Sun 25 Jun 2017
A Western Pulp Fiction Review: BENNETT FOSTER – Gila City.
Posted by Steve under Pulp Fiction , Reviews , Western Fiction[5] Comments
BENNETT FOSTER – Gila City. Five Star, hardcover, 2003. Leisure, paperback; 1st printing, September 2004. A fix-up novel comprised of six stories reprinted from the western pulp magazines; details below.
To call it a novel is, truthfully, an exaggeration. What this book actually consists of is a series of connected but individual stories from the pulps, each with its own definitive ending. What’s more than a bit strange about this is that the stories did not all come from the same magazine. Chronologically, and in the same orderas they appear in this book, they jumped from title to title, as follows:
“Mail for Freedom Hill” Dime Western, November 1946.
“Pilgrim for Boothill’s Glory Hole” Star Western, February 1947.
“Dandy Bob’s Cold-Deck Cattle Deal” Dime Western, April 1947.
“The Joke in Hell’s Backyard” Dime Western, July 1947.
“Gila’s Four-Rod Justice” New Western, December 1947.
“Duggan Trouble at Salada Wash” Dime Western, March 1948.
All of the stories take place in the small western town of Gila City, Arizona. It’s within a day’s ride of Tucson, if that helps you place it geographically. Some of the same townspeople appear now and then, as needed, but the villains generally come and go within the time and space of a single story. (More often than not they don’t even survive to the end of the story.)
The two primary protagonists, on the other hand, are the same throughout: First and foremost, Dandy Bob Roberts, local gambler and sharply dressed gent of sharper than average wit. He is also not averse to doing a little cattle rustling on the side. His natural-born tendency toward illicit ventures always seem to turn around on him, though, often making a small town hero of him. His stature in town seems somehow to keep rising, mostly because of the interference of Old Man Duggan, town drunk, stable hostler and teller of tall tales, and a constant pain in the behind to Dandy Bob.
For example: When a dude from the East (or pilgrim, as he’s referred to here) happens to come to town looking for a mine to buy, Bob decides to salt the Widow Fennessy’s holdings. Old Man Duggan, having the same idea, unknowingly manages to switch Bob’s high grade ore back to a bag of useless rock. It all works out in the end, though. An inadvertent explosion in the mine exposes a new vein of gold, starting the Widow Fennessy into thinking a lot more favorably of Old Man Duggan as suitable marriage material.
Which is more plot detail than I’d usually provide, but it should give you the general gist of these gently humorous stories, along with the not idly stated fact that they are gently humorous. Dandy Bob in one story actually becomes the owner of the saloon he’s been plying his trade in all these years, and in another tale Old Man Duggan somehow manages to get himself elected Justice of the Peace, but alas neither position or status is permanent.
Totally ephemeral, in other words, but also a more than adequate way to spend one’s time while flying cross country on an airplane.
June 25th, 2017 at 11:18 am
I’ve read many Bennett Foster stories in the better pulp magazines. He started in 1929 and wrote scores of stories right into the 1950’s even breaking into the slicks as the pulps began to die.
But I can’t find anything about his life. There is no entry in TWENTIETH CENTURY WESTERN WRITERS or in Jon Tusca’s Encyclopedia of western authors. No wikipedia article either.
Steve, is there an introduction in GILA CITY? Sometimes the Five Star books have interesting information on these writers.
June 25th, 2017 at 12:47 pm
He was only a name to me when I started reading this book, and only a vague one at that. I’m sure that this is the first of anything I’ve ever read by him.
But, yes, you’re right. There is a short introduction to the book, one that’s written by his daughter. He was born in Omaha, Nebraska in 1897 and went to college at what is now New Mexico State University, a stay interrupted by a stint in the Navy during World War I. He had all kinds of jobs before turning to writing.
His first story appeared in WEST in 1930, the beginning of a writing career that produced nearly 400 short stories and eighteen novels, many of these for William Morrow and Doubleday’s Double D series. Some of the latter were written under the pen name John Trace. Besides the pulps, his stories appeared in the slicks as well, magazines such as COLLIER’S and THE SATURDAY EVENING POST. The online Western Fiction Index says he died in 1969.
On the basis of this book, I can’t make any statement about his writing ability. The stories in this book were meant to be amusing, and that’s what they were. But on the basis of all the stories he wrote, he certainly was no slouch at the keys of a typewriter. I’ll certainly recognize his name now, the next time I come across it.
June 27th, 2017 at 4:36 pm
A smidgen of personal information about Bennett Foster is found in New the Greats by Agnes Wright Spring ( Frederick, CO; Platte’N Press; 1981 ) Wright Spring was a Colorado historian.
***************************************
Bennett Foster, one of the outstanding writers of western fiction, lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
He was the brother of Trace Foster, a classmate of mine in the University of Wyoming. Their uncle, names Davis, lived in Laramie and came often to our ranch to fish on the Little Laramie River.
On one trip,brought with him his nephew, ten-year-old Bennett Foster.
Years later weh I was State Historian in Denver, Bennett Foster came to my office with his young son. He declared I had saved him from drowning when he was on that fishing trip with his uncle.
My memory was hazy. The incident had not made the deep impression on me that it had on Bennett, but I appreciated his thanking me!
June 27th, 2017 at 7:48 pm
Only a smidgen, but an enjoyable story nonetheless. Thanks, Daryl!
June 27th, 2017 at 10:04 pm
Amazing how readable many of the stories from the old Western pulps still are.