spent half a century as an English professor, specializing in Montana literature and other fields, before her short-term memory began to fade.
She loves the Monk novels. She had been unfamiliar with them until I started reading them to her in her room, and now she laughs and smiles right along with me, as I spin out the story for her.
There is a genius to the Monk novels. Mr. Monk is crazy and outrageous-- but we don't laugh at him, because there is the pathos about him, and what we feel is tenderness toward him, no matter how peculiar he seems.
These reading sessions, which light up my wife, have made me aware of how gifted Lee Goldberg is as a novelist and storyteller. There is something about reading a story out loud, and catching the response, that tells me more about the work than if I had read it silently to myself. And it is telling me that Lee Goldberg is a splendid storyteller with a great sense of the human condition.
April 5, 2014
What We're Reading
After reading three delightful Craig Johnson novels to my wife, Sue Hart, who is in the memory unit of a nearby assisted living place, I've started in on the Monk novels written by Lee Goldberg. The first is Monk in Trouble, a dual story featuring the modern Monk as well as his ancestor, who was a gold-rush era assayer in the Sierras. We're having a lot of fun. Each bright chapter sets Sue to laughing, or enjoying Goldberg's rich humor. I like the Monk novels because they're warm, often tender, and filled with rich pathos.
March 22, 2014
London
I've just finished Earle Labor's magisterial new biography of Jack London, once the country's best-selling author, a novelist and short story writer largely ignored by the intelligentsia. It is a magnificent biography of a profoundly gifted and thoughtful author, and I recommend it without reservation. I have wondered all my life why academics ignore or denigrate the Californian who pulled himself up by the bootstraps to write novels that remain in print, influenced numerous authors including Ernest Hemingway, and are as fresh today, a century later, as they were when written.
March 6, 2014
Some Montana Catnip
I've enjoyed a novel by my friend Jeff Gibson, called Outlaws: Love and Money in the New West.
It's about a guide with flexible ethics who agrees to take a would-be big game hunter out to poach a trophy elk which he plans to display back in New Jersey.
The protagonist, who finds himself a part of this dubious outfit, acts as a sort of Greek Chorus, but his voice of caution is rarely heeded by the guide or by the hunter or anyone else.
The ending is unexpected, rich and comic, and fun to read. They all escape the Montana game wardens, but the great hunter doesn't get his trophy elk, either.
It's about a guide with flexible ethics who agrees to take a would-be big game hunter out to poach a trophy elk which he plans to display back in New Jersey.
The protagonist, who finds himself a part of this dubious outfit, acts as a sort of Greek Chorus, but his voice of caution is rarely heeded by the guide or by the hunter or anyone else.
The ending is unexpected, rich and comic, and fun to read. They all escape the Montana game wardens, but the great hunter doesn't get his trophy elk, either.
March 3, 2014
A Choice Quotation
I found this engaging comment published in the Jack London Foundation's quarterly newsletter.
It is on a postcard written by James Lee Burke:
Jack London has never been given adequate credit for the fine journalist and fiction writer that he was. My experience has been that academics often find no offense more unforgivable than an author enjoying commercial success during his own lifetime.
It is on a postcard written by James Lee Burke:
Jack London has never been given adequate credit for the fine journalist and fiction writer that he was. My experience has been that academics often find no offense more unforgivable than an author enjoying commercial success during his own lifetime.
February 21, 2014
Wise Counsel
My friends Win and Meredith Blevins have been posting material about traditional publishing versus self-publishing. They are old friends with deep experience that runs back decades. It is simply the best and wisest counsel I have ever read.
Win has not only written award-winning fiction, notably about the American fur trade period, but also has been a book editor for Forge (a Macmillan imprint) and has taught college-level creative writing. And Meredith is an accomplished author as well.
On their website they've posted the pluses and minuses of the various approaches to publishing; the assets that each approach offers, and the pitfalls too.
If you are interested in a career in literature, but are unsure of what approach to take, you can't do better than to heed their counsel.
http://www.meredithandwinblevins.com/...
Win has not only written award-winning fiction, notably about the American fur trade period, but also has been a book editor for Forge (a Macmillan imprint) and has taught college-level creative writing. And Meredith is an accomplished author as well.
On their website they've posted the pluses and minuses of the various approaches to publishing; the assets that each approach offers, and the pitfalls too.
If you are interested in a career in literature, but are unsure of what approach to take, you can't do better than to heed their counsel.
http://www.meredithandwinblevins.com/...
February 19, 2014
Fine Review
Ron Scheer, whose blog about western fiction and film is the finest and most authoritative in the field, has done a beautiful review of my wife's PBS documentary about Dorothy M. Johnson. You can read it here:
http://buddiesinthesaddle.blogspot.com/
http://buddiesinthesaddle.blogspot.com/
February 16, 2014
Finished
I've finished reading A Serpent's Tooth, by Craig Johnson, to my wife, Sue Hart. We were enthralled by it. I think he is the finest mystery writer of our time, and one of the all-time greats. Next I will start on Hell is Empty, another of his Walt Longmire series.
