Owen Wister Out West: His Journals and Letters

This is an absolutely beautiful book. Wister journaled throughout his life, particularly during his trips to the Frontier West. HIs voice is so solid and his style so easy. He captures the West in all of its beauty and all of its ugliness. The place and the people who populated this part of the country were hard and elegant, base and full of integrity all at the same time. Wister can describe a lonely mountain town, shanty construction and all, in such a compeling and true way. I have read few accounts of a Western sunset which are as accurate and awe inspiring as those found in his journals.

Wister, a contemporary of Rudyard Kipling, Henry James, Frederic Remington, and Theodore Roosevelt, did not have the same staying power of show more reputation evidenced by his friends. But it is not because he wasn't deserving of the reputation. His journals show the germination of his Virginian, in stories relayed to him from the men and women he met in his travels. This first cowboy of modern literature is still the mold by which all other cowboys are shaped in literature and screen. Unfortunately, Wister was not a prolific writer and left u s with only a few stories by which his career should be measured. These journals are evidence of a style and voice that, were he more prolific, would have been compared kindly to near any writer who preceeded or followed him.

5 hearty bones!!!!! show less