Malcolm R. Campbell's Blog, page 38

Remembering Author Robert M. Utley

“Robert Marshall Utley (October 31, 1929 – June 7, 2022) was an American author and historian who wrote sixteen books on the history of the American West. He was a chief historian for the National Park Service.

“Much of his writing deals with the United States Army in the West, especially in its confrontations with the Indian tribes. He wrote:

“‘the frontier army was a conventional military force trying to control, by conventional military methods, a people that did not behave like conventional enemies and, indeed, quite often were not enemies at all. This is the most difficult of all military assignments, whether in Africa, Asia, or the American West.’

“The Western History Association annually gives out the Robert M. Utley Book Award for the best book published on the military history of the frontier and western North America.” – Wikipedia

We lost another great author and historian last year when Utley died in June at 92. He wrote within the somewhat narrow niche of western history which explains why the national press and social media weren’t over the top in their coverage of his passing. He wrote about the Texas Rangers, Geronimo, Sitting Bull, Billy the Kid, Custer, the Apaches, and the Sioux with impeccable research and understanding that made its mark with western historians more than the general public.

Writing in “Montana, the Magazine of Western History,” Cary Collins said that Utley “achieved a rare status among historians: instantaneous name recognition: Robert M. Utley was a giant of Western history. Over an extraordinarily productive career that began in the 1940s. he remained at his desk until a week before his death.”

According to Collins, Utley was captured by the west after seeing the Errol Flynn movie “They Died With Their Boots On” when he was twelve years old.

For those who can find a copy of the magazine, you’ll be rewarded with a series of articles about Utley. However, you’ll gain a lot more by reading his work. The new edition (2004) of The Last Days of the Sioux Nation might be a good place to start.

–Malcolm

I was captured by the West after seeing the Howard Hawks adaptation of A.B. Guthrie’s novel “The Big Sky” starring Kirk Douglas.

Potpourri for January 10th

How the hell did it happen. Joan Baez, whom I had a school-boy crush on years ago, is now 82. I approved of her songs, and her anti-war stance, but not her relationship with Bob Dylan. While she can’t hit the high notes the way she did when she was young, I will like to hear her sing.Somehow, being too lazy to change the channel, we ended up watching the Georgia-TCU game on TV last night as the Dawgs won 65-7. I’m not really a fan of the Dawgs because I’m an Atlantic Coast Conference person and really think the SEC is trailer trash. But the Dawgs did everything right and the Horned Frogs basically didn’t do anything. The game would have been more interesting if it had been a close one.I enjoyed Lydia Sherrer’s Love, Lies, and Hocus Pocus. I left a four-star review on Amazon here. This book is the first in a series of seven and really seemed more like two short stories than a novel. While the novel has been advertised as the new Harry Potter, it doesn’t have the strong plot of the Potter series.I’m a bit frightened of the controls in our 2019 Honda HRV because the dashboard has buttons for stuff I’ve never heard of. This is the first car we’ve owned where we had to keep looking stuff up in the manual. I don’t care for the setting that tells me whether I’m centered in the lane or the warning buzzers that remind me to shift into Park when I turn off the engine or to fasten my seatbelt. I try to avoid pushing most of the buttons.My brother Barry sent me a three-novel Mickey Spillane book for Christmas. I’ve been aware of Mike Hammer, but never got around to reading “One Lonely Night,” “The Big Kill,” or “Kiss Me, Deadly.” Good noir stuff.I think that whatever the hell’s inside a toilet tank is made in hell because it randomly breaks for no apparent reason, forcing one to buy a new one (also made in hell) and install it with the worse curses on the planet. At least our secondary bathroom is functional again, though we probably won’t trust it for a while. While looking at the problem, it appeared that the water was going into the closet in the next room rather than the septic tank. It wasn’t, but emptying out an entire closet was the last thing we needed in the middle of the night. Maybe this will make a good short story, “Hell’s Toilet.”I continue to be addicted to Kathy Reich’s Temperance Brennan series, enabled by family members who gave me some new novels for Christmas. Just finished two more and need a pickup truck filled with new books.

–Malcolm

Messing with people’s minds

I guess I’m sadistic because I love messing with people’s minds by saying the last thing they expect to hear. This began as a nasty habit: if you’re somewhat psychic, you can “read” a person who’s been surprised by an unsuspected comment, including my favourite of twisting a common cliché into something that either makes no sense or means something quite different than the original version. Now I do it for fun.

For example, “balls to the wall” becomes “balls to the grindstone.”

“Barking up the wrong tree” becomes “barking down the wrong hole.”

“Bated breath” becomes “baited breath.” (Not as good as it could be since a lot of people don’t know the difference.)

The thing is, you can’t smile when you say such things in conversation or write”LOL” after them in print. That ruins the impact. You have to sound sincere as though you don’t know you’re saying something illogical or socially incorrect. But, continuing on with more examples you can use without charge:

“Been there, done that” becomes “never been there, never done that” whether or not you got the tee shirt.

“Better safe than sorry” becomes “better sorry than safe.”

You get the idea, right. If you do, people will consider you either flat stupid or a trickster. I prefer being seen as a trickster because, without shame, that’s my approach to life.

“Cut the mustard” becomes “cut the horseradish.”

“Davy Jones locket” becomes “Davy Jones outhouse.”

“Different kettle of fish” becomes a kettle of something off the wall like a kettle or okra.

Of course, twisting things up like this is dangerous because cops, thugs, and professors just don’t like it. Their brains get out of joint.

–Malcolm

Briefly Noted: ‘Hell With the Lid Off, Butte Montana’

I changed planes several times in Butte. Unfortunately, all the old-time fun portrayed by Horace Smith in this on-the-scene 1890s book was long gone.

From the Publisher

Hell With the Lid Off: Butte, Montana is the lost manuscript of Horace ‘Bert’ Smith, who arrived in the West as a teetotaling 21-year-old adventure-seeking reporter. He later went on to publishing successes in New York as part of a salon that included Zane Grey and Upton Sinclair. With his reporter’s eye and access to characters on both sides of the law, Smith chronicles wild times, terrible tragedies and sudden millionaires on ‘the richest hill on earth’. His granddaughter, Melissa Smith FitzGerald, discovered the manuscript that Smith was finishing and trying to sell to Hollywood when he died suddenly in 1936.

Reviewer’s Comment

“Horace Herbert Smith takes you to Butte, Montana, in its copper-mining heyday to experience that brawling, big-hearted time. In a series of vivid snapshots Smith, a Butte newspaperman, describes the 1890s when, as he writes, life there “was fast and fun.” Smith died before he could publish his absorbing and entertaining memoir detailing daytime gun battles and a sermonizing standoff, the high life and labor strife, scoundrels and bullwhackers and still-breathing corpses, with a cast of real-life characters so colorful as to make fiction writers despair. Fortunately for the reader, Smith’s manuscript is finally seeing print. It’s a rare treat.” – Gwen Florio

Looks like a winner for fans of the old west. The catchy title gives you an apt clue about the town in those days.

–Malcolm

Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of the contemporary fantasy “The Sun Singer” set in Montana’s mountains.

The Biggest Mistake Even Expert Writers Make

“Robert McKee talks in his amazing book Story (which I highly recommend) about the Principle of Antagonism. He says: “A Protagonist and his story can only be as intellectually fascinating and emotionally compelling as the forces of antagonism make them.” That’s a pretty wild statement! Especially since many of us writers have been taught for years that character development trumps everything else. Heck, there are entire websites dedicated to helping writers develop realistic characters! We make notes of what they eat, what they’re scared of, who their parents were, even when they go to sleep every night.”

Source: The Biggest Mistake Even Expert Writers Make | Jane Friedman

Friedman goes on to say, “think about antagonism as any force that pushes back against your hero. Anything that gets in your hero’s way—whether it’s external or internal—is an antagonist. Audiences don’t want their hero to spend six chapters relaxing. Audiences want their hero tested, prodded, hurt, damaged, frightened, confused, and—above all—struggling.”

If the protagonist isn’t variously perplexed, uncertain, challenged, injured, or off on the wrong tack, readers will get bored. In murder mysteries, the main character’s early assumptions often turn out to be wrong–or, at least, incomplete when new evidence or new murders come to light.

These roadblocks are what keep readers turning pages, while they also develop the character as we see how s/he copes with them. We might also say they add realism because mysteries are seldom solved the moment they’re discovered. As authors, we need to challenge our protagonists–but carefully so that readers won’t think we’re tossing in every negative thing that comes to mind.

Make the problems believable within the scope of the story.

–Malcolm

Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of “Conjure Woman’s Cat,” available on Nook, Kindle, paperback, audiobook, and hardcover. There are three more books in the series.

The bodies are stacked up like cordwood

That’s what happens when you read a Kathy Reichs novel, the current one from back in the 1990s, Death Du Jour. Reichs, of course, is a forensic anthropologist as well as the author of the well-received Tempe Brennan series, so when she gets up close and personal with the bones in the lab, she’s been there and one that in “real life.”

So, in many ways, reading these novels is like walking where Reichs has walked even though the books are fiction. They’re windows into another world and, while they make good reading, they look at a world that makes me doubt the sanity of the human race. As the bodies stack up like cordwood in these books, we see just how many horrific ways there are for killing another person–not counting war and so-called acts of God.

I think this snippet of dialogue from “Terminator 2” sums up my despair:

John Connor: We’re not gonna make it, are we? People, I mean.

The Terminator: It’s in your nature to destroy yourselves.

John Connor: Yeah. Major drag, huh?

I think the jury’s still out when it comes to deciding whether we’re going to destroy ourselves and our planet. My view of reality is fairly dark. Maybe that’s why I read books that make that view darker

What about you? When you read police thrillers, black ops, and other novels do you move on easily at the end of the book with the thought that the story was “just fiction” or do you worry about whether the story is telling us something about ourselves?

I worry about ourselves because the realistic stories in novels aren’t coming from some other world where trust and honesty and a long life expectancy don’t exist. I grew up in a place where the KKK was thicker than rattlesnakes, so that’s what I write about. Even though I’m writing about the 1950s, I wonder about the Jim Crow racism that’s still alive and “well” now.

The klan and its supporters knew how to stack up the dead. I want to turn my back on it, but I started the Florida Folk Magic Series and am not willing to move on to something that could air on the Hallmark Channel. I suspect Kathy Reichs couldn’t either. How she kept her sanity as a forensic anthropologist, we’ll never know. Perhaps, the novels are a good kind of therapy.

I’m not so sure. I wonder how many black stories one can view before one becomes immune to the horror of them. As long as we’re not immune, those of us who write and those of us who read, perhaps there’s still hope for people.

–Malcolm

State Government Passes New Law, Makes Georgia a ‘monsoon state.’

Why would they do that? There’s probably money to be made or political debts to pay off. Or, maybe it’s just the typical government insanity we’re seeing far too much of these days. The current RADAR includes hidden tornados. Great. Some clown thought this was a sure route to “all that lucrative FEMA money.”

When it comes to government, I agree with Groucho Marks’ statement that “Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedies.”

From what I read on the news, FEMA isn’t very speedy when it comes to dispensing FEMA money. You have to suffer first–for a while. And finish burying your neighbors and kin.

Our indoor/outdoor cat is outdoors, watching for tornados, I guess. Or enjoying the rhythm of the falling rain. . .as the Cascades sang back in 1962. I think that’s Georgia’s new state song, replacing Hoagy Carmichael’s “Georgia on my Mind” which the federal weather service said wasn’t aggressive enough for tornado chasers.

Normally, I’d FedEx this weather to California, but I think they’re getting more rain than they bargained for while hoping that FEMA covers their losses. Don’t hold your breath out there, guys.

Somebody should have told the legislature that monsoon season in the U.S. is a June-to-September event that occurs in the southwest. Perhaps when it’s time to look for those to blame, we’ll say “just more global warming” while the guilty enjoy their FEMA money.

Malcolm

Don’t ask ‘How can things possibly get any worse in 2023?’

Used to be the worst thing that routinely happened with each new year was writing last year’s date on checks for several weeks. Now, I probably write one or two checks a year since online banking takes care of most of the bills. So, that’s the least of my worries.

Parade Entertainment Graphic

Since I’m superstitious, I try not to predict doomsday scenarios great and small because, well, fate likes pulling questions and predictions like that out from under us so it (fate) can provide what we fear most. I tend to agree with Carl Jung’s idea that “the more you resist anything in life, the more you bring it to you.”

That doesn’t mean we should do nothing while chaos reigns supreme on our doorstep. It’s the personal worry that draws fate our way, not actions meant to improve everything on our doorsteps, home towns, and possibly the world.

We see on the news that shooter incidents have increased, that police are looking the other way as shoplifting (often brazen) increases day by day, that sending Patriot Missiles to Ukraine risks Russian nuclear attacks, and that the seas are rising. I think most of us would prefer to see these problems go away. And yet, I suspect most of us are making them go away by covering our ears and eyes in an ostrich-head-in-the-sand “solution” to problems.

My hope for 2023 is that more people look at what’s happening and fight against it rather than pretending they’re not involved.

–Malcolm

One person can make a difference, a concept I explored in “Conjure Woman’s Cat.”

New Year’s Resolutions: Forget it

If something’s important to me, I’ve already done it. Or I’m saving up money so I can afford to do it. So I’m not overly excited about the concept of New Year’s resolutions.

There’s a lot of information online about high-quality resolutions. If one likes resolutions, these places have interesting ideas. Among the more common resolutions are those that involve losing weight and getting more exercise. Nothing wrong with that, though I take issue with the concept of “losing weight.” I prefer “getting rid of weight” because stuff one loses is stuff one’s trying to find so that it’s no longer lost.

But we already know we should be doing such things, so why not start as soon as we can find a way to commit to it instead of waiting until January 1? I’ve never understood the fascination with the new year and turning over a new leaf.

According to 19 Mind-Blowing New Year’s Resolution Statistics (2023), “23% quit in the first week, and only 36% make it past the first month” and “9% successfully keep their New Year’s resolutions.”

I think people fail because the fad of setting New Year’s resolutions doesn’t mesh well with setting them when the time is right when you’re seriously ready to change. The website has some interesting ideas of its own for failed resolutions.

Since I can’t take the whole shebang seriously, I tend to offer sarcastic resolutions when places like Facebook ask what people have vowed to do or not do during the new year.

Tell wife number 2 that there’s a wife number 1.Get in fewer bar fights.Stop robbing little old ladies on dark streets.Break out of the asylum when Nurse Ratched is drunk.Stop referring people to old friends to Abby and Martha Brewster for understanding and companionship.

So there it is if I have to do it, the list of my resolutions for 2023. I have few plans of keeping them except, maybe, #2.

Wishing you much success in whatever you resolve,

–Malcolm

If you like wild and sarcastic plots, you’ll love Special Investigative Reporter.

Every Christmas There’s At Least One Just-For-Fun Gift

My wife wins the prize with this year’s best just-for-fun gift. This one’s practical, so I can’t call it a gag gift. And though I rarely eat hot seat hot cereal other than the occasional bowl of oatmeal I’ll probably try this even though I like it mainly for the box. She found it in the online store of the Montana Historical Society.

Meanwhile, I’m enjoying reading The Guardians by John Grisham, a gift from my brother Barry and his wife Mary. It’s about an organization that works to get wrongly convicted people out of jail. So far, so good.

–Malcolm