Caroline Lockhart's talented ex-boyfriends
When I was writing The Cowboy Girl, there were dozens of tangents that I had to stop myself from going down if I ever wanted to finish. Many of these tangents involved Caroline Lockhart's boyfriends. In addition to being quite a character herself, Caroline's taste in men ran toward the unusual, the talented, the zest-for-life types.
One such was Valentin di Colonna, also known as Bill Miller, whom Lockhart described as "the son of a bona fide Italian count.” He helped draw posters for the initial Cody Stampede rodeo. I was intrigued by him, wanted to learn more. Was he really nobility? A good artist? Whatever happened to him? But their affair was incidental to Lockhart's quest, and I reluctantly set him aside.
Luckily, Roy R. Behrens has done that digging, and discovered that di Colonna served in the American Camouflage Corps during World War I -- apparently at the forefront of using protective coloration in warfare. A fine artist indeed. Behrens has the full story (to which I contributed) here.
I'm always interested in feedback, via info at johnclaytonbooks dot com
One such was Valentin di Colonna, also known as Bill Miller, whom Lockhart described as "the son of a bona fide Italian count.” He helped draw posters for the initial Cody Stampede rodeo. I was intrigued by him, wanted to learn more. Was he really nobility? A good artist? Whatever happened to him? But their affair was incidental to Lockhart's quest, and I reluctantly set him aside.
Luckily, Roy R. Behrens has done that digging, and discovered that di Colonna served in the American Camouflage Corps during World War I -- apparently at the forefront of using protective coloration in warfare. A fine artist indeed. Behrens has the full story (to which I contributed) here.
I'm always interested in feedback, via info at johnclaytonbooks dot com
Labels: Caroline Lockhart, Cowboy Girl
A glossary for "Me-Smith"
When Caroline Lockhart's first novel, "Me-Smith," was published, the New York Times cited its "infallible ear for local vernacular," among other qualities. At one point famed critic H.L. Mencken at paired Lockhart with Sinclair Lewis and Ring Lardner in their marvelous use of local vernacular.
But it can be a bit intimidating today. Over at "Buddies in the Saddle," Ron Scheer has posted a wonderful glossary of terms appearing in "Me-Smith." I was surprised at how many there were, and how foreign many seemed to me. (I must have glossed over them while reading.) A keen reminder of the constant changes in language, and the current obscurity of the tiny subculture Lockhart was writing about.
I'm always interested in feedback, via info at johnclaytonbooks dot com
But it can be a bit intimidating today. Over at "Buddies in the Saddle," Ron Scheer has posted a wonderful glossary of terms appearing in "Me-Smith." I was surprised at how many there were, and how foreign many seemed to me. (I must have glossed over them while reading.) A keen reminder of the constant changes in language, and the current obscurity of the tiny subculture Lockhart was writing about.
I'm always interested in feedback, via info at johnclaytonbooks dot com
Labels: Caroline Lockhart, Cowboy Girl
The Lockhart contemporaries reunion tour
You know the feeling you have about old classmates, or compatriots in some ancient but intense experience? That’s how I feel about many of the people in Caroline Lockhart’s life: I wonder whatever happened to them, and I hope it was generally positive.
The feeling played out effectively for me on Wednesday night, when I spoke to the Yellowstone Corral of Westerners, a group of Billings-area folks interested in Western history. We were talking about Lockhart’s efforts to set up her ranch on the Dryhead (the climactic section of The Cowboy Girl). I showed a picture of one of Lockhart’s boyfriends, Lou Ericson, the fellow who had signed his name to the ranch purchase in 1926.
“We knew Lou Ericson,” said a voice from the audience. It came from Shirley Steele, speaking on behalf of herself and her husband, the esteemed artist Ben Steele. Ericson had been a friend of Ben’s father, and the younger Steeles visited him shortly after their wedding, at the Spear Ranch southeast of Hardin. Ericson told them of his days as a jockey, but not of his association with the notorious novelist/rancher.
A year or two after they purchased the ranch, Lockhart and Ericson split up. (There was a gunfight involved.) She banished him from the L Slash Heart. I was never able to find out what had happened to him, how he felt about Lockhart and his time on the Dryhead. But I was gratified to hear the Steeles report that he lived to a ripe old age, and seemed at that age to be quite happy.
I'm always interested in feedback, via info at johnclaytonbooks dot com
The feeling played out effectively for me on Wednesday night, when I spoke to the Yellowstone Corral of Westerners, a group of Billings-area folks interested in Western history. We were talking about Lockhart’s efforts to set up her ranch on the Dryhead (the climactic section of The Cowboy Girl). I showed a picture of one of Lockhart’s boyfriends, Lou Ericson, the fellow who had signed his name to the ranch purchase in 1926.
“We knew Lou Ericson,” said a voice from the audience. It came from Shirley Steele, speaking on behalf of herself and her husband, the esteemed artist Ben Steele. Ericson had been a friend of Ben’s father, and the younger Steeles visited him shortly after their wedding, at the Spear Ranch southeast of Hardin. Ericson told them of his days as a jockey, but not of his association with the notorious novelist/rancher.
A year or two after they purchased the ranch, Lockhart and Ericson split up. (There was a gunfight involved.) She banished him from the L Slash Heart. I was never able to find out what had happened to him, how he felt about Lockhart and his time on the Dryhead. But I was gratified to hear the Steeles report that he lived to a ripe old age, and seemed at that age to be quite happy.
I'm always interested in feedback, via info at johnclaytonbooks dot com
Labels: Caroline Lockhart, Cowboy Girl
Caroline gets BUSTed
The Febuary/March issue of BUST magazine (“for women with something to get off their chest”) includes a great article by Terry Selucky. Titled “Home on the Range” (and teased on the cover as “Cowgirls gone wild”), it argues that cowgirls were among the first and best feminists. As evidence it cites, among others, the life of Caroline Lockhart.
Selucky and I had a far-ranging interview (set up in part by Margot Kahn). I agreed with her basic thesis, that women of the Old West (and New) had an independence, free spirit, and contentment that make them excellent models for young girls today. But Selucky had a problem that I wasn’t able to help her with: most contemporary independent female ranch owners and horsewomen don’t think of themselves as cowgirls.
In the article, Selucky argues that “the term ‘cowgirl’ has been hijacked, so that we can’t even recognize a real cowgirl when we see one.” I think it’s a little more complicated than that, because even in Lockhart’s day the term ‘cowgirl’ did not fit in with the proto-feminist agenda.
Cowgirls are generally women who love the West, the landscape, the lifestyle, the horses and cattle and men who work them -- and who are generally seen as part of a family unit: a daughter, wife, mother. Lockhart was too independent and ornery for such a family-centric role. In metaphorical terms, she wanted to ride off into the sunset alone, just like a cowboy does. And I’m not sure that option was (or maybe even still is) open to cowgirls.
That’s why Lockhart self-identified not as a cowgirl but as the "cowboy girl." And that’s why I selected that phrase as the title for the book.
I'm always interested in feedback, via info at johnclaytonbooks dot com
Selucky and I had a far-ranging interview (set up in part by Margot Kahn). I agreed with her basic thesis, that women of the Old West (and New) had an independence, free spirit, and contentment that make them excellent models for young girls today. But Selucky had a problem that I wasn’t able to help her with: most contemporary independent female ranch owners and horsewomen don’t think of themselves as cowgirls.
In the article, Selucky argues that “the term ‘cowgirl’ has been hijacked, so that we can’t even recognize a real cowgirl when we see one.” I think it’s a little more complicated than that, because even in Lockhart’s day the term ‘cowgirl’ did not fit in with the proto-feminist agenda.
Cowgirls are generally women who love the West, the landscape, the lifestyle, the horses and cattle and men who work them -- and who are generally seen as part of a family unit: a daughter, wife, mother. Lockhart was too independent and ornery for such a family-centric role. In metaphorical terms, she wanted to ride off into the sunset alone, just like a cowboy does. And I’m not sure that option was (or maybe even still is) open to cowgirls.
That’s why Lockhart self-identified not as a cowgirl but as the "cowboy girl." And that’s why I selected that phrase as the title for the book.
I'm always interested in feedback, via info at johnclaytonbooks dot com
Labels: Caroline Lockhart, Cowboy Girl
Never judge a book by the cover (of its reprint)
I often get asked whether Caroline Lockhart’s novels are still in print. As of this year, boy are they ever! Did The Cowboy Girl play a role? Maybe, but technology played a bigger one.
If you need any proof of the way the “Long Tail” economy is growing exponentially, look no further than the explosion of recent republications of Lockhart’s books, originally published in the 1910s. Most are from print-on-demand outfits. I imagine they’re aided by the fact that Project Gutenberg has provided the text for these books. All the publisher has to do is grab the text from Web, insert into its printing software, add a cover, and wait for somebody to make an order through an outfit like bn.com.
But it turns out there’s one step in that newfangled-publication process that turns out to be more difficult than it looks: adding a cover. Here are three Lockhart books from an outfit called Tutis publishing.
Is The Dude Wrangler about ancient Greece? Does The Fighting Shepherdess involve Indian maidens and Egyptian pottery? Is the Lady Doc a contemporary medical thriller? Suffice it to say: no. In fact I’d have to say that these are some of the absolute worst covers I can imagine given the content of these novels. I picture some hapless Tutis executive, armed with a CD-full of stock images, required to assign them to titles at a rate of 20 or 30 an hour.
On the other hand, hey, anything to promote reading and books. And especially, anything to promote unjustly-forgotten novelists like Lockhart. But here’s hoping this process of reprinting old novels improves a bit as it matures.
I'm always interested in feedback, via info at johnclaytonbooks dot com
Labels: Cowboy Girl, publishing realities, technology
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
The Montana Arts and Culture Magazine
I am honored to be featured in the June/July issue of The Montana Arts and Culture Magazine, a celebration of the creative arts published in Billings and distributed free throughout the state.
The magazine’s Writer’s Corner this issue features an excerpt from The Cowboy Girl. I’m particularly gratified to see nonfiction celebrated as a “creative art,” as well as being associated with the many talented people featured in the magazine.
To get a copy for yourself, email publisher Randy Vralsted at mtartsandculture [at] earthlink.net.
I'm always interested in feedback, via info at johnclaytonbooks dot com
The magazine’s Writer’s Corner this issue features an excerpt from The Cowboy Girl. I’m particularly gratified to see nonfiction celebrated as a “creative art,” as well as being associated with the many talented people featured in the magazine.
To get a copy for yourself, email publisher Randy Vralsted at mtartsandculture [at] earthlink.net.
I'm always interested in feedback, via info at johnclaytonbooks dot com
Labels: Cowboy Girl
