Tue 18 Sep 2018
Reviewed by David Vineyard: CLIFFORD IRVING – Tom Mix and Pancho Villa.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[6] Comments
CLIFFORD IRVING – Tom Mix and Pancho Villa: A Romance of the Mexican Revolution. St. Martin’s Press, hardcover, 1982; paperback, 1984.
So begins the rip-snorting adventure tale told in the first person by Tom Mix about his early days and his adventures riding side by side with Mexican Revolutionary Pancho Villa in the days of the Mexican Revolution at the beginning of the 20th Centruy. And it should come as no surprise that this tall tale of a “memoir†should sound authentic since it is penned by the infamous Clifford Irving whose Howard Hughes memoir was one of the great literary hoaxes of all time.
It hardly needs to be said this “memoir†is no more authentic than most of its subjects popular Westerns, but must be added it is every bit as entertaining as the best of them, as Tom Mix, at trails end, shortly before the tragic accident that ended his legendary (in more senses than one) life sits down to recall the best and happiest time of his checkered career.
Seeking an old friend in Juarez young Tom falls in with Villa, and soon is hypnotized by the revolutionary:
“Five here. That’s counting you and me. Four waiting for me across the river in El Paso. That’s … let’s see …†He counted rapidly on his fingers.
“That’s nine.â€
“That’s all? I thought you already had an army!â€
“I’ll get one.†“Nine men?†“With nine men, loyal and brave, I can recruit nine thousand more. Then I’ll need horses for them to ride, trains for them to travel on, food for them to eat, rifles for them to shoot and bullets to put into the rifles.â€
A pop-eyed smile lit up his face. “None of this will be very difficult. The people know me. They’ll follow me. Look how easily I convinced you to do it, and you’re a gringo.†His eyes grew a shade more solemn. “I need men like you, Tomás. You’re young, but you’re clever and you want to learn. Moreover, as Candelario said, you’re lucky. Once we have a real army, you’ll have the rank of captain. If I forget, remind me.â€
And young Tom is swept up, and who wouldn’t be, in dreams of revolution and adventure.
Adventure being the key word. Adventure in the grand and picaresque sense of the word, adventure full of character building, painful realizations, fast horses, flying bullets, dead enemies, lost friends, beautiful senoritas Rosa, Eliza, and one of his own race. Hannah, treachery, Hemingwayesque discussions of passion, revolution, death, and manhood (“If your obligations are the same as your desires, you’re a lucky man. You can be whole.â€), all kept moving by colorful and rich portraits of Mexico and the border in those wild days.
The ending, as our hero rides into a different kind of sunset has a beauty all its own:
To Sonora …
To Celaya …
To Torreón, again …
To Hollywood …
The desert lay drowned in rich, soft mist. Somewhere, a coyote howled. The dead slept in the slowly cooling earth of Mexico. Goodbye, my love. What the hell, I thought. The defeats are also battles. Goodbye, my youth — and goodbye. Chihuahua. I flicked a rein. The horse turned west. I rode off into the sunset, singing a mournful tune, and became a movie cowboy.
Tom Mix and Pancho Villa is a big technicolor historical fantasy, all vistas and gun battles, beautiful women, heroic men, and hard riding against a rich backdrop of a time not so very far away. I confess it is one of my favorite books, rich in imagination and vivid action and characters, not, perhaps, as flawed as their real life counterparts, or at least in the same ways, but beautifully painted images as glorious in their own ways as their cinematic adventures.
September 18th, 2018 at 2:27 pm
Clifford Irving, who died last year, was quite a writer. He was best known for his Howard Hughes book, of course, for which he served a stretch in prison, but here’s a list of other books he wrote that Hubin considers to be crime fiction:
The Losers (n.) Coward 1957
-The Valley (n.) McGraw 1961
The Thirty-Eighth Floor (n.) McGraw 1965
The Sleeping Spy [with Herbert Burkholz] (n.) Atheneum 1983
The Angel of Zin (n.) Stein 1984
Trial (n.) Summit 1990
Final Argument (n.) Simon 1993
The Spring (n.) Simon 1996
September 18th, 2018 at 5:53 pm
To my surprise, the Los Angeles Public Library doesn’t have this book…not even as a non-circulating reference copy. I certainly did not expect this book to be so obscure.
September 18th, 2018 at 8:30 pm
You can find an ebook copy on Kindle fairly cheap, I don’t know why the hardcover or paperback would be that obscure since there were more than enough copies printed, though it may be that like me the people who bought it kept it.
It really is a lot of fun, one of those rare books you close with a satisfied smile as if saying goodbye to an old friend you plan to visit again.
September 18th, 2018 at 8:42 pm
No you wouldn’t expect the book to be so scarce but it is. Copies of the paperback will set you back nearly twenty dollars and then only in my poor condition Maybe it’s a case of high demand rather than low supply.
For some reason l think I remember a lot of publicity about the book when it came out, but if so I can’t think of a reason why. It’s not a book with general appeal; but those who like it really like it.
September 19th, 2018 at 6:01 pm
There was talk of a film at the time which might have generated some of the excitement.
As for a shortage of copies, you find the oddest things hard to find, and often as not on Amazon you will find one copy of the same book and same edition on sale for under a dollar while another seller wants $800 for it.
I can’t recall ever seeing it remaindered and seldom in second hand bookstores, but it sold extremely well so it isn’t rare in that sense though there weren’t multiple printings and reprintings.
September 20th, 2018 at 2:18 am
In Zacatecas, Zacatecas atop of the continental divide in old Mexico, I lived in the shadow of La Bufa, a knob of a peak, which delays the morning sun from reaching the city, where Francisco Villa commanded the artillery that bombarded the city, winning a decisive battle against the government forces. I read about the Revolution and heard family stories about grandparents during the time when the revolutionaries came, which were then quickly fading from living memory. On the top of La Bufa, I have looked at the huge statue of Villa, atop of a stallion, and patched that together with my piece-meal mental portrait of Villa.
Reading in your review the bit of dialogue invented for Villa by Clifford Irving, I think, what is this horse manure? Part of that response is reflexive as I long have rejected much about Pancho Villa, the fictionalized foil to General Black Jack Pershing. Nor do I romanticize Francisco Villa, either, for in many ways, he was a detestable force of fury.
Having not read the novel, I realize I may be too harsh in my views. David, what do you think? Is this Pancho Villa in Irving’s book the Francisco Villa the myth or Villa the caricature or Villa the man?