Encyclopedia of Frontier and Western Fiction by Jon Tuska and Vicki Piekarski

Abstract

54 Western American Literature and out of each other to a confusing degree, though deliberately so according to the “Remarks” which preface the play, and the imagery is often elliptical and personal. However, the overall impression is of a haunting search for communion. The final speaker says of her ancestors: They put the stories inside you, wrapped in cloth. But then the threads began to rot away, and the stories and the rags lie jumbled in the bottom of the jar. Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge’s stories are valuable, rich and surely her own. ALICE G. HART, Logan, Utah Encyclopedia of Frontier and Western Fiction. By Jon Tuska and Vicki Piekarski. (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1983. xviii, 365 pages, $29.95.) Jon Tuska and Vicki Piekarski have edited a very useful reference guide to western writers and fiction. Their encyclopedia includes brief discussions of more than 300 authors and several noteworthy topics. Dealing with writers from Cooper to the present, most of these brief sketches include biographical information, lists of published books, and mention of movie, radio, or TV tie-ins. As Tuska notes, this is primarily “a reference work” intending “to convey factual information” (p. viii). This encyclopedia covers many more writers but less extensively and in a manner different from the essays in Erisman and Etulain, Fifty Western Writers (1982). It also provides biographical information and checklists of fiction missing in Etulain, A Bibliographical Guide to the Study of Western American Literature (1982), and is much more up-to-date than Anderson, et al, Southwestern American Literature: A Bibliography (1980) and Nemanic , A Bibliographical Guide to ,Midwestern Literature (1981). While Tuska and Piekarski are less comprehensive than the essays in Vinson, Twentieth-Century Western Writers (1983), their book is available at about one-third the price of the latter guide. Although the two editors list several contributing or consulting editors, they seem to have written most of the entries. Some entries are more pointed — maybe slanted — than Tuska suggests in his preface. The editors reveal a strong interest in Indian and women writers and in writers working on these topics. On the other hand, their discussions of Louis L’Amour, Alan LeMay, and Larry McMurtry are par­ ticularly unfriendly. Generally, however, the entries make good use of perti­ nent secondary sources, although the discussion of George Pattullo illustrates the problem of too much reliance on secondary sources. In addition to treating such major figures as James Fenimore Cooper, Mark Twain, Willa Cather, and John Steinbeck, this volume treats many less well-known writers. The brief commentaries on this latter group, especially Reviews 55 writers of “formulary” Westerns, are particularly useful. One wonders, how­ ever, why such writers as Wright Morris and Edgar Watson Howe were omitted while much less notable authors are discussed. Most entries close with a mention of one or two notable secondary works on the author or topic discussed, although none are suggested for such authors as McMurtry, Fred­ erick Manfred, Conrad Richter, John Steinbeck, or Owen Wister. The editors’ emphases are also intriguing: Zane Grey is given 12 pages; Frederick Faust (Max Brand), Ernest Haycox, and Clarence Mulford, 5-6 pages; and Frederick Glidden (Luke Short) and Wister more than 4 pages. But Cather is limited to 2/2 pages, Steinbeck to 2, and Wallace Stegner to less than 2. Also included in the volume are brief discussions of five pertinent topics. The material presented on “House Names” and “Pulp and Slick Western Stories” is very useful, much more so than accounts on “Historical Personali­ ties,” “Native Americans,” and “W'omen on the Frontier.” Still, all these topical entries will be of use to general readers, if less so for specialists in the history and literature of the West. While a few errors crop up here and there, this volume contains far fewer mistakes than most fact-filled volumes like this. All in all, this encyclopedia is a handy sourcebook for biographical and bibliographical information about nearly all major western writers of fiction. While it isless evaluative and analytical than some recent reference works, it is especially thorough on listings of notable western fiction and provides more information on western films than is...