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
RUSSELL, CHARLES M. _Trails Plowed Under_, 1927, with introduction by
Will Rogers. Russell was the greatest painter that ever painted a range
man, a range cow, a range horse or a Plains Indian. He savvied the cow,
the grass, the blizzard, the drought, the wolf, the young puncher in
love with his own shadow, the old waddie remembering rides and thirsts
of far away and long ago. He was a wonderful storyteller, and most of
his pictures tell stories. He never generalized, painting "a man," "a
horse," "a buffalo" in the abstract. His subjects are warm with life,
whether awake or asleep, at a particular instant, under particular
conditions. _Trails Plowed Under_, prodigally illustrated, is a
collection of yarns and anecdotes saturated with humor and humanity.
It incorporates the materials in two Rawhide Rawlins pamphlets. _Good
Medicine_, published posthumously, is a collection of Russell's letters,
illustrations saying more than written words.
Russell's illustrations have enriched numerous range books, B. M.
Bower's novels, Malcolm S. Mackay's _Cow Range and Hunting Trail_, and
Patrick T. Tucker's _Riding the High Country_ being outstanding among
them. Tucker's book, autobiography, has a bully chapter on Charlie
Russell. _Charles M. Russell, the Cowboy Artist: A Bibliography_, by
Karl Yost, Pasadena, California, 1948, is better composed than its
companion biography, _Charles M. Russell the Cowboy Artist_, by Ramon F.
Adams and Homer E. Britzman. (Both OP.) One of the most concrete pieces
of writing on Russell is a chapter in _In the Land of Chinook_, by
Al. J. Noyes, Helena, Montana, 1917. "Memories of Charlie Russell," in
_Memories of Old Montana_, by Con Price, Hollywood, 1945, is also
good. All right as far as it goes, about a rock's throw away, is "The
Conservatism of Charles M. Russell," by J. Frank Dobie, in a portfolio
reproduction of _Seven Drawings by Charles M. Russell, with an
Additional Drawing by Tom Lea_, printed by Carl Hertzog, El Paso [1950].
SANTEE, ROSS. _Cowboy_, 1928. OP. The plotless narrative, reading like
autobiography, of a kid who ran away from a farm in East Texas to be a
cowboy in Arizona. His cowpuncher teachers are the kind "who know what
a cow is thinking of before she knows herself." Passages in _Cowboy_
combine reality and elemental melody in a way that almost no other
range writer excepting Charles M. Russell has achieved. Santee is a
pen-and-ink artist also. Among his other books, _Men and Horses_ is
about the best.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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