Arizona
Ames and Other American Portraits by Zane Grey
by
Thomas McNulty
As a Chicago boy
growing up in the swinging Sixties, when nostalgia was a fashionable trend,
someone gave me an old Zane Grey paperback. It was Riders of the Purple Sage, and I delved into the book numerous times, thumbing the pages. Occasionally,
there was something in the prose that appeared like magical incantations; a
descriptive passage that rang true like a guitar chord. The magic lingered in
my mind. Here was language with the emotional effect of music, or the resonance
of a great motion picture, and it thrilled me: “A sharp clip-clop of iron-shod hoofs deadened and died away, and
clouds of yellow dust drifted from under the cottonwoods out over the sage.”
That first line set in motion a remarkable tale that was impossible to put
down. Years later, as a fledging college student, I learned that line is
considered among the great opening declarations in American letters, and that Riders of the Purple Sage is considered
a classic of Western genre writing. I experienced a sense of pride in realizing
I was already familiar with such a revered book. I began collecting the Walter
Black editions. I bought old and new paperback editions as I encountered them.
I kept them. Today, I return to Zane Grey far more than any other Western
writer.
Zane Grey loved the
landscape. He wrote with a poet’s eye but always complemented by his uncanny
understanding of human nature. He understood that we are all a part of the
landscape we inhabit, and he celebrated his love of the land with adventure
tales set in the wild country that he loved so much. From the forests and hills
of the Tonto Basin, across the Colorado Rockies; deep in the verdant valleys
and forests of tall pines, down winding creeks and across roaring rivers; along
the majestic beauty of the Ohio River and down into the glimmering
heat-drenched deserts; there Zane Grey had his characters live and struggle and
succeed and fail and sometimes die.
At the center of these
tales are his characters, and all of Grey’s stories are character driven. I
point to Arizona Ames, one of my many
favorites. Ames refers to himself as “Just a grub-line ridin’ cowpuncher who
cain’t hold a job…” (p 217) but who possesses the virtues and capabilities
inherent in our dream of the quintessential American man. Early in the novel,
Ames kills the man that had taken advantage of his twin sister, Nesta, and
subsequently fled his beloved Tonto Basin where over the course of a decade has
earned his reputation as both a capable ranch hand and lethal gunslinger. At
the heart of the story is the fact that Ames, being afraid of devoting himself
to a woman, continuously ends up on a lonely trail. With his beloved twin
sister and her children unseen for years, Ames takes the side of the underdog
time and again. His reputation precedes him wherever he goes.
Arizona
Ames
is not seamless. The plot jumps about, and the central incidents are
disconnected. However, Ames himself is immeasurably alluring, and like so many
of Grey’s characters we find ourselves rooting for him, hoping that he’ll find
the happiness that he deserves. Ames is a man running from his past and haunted
by his actions. “But I am only a wanderin’ cowboy,” he says at one point, “I
have nothin’ except a horse – an’ this blood-stained gun.” (P. 227.) He pushes
women away, and rides on, righting wrongs as he goes. When he finally meets
Esther it’s a decade into his wanderings and he’s now in his early 30s. As for
Esther, she thinks “…he was the finest-looking man she had ever seen, obviously
a cowboy, or most certainly a rider. Tall, lithe, booted, spurred, belted, with
gun swinging low, gray-clad, his head drooping, with face hidden under a wide
sombrero that had once been white…” (p.235)
Ames is the
quintessential Zane Grey hero, blood-brother to most of the protagonists in his
Westerns, possessing of a singular morality, an unspoken code of honor, decent
and honorable. Grey created with his literature a series of American
portraiture that is perhaps idealized to fit his vision of the American West,
and far removed from the industrial revolution that was changing the landscape
before his very eyes. Grey was born in 1872, and the changes in American life
he experienced by the time his first story was published in 1903 were profound.
Grey was prolific, and
once Riders of the Purple Sage became
a best-seller, he was constantly in demand. He rarely deviated from his
standard formulae and characterizations, but he was skilled at infusing his
prose with likable characters, and enough action to keep readers on the edge of
their seats. He became a celebrity, and his legend grew. Zane Grey was a man’s
man; a hunter, fisherman, baseball player, film actor, explorer and world
traveler. He appears to have been always moving, always writing, with fishing
being perhaps his favorite activity next to pursuing women. The books are
amazing: Code of the West, Forlorn River,
Knights of the Range, The Light of Western Stars, The Lost Wagon Train, The Man
of the Forest, The Mysterious Rider, Raiders of Spanish Peaks, Thunder
Mountain, Wildfire and so many more. He published over 60 books before his
death in 1939.
Certain of his books
stand out as examples of great American fiction, although it is the rare critic
who will agree with me. Desert of Wheat
is a modern tale, set during World War I and published in 1919. Grey strikes an
anti-union pose with his depiction of the IWW – Industrial Workers of the World
– in addition to discussing ethnic prejudice against Germans. Later scenes set
on the battlefront of France during the war are fully realized, and he keeps
his romantic notions intact. Desert of
Wheat is underrated and quite an accomplishment for a writer best known for
his Horse Operas. Grey proved that he could write a contemporary novel the
equivalent of anything Sinclair Lewis or Theodore Dreiser would produce.
 |
Frontpiece from the 1935 signed
edition of Thunder Mountain
|
Wanderer
of the Wasteland is a riveting story about Adam who
flees his life to seek refuge in the desert where he wanders for years, meeting
strange characters, and coming to grips with his past. Grey ponders man’s often
violent nature, relationship with women, and offers a conclusion that is truly
a “surprise ending.” Another, The Rainbow
Bridge is the sequel to Riders of the
Purple Sage and among the few of his novels that scholars agree has
literary value. Greys work is too often dismissed as winsome fabrications, but
I’ll argue that Grey captured the spirit of those Westerners who forged ahead
to tame the land. The critics were hard on Grey from the onset, and remain
critical of his work. Critic Jonathan Miles, writing in his The New York Times review of Thomas H.
Pauly’s 2006 biography on Grey, falsely stated that “Grey was a profoundly bad
writer who combined mawkish sentimentality with geographic fabulism.” Miles is
miles off-base, and misses the point that Grey’s sentimentality is part of what
strikes a chord with readers. There is nothing wrong with sentimentality. Grey
expressed those moments beautifully. If anything, Grey was a profoundly
intuitive and insightful writer who framed his stories with tales of heartache
and loss, creating portraits that might have been culled from any family album.
I agree that some
modern readers will struggle with Grey’s use of phonetic spellings to mimic a
drawl or accent, and the melodrama is at times clichéd, and the dialogue
simplistic. These are, however, not valid reasons to dismiss his work. I
suspect part of the problem lies in the cultural changes that make Internet
haters all feel empowered to say something negative rather than positive. This
has always been the weakness of American literary critics, of which Jonathan
Miles represents the common hack. Zane Grey’s readers and fans exist because he
fulfills a need, and he told great stories. It really is that simple.
The
Heritage of the Desert is a personal favorite, and a
novel that many fans agree is among Grey’s best. The tale of Jack Hare, and his
trials and tribulations is melodramatic, rambling, and often epic; it involves
land grabbers, Indians and Mormons, is vividly drawn, and packed full of
excitement. Yet another, The Lone Star
Ranger is well known among Grey’s fans and clearly the inspiration for the
character created by Fran Striker and George W. Trendle for radio in 1933, and
who, as you know, was later epitomized on television and in films by Clayton
Moore. Grey’s The Lone Star Ranger was
published in 1915 to immediate success. It’s a good book, but the unexpurgated
manuscript, published in 2008 by Leisure Paperbacks as Last of the Duanes, is a masterpiece.
There are so many other
examples of Grey’s fine novels, that readers today will have no difficulty in
finding either modern paperback reprints or e-books on Kindle. Although
Westerns were Grey’s bread and better, he ventured into non-fiction with books
like Roping Lions in the Grand Canyon,
Tales of Southern Rivers, Tales of Fishing Virgin Seas, Tales of the Angler’s
Eldorado-New Zealand, Tales of Fresh Water Fishing, and Tales of Tahitian Waters all which added
to Grey’s popularity. A few juvenile novels,
especially those dealing with baseball, round out Grey’s enormous literary
output. The Shortstop and The Young Pitcher evoke Grey’s love for
baseball. He was a minor league player prior to becoming a novelist, and this
fact, too, adds another layer to the depth of his extraordinary life.
I believe what is
lacking here is a comprehensive, academic appreciation of Grey’s novels. The
critics may not like him – they never have – but readers are always connecting
with Zane Grey because his appeal is universal. The rule I follow, and that was
a driving force behind my Errol Flynn biography (which took me ten years of
research and writing) is that one should not write about historical figures
unless you truly appreciate their contribution. Write about what you know and
what you love. That’s what Zane Grey did. It’s also vitally important to
understand the era in which Grey lived, and that our cultural history shapes us
all, like it or not. We cannot distance ourselves from the landscape we
inhabit, and Zane Grey was a product of his time.
His influence is
far-reaching. Commencing in December 1946 and released sporadically through the
early 1970s, Zane Grey’s Western Magazine
published original stories by new authors and the occasional reprint of a Zane
Grey Story. Grey’s stories continue to influence both writers and filmmakers,
and many of his books have never gone out of print.
In 2009, when I was in
Hollywood to attend Errol Flynn’s centennial at filmmaker Jack Marino’s home,
my wife and I made a side-trip to Catalina Island. It was a foggy morning, and
as the boat rocked across the sea I waited for a glimpse of the island where
Zane Grey had made his hideaway. At length, the island appeared to rise from
the mist; a primordial sight of steep hills and deep underbrush, wild and
somehow forbidding. When the sun burned away the fog the heat set in, and we
wandered the shops and small streets of Avalon. Finally, I set my gaze on the
white pueblo wall visible on the hillside, and we made the trek on foot through
a blanket of heat to the Zane Grey Pueblo Hotel, his former home turned tourist
destination. It was easy to understand why he chose this hilltop location for
the home that was completed in 1926. The view of Avalon Bay is breathtaking,
and from here Grey could indulge his love of deep sea fishing.
I lingered awhile and
wandered the halls and verandas. It was a quiet day, with little activity in
the hotel. I had a sense that this place offered serenity to Grey, and given
his self-induced hectic lifestyle, I realized that this island patio
overlooking the sea must surely be the place where Grey’s spirit wandered
today. Just a swiftly, I realized I was wrong, for while Zane Grey’s presence
could surely be felt, his was a spirit that acknowledged no boundaries. He was
there, perhaps but briefly, and then in a swirl of a salt-tinged sea-breeze and
sunlight, he was gone.
Copyright
© 2017 by Thomas McNulty
All
book and magazine cover scans are from the author’s collection.
Arizona
Ames
quotations and page numbers are from the Walter Black edition.
Click HERE to visit Zane Grey's West Society Web Page
