The (scholarly) reviews are in
Although newspapers and magazines traditionally run book reviews only immediately upon publication, scholarly journals work at a slower pace. These reviews come out a year or two after the publication date, but because they are written by experts in the field, they tend to be quite thoughtful.
Thus the scholarly reviews are now coming in for The Cowboy Girl, my biography of Caroline Lockhart, and I am pleased that they are generally positive. For example, in the Journal of the West, Miles Lewis said that it “succeeded admirably” and that “Whether or not you like Lockhart’s fidelity or character on a personal level, Clayton has crafted a strong, enlightening account of her life as a self-described Cowboy Girl.”
I’ve been rather nervous about how scholars would receive the book. I myself have no graduate degrees, and so the research skills I brought to the project consisted primarily of my curiosity and the help that others would provide. At the same time, however, I am puzzled that scholars of Western history and literature have not given Lockhart more attention. But my fear has always been that the problem is not how that scholarship has evolved, but my failure to understand it.
Thus the reviews are gratifying. Several current scholars do agree that Lockhart deserves attention. Victoria Lamont’s review in Western American Literature is everything I could hope for:
Two features of this review particularly excited me. One is that I consider Lamont the world’s leading expert on female writers of the Western frontier. In doing background research I had dug up her PhD thesis, and found it compelling. Her opinion matters. The other is that her discussion of “frontier mythmaking in its historical context” (too lengthy to quote in full here) brought me back to when I was deciding to write the book, and was fascinated with how our romantic views of the Old West came to be, and what the lives must have been like of the people who thought they were close enough in time to those views to actually live them. When it came to the actual writing of the book, I tried not to make this theme too overt, because I wanted to keep the narrative drive, but I was delighted that a critic was still able to see it.
I'm always interested in feedback, via info at johnclaytonbooks dot com
Thus the scholarly reviews are now coming in for The Cowboy Girl, my biography of Caroline Lockhart, and I am pleased that they are generally positive. For example, in the Journal of the West, Miles Lewis said that it “succeeded admirably” and that “Whether or not you like Lockhart’s fidelity or character on a personal level, Clayton has crafted a strong, enlightening account of her life as a self-described Cowboy Girl.”
I’ve been rather nervous about how scholars would receive the book. I myself have no graduate degrees, and so the research skills I brought to the project consisted primarily of my curiosity and the help that others would provide. At the same time, however, I am puzzled that scholars of Western history and literature have not given Lockhart more attention. But my fear has always been that the problem is not how that scholarship has evolved, but my failure to understand it.
Thus the reviews are gratifying. Several current scholars do agree that Lockhart deserves attention. Victoria Lamont’s review in Western American Literature is everything I could hope for:
John Clayton’s The Cowboy Girl is as meticulously researched as it is a bona fine page-turner… What sets The Cowboy Girl apart from standard woks of western Americana, aside from the inherently sensational life of its subject, is the way it weaves together details of both Lockhart’s public and private life with insights about the historical, social, and cultural developments of which Lockhart was a part. The result is a fascinating read… a rare revelation of frontier mythology as lived experience.
Two features of this review particularly excited me. One is that I consider Lamont the world’s leading expert on female writers of the Western frontier. In doing background research I had dug up her PhD thesis, and found it compelling. Her opinion matters. The other is that her discussion of “frontier mythmaking in its historical context” (too lengthy to quote in full here) brought me back to when I was deciding to write the book, and was fascinated with how our romantic views of the Old West came to be, and what the lives must have been like of the people who thought they were close enough in time to those views to actually live them. When it came to the actual writing of the book, I tried not to make this theme too overt, because I wanted to keep the narrative drive, but I was delighted that a critic was still able to see it.
I'm always interested in feedback, via info at johnclaytonbooks dot com
Labels: Cowboy Girl
