Friday in Boise
Last week's event in Cody was a success all around. Attendance was great -- something like 40 people, and on a night when the city council was also having a controversial meeting. The panel was interesting. Paul Fees did a nice analysis of the text of Lockhart's novel "The Lady Doc," highlighting several passages that hadn't previously stood out for me. Chris Finley reported that the National Park Service has received some great grant funding to do some more restoration work on the old Lockhart ranch. And a fourth panelist, I was glad to learn, was David Dominick. As a college student in the late 1950s, Dominick spent several afternoons listening to Lockhart's stories. The Yale University paper he wrote about that experience still stood as the best introduction to Lockhart when I started my research five years ago.
The best panels achieve something greater than their parts because each individual brings differing perspectives and areas of expertise that end up meshing nicely. So it was last Tuesday. Dominick's stories of Cody individuals prompted some in the audience to offer their own stories. Fees' knowledge of Cody history helped people understand this historical document. Finley and I, having interviewed several people who knew Lockhart, were able to help probe her odd dynamic.
A panel on the same topic this Friday offers a potentially very different situation. At the Western Literature Association conference in Boise, I will be again be speaking about Lockhart and "The Lady Doc," this time with Victoria Lamont and Christine Bold, who are both English professors at Canadian universities. Lamont is giving her own take on "The Lady Doc" while Bold will be looking at historical forces that shaped such novels. Again I'm looking forward to a rich discussion, as I consider Lamont to be the world's leading expert on early female writers of Westerns. Her work really helped me put Lockhart in perspective, and I'm hoping our combination can do the same for the audience in Boise. We'll be speaking in the White Room of the Grove Hotel at 9:30 on Friday morning.
I'm always interested in feedback, via info at johnclaytonbooks dot com
The best panels achieve something greater than their parts because each individual brings differing perspectives and areas of expertise that end up meshing nicely. So it was last Tuesday. Dominick's stories of Cody individuals prompted some in the audience to offer their own stories. Fees' knowledge of Cody history helped people understand this historical document. Finley and I, having interviewed several people who knew Lockhart, were able to help probe her odd dynamic.
A panel on the same topic this Friday offers a potentially very different situation. At the Western Literature Association conference in Boise, I will be again be speaking about Lockhart and "The Lady Doc," this time with Victoria Lamont and Christine Bold, who are both English professors at Canadian universities. Lamont is giving her own take on "The Lady Doc" while Bold will be looking at historical forces that shaped such novels. Again I'm looking forward to a rich discussion, as I consider Lamont to be the world's leading expert on early female writers of Westerns. Her work really helped me put Lockhart in perspective, and I'm hoping our combination can do the same for the audience in Boise. We'll be speaking in the White Room of the Grove Hotel at 9:30 on Friday morning.
I'm always interested in feedback, via info at johnclaytonbooks dot com
