154 Western American Literature Ohiyesa should be read by anyone with even a mild interest in the nature of American Indian cultural resistence in the twentieth century. All who do so will no doubt share my debt of gratitude to Raymond Wilson for having written it and to the University of Illinois Press for having published it. WARD CHURCHILL, University of Colorado The American Cowboy. By Lonn Taylor and Ingrid Maar. (Washington: Library of Congress, 1983. Studies in American Folklife, no. 2. 228 pages; art, graphics and photographs; softcover $18.95. New York: Harper & Row, 1983; hardcover $50.00.) The American Cowboy exhibit — a massive collection of western art, sculpture, photographs, books, movie posters, clothing, branding irons and assorted memorabilia — opened at the Library of Congress on March 26, 1983. It will be seen in San Antonio, Denver and Calgary, Alberta before it closes at California’s San Jose Museum of Art on October 26, 1984. If you are never fortunate enough to see the exhibit, the catalog will suffice. It is a handsome book and leaves nothing of merit unillustrated. Erwin E. Smith’s photographs of ranch life in the Texas Panhandle (circa 1907-16) are authentic and sometimes candid. His best photographs can be compared to Charles M. Russell paintings. Russell is represented in the book by a number of works, including the remarkable At Rope’s End. Regulars like Remington, N. C. Wyeth and Rufus F. Zogbaum are also in evidence. They seem even more sentimental when contrasted to Lionel Adams’ chainsaw-carved, house paint-dabbed, wood sculpture Cowboy. The captioning is rich and informative. The text of an exhibit is at best only half read while strolling through a gallery. Lonn Taylor, Deputy Director for Collections and Research at Santa Fe’s Museum of New Mexico, was guest curator for the exhibit. He also wrote two essays for the catalog — The Open-Range Cowboy of the Nineteenth Century and The Cowboy Hero: An American Myth Examined. Taylor has a firm knowledge of the brief era of trail drives (1866-86) and writes of it with understanding rather than nostalgia. “The trail driver,” he reminds us, “was constantly exposed to the elements and had to do his job in drenching rain, freezing sleet, and parching dust.” His essay on the evolution of the cowboy hero covers familiar ground. He writes of Wister, Lewis and Grey, and pays halting homage to folklorist John A. Lomax. He may have done better by examining the novels of Eugene Manlove Rhodes or giving due credit to pioneer cowboy song collector N. Howard (“Jack” ) Thorp. The last two entries, Modern Cowboy Life on the Texas Plains by B. Byron Price, and Bubba and Virgil: Cowboys Again! A Dialectical Inquiry into the Recurring Fantasy of the Equestrian Herdsman (Singing Variety) by Dave Hickey are truly distinctive. Price writes in an easy, non-academic prose. He tells us that not only is the cowboy myth still with us, so is the real Reviews 155 cowboy. Hickey writes a breathless dialogue between two Good Old Boys named Virgil Childress and Bubba Burkette. He says Bubba and Virgil “are closely related in his mind to those two young gentlemen who discuss matters aesthetic and cultured in Oscar Wilde’s Intentions.” For example — Virgil: “I mean have you ever known a cowboy, working, rodeo, or feedlot, who wasn’t completely eat-up with the idea of being a ‘cowboy’— that didn’t spend half his available time watching ‘cowboys’ on TV or ‘cowboys’ in the movies, or listening to ‘cowboys’ on the radio, or reading about ‘cowboys’ in a comic book or in some Louis L’Amour novel?” The American Cowboy is not the final word on the subject, but it contains fine writing and beautiful illustrations. It is a pasan to the cowboy’s past, present and future. J. WESLEY CLARK, Galesville, Maryland Willa: The Life of Willa Cather. By Phyllis C. Robinson. (New York: Doubleday &Company, Inc., 1983. 280 pages, $17.95.) Phyllis C. Robinson’s Willa: The Life of Willa Cather is best classified in the sub-genre known as “popular” biography. Written with the singular purpose of examining and exploiting the lesbian question in...