Best Western Writer of All Time?

Mark Twain as a young man

Mark Twain is one of my favorite Western authors. Whenever I tell someone that, their immediate reaction is that Twain was not a Western writer. When I point out that his nineteenth-century stories take place on the frontier, skeptics usually make some comment about the lack of six-guns, cowboy hats, and black-hearted desperados.  I suggest they revisit the books. Injun Joe wasn’t sitting in the pew next to Tom on Sunday mornings, and poor Tom got shot in the leg in the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Mark Twain knew the real West as few other authors. His memoir, Roughing It, tells about his experiences as a newspaper reporter in Virginia City when it was as rough as any cow town and six-guns were always at the ready. Twain actually lived the Wild West and wrote about the American frontier. That makes him a Western writer in my book.

Owen Wister was another great author who experienced the real western frontier. In fact, many scenes in The Virginian come directly from his notes taken during his summer sojourns to Wyoming in the late 1880s. Currently, I’m reading An Editor on the Comstock Lode by Wells Drury. Drury was a newspaper editor in Virginia City after Mark Twain had departed, but the hillside town was still wildly fun and dangerous as hell.

What struck me is the common cultural trait that permeates the writing of Twain, Wister, and Drury. It appears the most common characteristic of the real Old West was not gun fights, but practical jokes. All three authors relate yarns about hijinks and pranks, some of which required the participation of a large number of people—sometimes almost the entire town against one or two people not in on the joke. Westerners evidently loved practical jokes; the more elaborate the better.

Thinking on this brought to mind the Earps. They are often criticized by their detractors as small-time swindlers. Besides some more serious accusations, the Earps supposedly rigged bets to determine who would pay for drinks. Some biographers use these accusations to illustrate an unsavory aspect of their character. Perhaps. On the other hand, maybe these authors didn't understand the culture of the real Old West.

Favorite Western Writer

Mark Twain in Virginia City by Andy Thomas

My favorite Western writer is Mark Twain. Owen Wister is second. These are probably not names that come immediately to mind when thinking about Westerns, but both of these authors actually experienced the American frontier. They were there and they wrote about it so fondly that the Wild West became a cultural icon. The whole world devoured Western stories. The American Western became a staple of fiction, Hollywood, television, and daydreams.

In Roughing It, Twain tells tall tales about his time in Virginia City. It is supposed to be a nonfiction memoir, but is probably about as truthful as The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. I suspect the two men would have admired each other's ability to make a point by telling a story.

Philip Pullman said, "Thou shalt not is soon forgotten, but Once upon a time lasts forever." The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a perfect example of this axiom. Below are a few handwritten pages from this great American classic. 

Handwritten manuscripts fascinate me. I used James Madison's convention notes when I wrote Tempest at Dawn. His notes were over 230,000 words; all recorded by dipping a quill into an inkwell. I marvel that in olden days, authors  maintained continuity without the cut and paste capabilities of a modern computer. Before word processors, writers had to keep future sentences in their head as their hand scrambled to keep up with their thoughts. Tough work that required exceptional mental agility. I thank Bill Gates daily for MS Word. 

Note: the original title does not include the word The. Recent editions have generally added The.