Wed 13 Sep 2017
Book Noted: RICHARD W. ETULAIN – Ernest Haycox and the Western.
Posted by Steve under Authors , Books Noted , Pulp Fiction , Reference works / Biographies , Western Fiction[3] Comments
I’ve asked Dick Etulain, the author of the following book to tell us more about it. He’s most graciously agreed:
RICHARD W. ETULAIN – Ernest Haycox and the Western. University of Oklahoma Press, hardcover, illustrated, 2017.
This book attempts to resurrect writer Ernest Haycox as a major figure in the development of the fictional Western. It is not a biography; Haycox’s son, Ernest Haycox, Jr., does that in his smoothly written book On a Silver Desert: The Life of Ernest Haycox (2003). Nor is it primarily a work of literary criticism. That book is available in Stephen L. Tanner, Ernest Haycox (1996).
Rather, my book is a work of literary history, tracing Haycox’s literary career from its origins in the early 1920s to his death in 1950.
Born in 1899 and reared in Oregon, Haycox contributed to high school publications and then to college outlets at Reed College (1919-20) and the University of Oregon (1920-23). By graduation, Haycox had published several stories in pulp magazines. Hoping to establish strong links to fictional outlets in the East, Haycox traveled to New York City, where he met editors important to his career in the 1920s. Meeting Jill Marie Chord (also from Oregon) on the train east, they married in New York City but soon returned west to Portland, which would be the Haycox home for the remainder of his life.
By the end of the 1920s, Haycox was a steady contributor to many pulp magazines, including such stalwarts as Adventure, Short Stories, and Western Story Magazine. In 1928, he published his first full-length serial, which appeared the next year as Free Grass, his first novel. In the opening 1930s, Haycox made his first appearance in Collier’s and remained a steady contributor for almost twenty years.
Hoping to move to the top of writers of Westerns, Haycox experimented with several new wrinkles to chosen genre. He created reflective protagonists (“Hamlet heroes”) and dark and light heroines (passionate and reserved women).
Even more important, he began to turn out historical Westerns, infusing his lively fiction with historical backgrounds such as building the transcontinental railroad, fighting Indians in the Southwest, and settling Oregon. His most notable historical Western was Bugles in the Afternoon (1944), a fictional recreation of Gen. George Custer and the Battle of the Little Bighorn.
Immensely successful, Haycox was nonetheless dissatisfied with the restrictions of the Western and entered a period of revolt in the last half-dozen years (1944-50) of his career. Abandoning lucrative serial markets, he set out to write first-rate historical fiction. His best historical novel, The Earthbreakers (1952), appeared two years after his death.
Talented, ambitious, and driven, Ernest Haycox became a major figure in popular fiction written about the American West. Haycox’s continuing growth, gradual but steady, amply demonstrates an author determined enough to defy popular demands and honest enough to write novels consistent with his changing literary beliefs.
September 13th, 2017 at 10:11 pm
For many years Haycox has been one of my favorite writers of western fiction. I have most of his short fiction in my pulp collection. He was a major writer of quality westerns for SHORT STORIES and WEST but he also appeared with early work in ADVENTURE and WESTERN STORY.
I consider his best work to be BUGLES IN THE AFTERNOON which portrays life in the US cavalry. His early death at age 49 or 50 cut short his writing career.
I just ordered this book from amazon.com which has copies for $29.95.
September 13th, 2017 at 10:35 pm
I’ll look forward to this. Haycox managed to straddle the difference between the fast paced world of the pulp Western and its more literary form. He could hold his own with the best of either pulp or historical Western writer and deserves a resurgence of interest.
September 14th, 2017 at 8:24 pm
Don’t forget “Stage to Lordsburg,” the short story on which “Stagecoach” was based, and which gave us John Wayne as a major star.