Mon 31 Aug 2009
Archived Western Review: RICHARD WHEELER – Flint’s Truth.
Posted by Steve under Reviews , Western Fiction[4] Comments
RICHARD S. WHEELER – Flint’s Truth.
Forge, hardcover; 1st printing, May 1998. Paperback reprint: October 2000.
The first of itinerant newspaper printer Sam Flint’s adventures in the Old West was recorded in Flint’s Gift. This is the second; the third, forthcoming, is Flint’s Honor. And if this book is any measure, all three are worth tracking down and reading.
Moving from settlement to settlement with a printing press, several cases of movable type, newsprint and ink is not a task or career for the faint-hearted, nor is setting up shop in a town such as Oro Blanco, where the powers-that-be prefer that certain secrets stay hidden.
As Sam says on page 63: “You’d be amazed the amount of news that people don’t wish to see in print.” At stake is a fortune in land and gold.
This is a morality tale written in the guise of a western novel, with most of the characters taking stock parts. In fuller roles, though, besides Sam himself, are the philosophical Mexican priest who befriends him, and Libby, the skinny 13-year-old girl who becomes his right-hand aide. Each in their own way becomes a key to the tale, which is brutally honest and takes an ironic twist or two before a form of justice prevails.
Here’s a solid, picturesque glimpse into a unique time and place, one that rings a resonant chord of truth and right, and even better — as you can expect of all of Wheeler’s work — here’s a book that’s completely and compulsively readable.
August 31st, 2009 at 12:12 pm
There used to be a series Man Without a Gun about a western editor and his adventures. I think it starred Rex Reason, though it could have been Rhodes.
Of course Tombstone opened every week with a story from the files of the Tombstone Epitaph.
August 31st, 2009 at 12:33 pm
You’re right about the star of MAN WITHOUT A GUN. It was Rex Reason, not his brother Rhodes.
Apparently a syndicated series, they made two seasons’ worth, and according to IMDB, where I had to check my memory on this one, here’s what the story line was about:
“The adventures of Adam MacLean, publisher and chief reporter for the Yellowstone Sentinel of Yellowstone, Wyoming, in the late 19th century.”
I don’t remember seeing this show more than once or twice. I was away at college then.
If it’s a coincidence or not, TOMBSTONE TERRITORY was on at the same time, in the late 1950s, but because it was a network series (ABC), I remember that one a lot more vividly.
In any case, I think that westerns that center around newspapers and newspaper editors are quite common, even if (on TV) they’re only individual episodes. It’s a good way to be at the center of conflicts, the eye of the storm, so to speak.
— Steve
August 31st, 2009 at 8:48 pm
The western editor was a staple in western films from Henry Hull in Jesse James to Edmond O’Brien in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence. They tended to hard drink and big mouths and often employed some suffragette reporter like Olivia de Haviland working for editor Frank McHugh in Dodge City.
Once in a while the courageous editor was even the hero like Randolph Scott in Fort Worth (which includes one of my favorite geographical gaffs in film history — Scott gets on his horse and announces he is going to Big Spring and will be back the next day — heck of a horse considering Big Spring is 350 miles from Fort Worth).
Carleton Young (more familiar for his voice over work than his face) is the editor in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence who delivers one of the best known and most misunderstod lines in western films. “This is the west, Senator, and when the legend conflicts with the truth, print the legend.”
The hero of Tombstone Territory was Clay Hollister, played by Pat Conroy with familiar character actor Richard Eastham as Tombstone Epitaph editor Harris Claibourne.
The thing I remember about Man Without a Gun was aside from the pacifist approach of the hero (who wasn’t adverse to using his fists whatever his opinion of firearms) was that Reason wore a suit and homburg most of the time.
Oddly enough few episodes of Bat Masterson dealt with his journalistic career which began while he was still out west, and ended with his becoming an influential sports editor in New York where his assistant was Damon Runyon and he presided over a group of young journalists including Earl Wilson, Ed Sullivan, and Walter Winchell. Masterson joined with Police Commissioner Teddy Roosevelt in cleaning up the New York boxing game and forming the New York Boxing Commission.
August 31st, 2009 at 10:37 pm
Re that last bit on Bat Masterson, he was the model for Sky Masterson in Runyon’s Guys and Dolls stories, so in a way to actors like Gene Barry, Joel McCrea, and George Montgomery who have played Bat we can add Marlon Brando and Dean Martin (who did Guys and Dolls on television with Jackie Gleason as Nathan Detroit).
Runyon seemed to worship his journalistic mentor, who took a somewhat jaundiced view of his career as a lawman and gunfighter, buying second hand guns at pawn shops, distressing them, and then selling them as “the gun Bat Masterson won the west with.”