Zane Grey: Man of the West

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Text originally published in 1949 under the same title.

© Borodino Books 2018, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

Publisher’s Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

ZANE GREY: MAN OF THE WEST

BY

JEAN KARR

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 3

ZANE GREY by W. Livingston Larned 4

Acknowledgments 5

List of Illustrations 6

Preface 7

Jim of the Cave 12

The Terror of the Terrace 14

The Pitcher 17

College Days 23

The Lean Years 26

Buffalo Jones 30

The Turn of the Tide 34

Tonto Basin 39

In the Jungles of Mexico 47

The Fisherman 72

Across Death Valley 80

The Cruise of the Fisherman 89

A Home in the West 104

Fishing in New Zealand Waters 111

Father and Son 119

A Wanderer Comes Home 123

The Last Great Adventure 130

The Books of Zane Grey 134

NOVELS 134

BOOKS FOR BOYS 139

OUTDOOR BOOKS 141

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 144

ZANE GREY by W. Livingston Larned

Been to Avalon with Grey...been most everywhere;

Chummed with him and fished with him in every Sportsman’s lair.

Helped him with the white Sea-bass and Barracuda haul,

Shared the Tuna’s sprayful sport and heard his Huntercall,

Me an’ Grey are fishin’ friends...Pals of rod and reel,

Whether it’s the sort that fights...or th’ humble eel,

On and on, through Wonderland...winds a-blowin’ free,

Catching all th’ fins that grow...Sportsman Grey an’ Me.

Been to Florida with Zane...scouting down th’ coast;

Whipped the deep for Tarpon, too, that natives love th’ most.

Seen the smiling, tropic isles that pass, in green review,

Gathered cocoanut and moss where Southern skies were blue.

Seen him laugh that boyish laugh, when things were goin’ right;

Helped him beach our little boat and kindle fires at night.

Comrades of the Open Way, the Treasure-Trove of Sea,

Port Ahoy and who cares where, with Mister Grey an’ Me!

Been to Western lands with Grey...hunted fox and deer.

Seen the Grizzly’s ugly face with danger lurkin’ near.

Slept on needles, near th’ sky, and marked th’ round moon rise

Over purpling peaks of snow that hurt a fellow’s eyes.

Gone, like Indians, under brush and to some mystic place—

Home of red men, long since gone, to join their dying race.

Yes...we’ve chummed it, onward—outward...mountain, wood, and key,

At the quiet readin’-table...Sportsman Grey an’ Me.

From Tales of Fishes, Harper & Brothers, 1919.

Acknowledgments

Among individuals who lent their assistance to the author the following deserve special thanks: Mr. Norris Schneider, teacher and Zanesville (Ohio) historian; and Mr. Ed McCaddon, sole survivor of Zane Grey’s boyhood Terrace Gang.

For background information I am indebted to Harper and Brothers; to the staff of Grosset and Dunlap, particularly to Mr. Hugh Juergens for his splendid co-operation; to Mr. Benjamin Rudd of the Library of Congress; and to Mrs. Lola Bikul for her valuable suggestions and advice; also to Miss Nellie K. Ball and Mr. George M. Cohen for their assistance in preparing the manuscript.

Too numerous to mention are the many older residents of Zanesville who contributed a wealth of personal anecdotes gleaned from their recollections of Zane Grey as a boy.

JEAN KARR

Washington, D.C.

List of Illustrations

The author did all his writing in a morris chair with a wide lapboard before him. All he needed was plenty of paper and sharpened pencils. His imagination and amazing memory did the rest.

Even at the age of sixty Zane Grey could outlast many a younger man in the saddle.

Zane Grey was proud of the fact that a trace of Indian blood flowed in his veins.

He was as proud of catching a five-pound steelhead as a five-hundred-pound tuna.

He became as fine a shot as any of his frontiersmen ancestors, but his interest was in conserving wild life rather than exterminating it.

On May 8, 1936, he landed this world-record Tiger Shark. Hooked off Sydney, Australia, it weighed 1036 pounds.

Zane Grey wrote every one of his six million published words in longhand.

Preface

Mr. Grey, what would you say is the secret of your success?

It was the old question. He had heard it a thousand times, from baffled critics, admiring readers, inquiring reporters, and aspiring young writers. He had always managed an answer, but never the answer. Hard work and perseverance, he might say on one occasion. Another time the substance of his reply would be Sincerity, or still another, The faith of my wife in my ability to succeed.

Zane Grey was aware that his answers were inadequate, for the question—natural as it is, and simple as it may sound—is a complex one, calling for more insight and objectivity than any writer can be expected to have in a discussion of himself or his works. Even the critics, whose business it is to explain these things, are usually incapable of wholly satisfactory explanations. This was especially true in the case of Zane Grey, whose rapid rise to best-seller fame was nothing short of phenomenal.

Here was a man who, with no special training in writing, with nothing to sustain him except his belief in himself, abandoned a profession which would at least have afforded a decent living for his family and himself, and in the most miserable poverty doggedly persisted toward his goal of becoming an author. To make the puzzle more baffling, his works were repeatedly rejected by astute publishers who were convinced that the man had no talent whatsoever, either for fiction or non-fiction, and that his works would never sell.

For years the determined author financed himself or relied on the generosity of his family while he experimented with all kinds of writing, even publishing some at his own expense. He was thirty-five years old, and had accumulated a staggering collection of rejections, before a publisher accepted one of his novels. This, it must be noted, was done with some misgiving and with no assurance that the author’s future manuscripts would be given favorable consideration.

Twenty years later, skeptical publishers were still marveling at Zane Grey’s mounting success. A total of twenty-five novels had sold during that period over seventeen million copies to an enthusiastic reading public estimated at 56 million. Demand for reprint rights and movie rights was almost taken for granted. Foreign editions had appeared in twenty different languages, including French, Spanish, German, Italian, and the Scandinavian. In 1948, nine years after the death of Zane Grey, his books were still in constant demand and his publishers reported a total sale of 28 million copies of his sixty-nine titles.

It read like a Horatio Alger success story. It was too fantastic to be believed.

Yet all the while, critics were insisting that this author, who had won himself a permanent place in the hearts of his readers with his dashing tales of American frontier life and the glamorous West, really had no talent for writing at all. They said he lacked humor and fluency. Some said his plots were improbable, his views of life unrealistic. Others said his characterization lacked subtlety and finesse. As for his style, some labeled it tedious and others said it was archaic and stiff. His publishers termed it bludgy, a word of doubtful meaning which exists, if at all, only in the secret dictionary of publishers; but though its definition is not clear, its very sound implies unfavorable criticism. Burton Rascoe was even less kindly but far more specific on the subject of style when he stated flatly that Zane Grey possessed no merit whatsoever, in either style or substance.

But still his stories sold, in book form and as magazine serials; reprint sales were assured; Hollywood producers clamored for movie rights. This despite all the qualities in which, according to the critics, Zane Grey was lacking. Where, then, was the answer?

Luck! chorused the critics, hastening to explain that the West was still new and exciting—a place of escape for office-weary Easterners and a source of pride to native Westerners. The writer had simply been fortunate in hitting upon a background that caught the public fancy. Luckily, too, his travels through the American Southwest had served to lend authenticity to his descriptions and local color.

Having summed up the success secret in one syllable, the critics relaxed, smugly unaware of the flaw in their reasoning that had produced, again, only a partial explanation.

Of course there was an element of luck in Zane Grey’s success, as in the success of any writer. Zane Grey would have been the last to deny it and the first to acknowledge its weight. Having suffered ill fortune for so many years, he was all the more impressed by the unpredictable change in his luck. For he knew only too well that the success or failure of a book may depend on the timeliness of its subject; on an editor’s mood, on the relative merits of other manuscripts currently competing for the publisher’s attention; on the temper of the people and the manner in which a book is presented to them. It would have been foolish to ignore the importance of luck, but it would have been infinitely more foolish to rely upon luck alone.

Further disproving the claims of the critics who attributed his success to the fortunate choice of the Western theme was the evidence of Grey’s increasing popularity in other fields. His Western romances had undoubtedly earned his reputation, but not all his works were of the West, and yet they sold. As time went by, there was more and more demand for the historical novels he had written early in his career, and at the same time he was earning a reputation as the writer of books for boys, stories of college days, of baseball and the world of sports, of outdoor adventures in hunting and fishing.

That presented another phase of the puzzle: the variety in his topics and the variety in the types of people who read his books. He had a faithful audience among office workers, cab drivers, miners, sportsmen, factory workers and professional men, newsboys and millionaires. His public included women as well as men: secretaries, salesgirls, schoolteachers, and housewives. Moreover, his popularity had spread all over the country, East and West, North and South, though publishers’ figures revealed the inexplicable fact that sales percentages were highest in New York and Boston.

Then, for a time, it became the vogue among critics to interpret everything in the light of the American spirit, a newly-discovered, intangible something that fed upon national heritage. Literary circles began to recognize the merit of folklore and legend, of ballads and anecdotes that had sprung up spontaneously as a part of American growth. Mythical figures took their places along with national heroes in the formation of the cultural pattern. Paul Bunyan and his Blue Ox were as American as George Washington and the cherry tree, and Casey Jones was as American as The Star-Spangled Banner. Possibly Zane Grey had his place in the establishment of the great American epic.

Here the critics were hitting closer to the mark, for without doubt Zane Grey’s themes were thoroughly American, dealing with the rigors of frontier life and the heroic characters it produced; Indian massacres and the American Revolution; the vastness and promise of the West; the appeal of outdoor life; hunting and fishing; riding and roping; school days and baseball, the national sport. Naturally Americans liked to read of the exploits of their pioneer forebears, of the wealth in resources and opportunity their country offered, of their favorite sports and their fondest memories.

But the Zane Grey appeal was more than national; it was universal. Millions of copies of his books, in English and in translation, were sold on the European continent, in South America, Africa, and Australia. Several queens of Europe listed him among their favorite writers. The Queen of Rumania so admired his books that she requested him to dedicate one to her. In Paris his books were among the most popular Foreign Fiction. In a Spanish castle, an American visitor observed shelf upon shelf of books bound in immaculate white leather, while on the table lay a leather volume, well-worn and soiled, bearing the familiar title, Riders of the Purple Sage. Apparently the field of Americana was being discovered abroad as well as at home—but surely there was something to explain why Zane Grey’s own particular contribution to Americana found such favor abroad.

Failing to find the answer to their question either in a study of Zane Grey’s writings or of his readers, critics were at last prompted to take a closer look at the man himself. It was a good idea, but like many a good idea, it was not entirely successful.

They were impressed by the man’s quiet manner, his rugged features, his appearance of indefatigability. He was not the powerful giant that people were inclined to picture when they read of his adventurous life; rather, he was surprisingly slight of build, with a wiriness that suggested great physical stamina supplemented by a kind of restless nervous energy. In countenance and dress he looked the part of the outdoorsman. His face, heavily bronzed by wind and sun, looked more youthful than the contrasting thatch of grey hair. His bright eyes were keenly observing, and yet at the same time gave the impression of looking far into the distance. His expression was usually grave and intent, but his smile was quick and friendly.

He created the impression of a man who has lived an active and interesting life, but disappointingly enough, he did not give the appearance of a successful writer, much less a world-known celebrity. He was quiet, reserved, almost shy. His extreme reluctance to talk about himself or his private life made interviewers acutely aware of the difficulty of their assignment, but equally aware that the object of their study was not being deliberately uncommunicative. In fact, he was half-apologetic about his conversational shortcomings and would occasionally confess, with a self-conscious smile, I was never much good at talking.

On some topics he spoke easily and enthusiastically—baseball, fishing, hunting, photography, his family—but about himself he had little to say. At the close of an interview, interrogators would realize that they still knew practically nothing of Zane Grey, the man.

The curious and significant fact was that Zane Grey’s readers knew him—his character, his personality, his ambitions and ideals, his moral code and his basic philosophy. Through his writings he revealed himself to the sympathetic reader, although it is quite possible that the critic’s eye, unaided by the light of sympathy, could never have seen the invisible man behind the closely-packed lines of narrative. Like the elves and brownies who are visible only to the eyes of believing children, Zane Grey was visible only to those who shared the same daydreams and hopes, the same love of natural beauty and craving for adventure.

Sympathy unites kindred spirits, and Zane Grey’s readers were quick to recognize his sympathetic interest in them. If, as the critics said, his style was labored and lacking in fluency, that was all to the good, for it identified him among his readers, not as a professional writer with a glib pen and a ready stock of high-flown phrases, but as an ordinary man like themselves, struggling to understand his own reactions, struggling to express his innermost feelings, and half-shy in doing so. They knew, from newspaper accounts, that he no longer lived in poverty or in the boredom of office routine, yet his success and freedom never instilled envy in their hearts, for he had not lost the common touch. They knew his humble gratitude for the life that was his, and his compassion for the less fortunate with whom he was always eager to share the benefits of his experiences. They felt his imaginative sympathy kindle as he watched the laborers in the Death Valley borax mines, surrounded by a cloud of choking dust, day in, day out, deprived of the clean fresh air, the open spaces, the smell of the salt sea, because love, or duty, or economic necessity bound them to their work. They never begrudged him his comfortable homes, his private yacht which with its fishing gear was said to have cost a million dollars. That was his realm and he deserved it; but the wonderful part about it was that he was living for them the adventures they could not have themselves. He had done what all men long to do: he had made his wildest daydreams become realities.

Zane Grey became a friend to his readers. They liked him for his simple tastes, his devotion to his home and family, his genuine love of nature, his ideals of sportsmanship and his code of chivalry. They respected him for his religious beliefs, simple, sincere, and unfaltering. They liked him because he was generous and tolerant, quite positive in his likes and dislikes, and outspoken in expressing them. They admired his rough, rugged cowboys who, though lacking the veneer of convention, could be relied upon to conduct themselves as gentlemen.

Zane Grey was criticized for not producing realism in an age when realism was the literary vogue, and fellow-writers had gone overboard for Freudian psychology. But the success of his romances—clean as an ocean breeze—proved that thousands of people, like himself, were revolted by the crudeness and vulgarity of modern fiction; that they liked to think, as he did, that men are essentially decent and can rise to untold heights of nobility, given half a chance.

No one would deny that he presented a glamorized version of life, but the truth of the matter is, he wrote about life as he lived it and saw it. Instinctively he sought beauty, purity, and simplicity of life. He was repelled by the sordid and ugly. He was not blind to its existence, but his awareness of it enhanced his appreciation of the better things: the eternal beauty of age-old mountains, the mystic loneliness of the desert, the ever-changing colors of the skies, the sweeping freshness of the ocean, the fragrance of forests, and the fascination of all the creatures, great and small, that were a part of Nature’s plan. Possibly it was a matter of luck that his everyday life was filled with glamor. But Nature had equipped him with rose-colored glasses, and he never outgrew his wonder at the world’s treasures.

This was the world he wrote about. And as he wrote, he was constantly striving for a better understanding of himself and the people around him. To the many readers who already know him through his works, this story of his life is offered in the hope that it will bring a deeper understanding of Zane Grey, the man.

JEAN KARR,

Washington, D.C.

Jim of the Cave

Dr. Lewis Grey and his family lived on Convers Avenue in a section of Zanesville known as The Terrace. Behind the Grey home was an orchard and beyond the orchard was a dense thicket which provided an excellent hiding-place for a gang of young mischief-makers led by the oldest Grey boy.

Under his supervision, the youthful ruffians had dug a cave in the midst of the thicket. The location of the cave—indeed its very existence—was a deep secret. The digging had been accomplished mainly after dark, or, when daytime labor was necessary, under the watchful eyes of lookouts who gave warning if outsiders approached. Not even a handful of loose dirt was left to disclose the secret hiding-place. All the dirt displaced by excavation had been