Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest, with a Few ObservationsDobie, J. Frank (James Frank)
History
Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest, with a Few Observations
Dobie, J. Frank (James Frank)
Southwest, New -- Bibliography
O. Henry's ranch experiences in Texas were largely confined to a sheep
ranch. The setting of his "Last of the Troubadours" is a sheep ranch. I
nominate it as the best range story in American fiction.
"Cowboy Songs" and "Horses" are separate chapters following this. The
literature cited in them is mostly range literature, although precious
little in all the songs rises to the status of poetry. A considerable
part of the literature listed under "Texas Rangers" and "The Bad Man
Tradition" bears on range life.
ABBOTT, E. C., and SMITH, HELENA HUNTINGTON. We _Pointed Them North_,
New York, 1939. Abbott, better known as Teddy Blue, used to give his
address as Three Duce Ranch, Gilt Edge, Montana. Helena Huntington
Smith, who actually wrote and arranged his reminiscences, instead of
currying him down and putting a checkrein on him, spurred him in the
flanks and told him to swaller his head. He did. This book is franker
about the women a rollicky cowboy was likely to meet in town than all
the other range books put together. The fact that Teddy Blue's wife was
a half-breed Indian, daughter of Granville Stuart, and that Indian women
do not object to the truth about sex life may account in part for his
frankness. The book is mighty good reading. OP.
ADAMS, ANDY. _The Log of a Cowboy_ (1903). In 1882, at the age of
twenty-three, Andy Adams came to Texas from Indiana. For about ten years
he traded horses and drove them up the trail. He knew cattle people
and their ranges from Brownsville to Caldwell, Kansas. After mining for
another decade, he began to write. If all other books on trail driving
were destroyed, a reader could still get a just and authentic conception
of trail men, trail work, range cattle, cow horses, and the cow country
in general from _The Log of a Cowboy_. It is a novel without a plot, a
woman, character development, or sustained dramatic incidents; yet it
is the classic of the occupation. It is a simple, straightaway narrative
that takes a trail herd from the Rio Grande to the Canadian line, the
hands talking as naturally as cows chew cuds, every page illuminated
by an easy intimacy with the life. Adams wrote six other books. _The
Outlet, A Texas Matchmaker, Cattle Brands_, and _Reed Anthony, Cowman_
all make good reading. _Wells Brothers_ and _The Ranch on the Beaver_
are stories for boys. I read them with pleasure long after I was grown.
All but _The Log of a Cowboy_ are OP, published by Houghton Mifflin,
Boston.
ADAMS, RAMON F. _Cowboy Lingo_, Boston, 1936. A dictionary of cowboy
words, figures of speech, picturesque phraseology, slang, etc., with
explanations of many factors peculiar to range life. OP. _Western
Words_, University of Oklahoma Press, 1944. A companion book. _Come an'
Get It_, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1952. Informal exposition
of chuck wagon cooks.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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