Main Street, Wyoming; 619; Owen Wister

Main Street Wyoming is made possible by Kennicott energy company proud to be a part of Wyoming's future in the coal and uranium industries which includes exploration mining and production. And the Wyoming Council for the Humanities enriching the lives of Wyoming people through the study of Wyoming history Bell use and ideas. When Owen Wister first arrived in Medicine Bow Wyoming in 1885. Who could have predicted this thin young man from Philadelphia would create one of America's longest enduring characters. The Virginian joined us on Main Street Wyoming when my guest help us to learn more about this fascinating writer Owen wisdom and his stories of Wyoming which have become a part of our national culture. And. Oh and.

Welcome to Main Street Wyoming. I'm Deborah Hammond and we're here to separate fact from fiction. To learn about Owen Wister part in creating the legendary western cowboy. We'll also be looking at Wyoming's impact on Wister and Wister his impact on Wyoming. My guests are Jay Nelson and John Nisbet. Jane is director of the writing center at the University of Wyoming. She's an author and contributor to the Encyclopedia of Western writers John Nesbitt an instructor of English and Spanish at Eastern Wyoming college in Torrington is a novelist of hard cover westerns and incidentally he wrote his dissertation on the western American novel. I have to thank the two of you between the two of you you've traveled hundreds of miles to come to our studio here in Riverton and I'm really anxious to get right into your topic. But before we start we're going to show a little film clip that we've put together about Owen was just a brief biography. So let's watch them. Owen Wister was born in 1860 to a wealthy Philadelphia family.

After graduation from Harvard he continued his music studies in Europe. His physician father encouraged him to return home to pursue a more profitable career in the business world. Within two years of his return listers health seriously deteriorated. His father sent him to the Wyoming Territory for his recovery. WISTER kept copious notes of his trips and experiences and quickly recovered from his medical problems. WISTER returned to the east and entered Harvard Law School. He began a successful law career in Philadelphia but as he later described it he couldn't get Wyoming out of his head by 1891. He began writing full time and soon was a respected author of Western stories. He published his landmark novel The Virginian in 19 too. And.

To this day. WISTER his novel of friends here while Maine remains the prototype. For stories about the West. On ways to began rioting over a century ago but here we are today still talking about him in his writing. Jane why are we still talking about this man and what he produced. Well probably from the sheer interest in Owen Wister I read yesterday and reviewing for this that he has sold at one point eight million copies of the Virginian which must mean that a bestseller for at least 80 or 90 years now. Because people are still reading his book I think we still find something enduring about his characters and about the setting in Wyoming. My particular thought about what we like about the book is that it tells us something about the coming of age both a character like the Virginian who was aged 20 to age 30 in that book a very important age group for Americans

and also the coming of age of civilization and the society the coming of age of Wyoming. In the process of becoming a state that's interest. That's an interesting perspective John do you think. Does that ring true for you. Yes I agree with that I think another reason people have always read it is because they have always read it. It's sort of well they're sort of a who's who in literature and in Western American literature especially looking at a survey the other day by Western Writers of America which is a nationwide organization of people who write Western mainly fiction and some historical nonfiction also for a living and they had a survey recently about what were the best Westerns of all times what were the best western short stories in the best nonfiction books and so forth of all time. And it was sort of like a who's who. One of the three best short stories for example was the rock of the luck of Roaring Camp and the outcast of Poker Flat by Bret Harte. Now you stack those up against all of the Best Western short stories of all times and

those are miserable stories. And yet those are the stories that people recognize the titles of the Virginias much better literature than that but I do believe that one reason it has always been popular is that it's recognition yet has been recognized people continue to read it because they continue to read it. It sort of gets perpetuated but it does have a very enduring interest also. Well help me understand how to get on the list what was unique about it. I'm having trouble thinking about the year 19 to where would this book be any comparison to the other books. Right. You've written about. That's an interesting question because if we look at literary history that's a time that is kind of a gap in American literature. Not the whole lot of famous American novels have been produced or were produced in the first couple of decades of the 20th century. Mark Twain is now writing anymore and there are some being written by Henry James. But literary historians identify that. As a as an interesting gap.

And so when he was when that book was written and it was a bestseller for two years maybe it was partly because of the other things that were being written if it were just not the same interest level for people. Potentially though I'd hesitate to say that was that's why it was a bestseller and there was the fascination with the West too at that time wasn't there. All Certainly So I see it is a late 19th century novel and very much a late 19th century novel. And so people are comfortable reading what they have been reading. Yes. And then it is new in the sense that it's a mainstream novel but it's about the American West which mainstream novels up to then weren't they were about Boston they were about New York about Americans who went to France. Well let me ask you this I mean here the story that we've heard about Owen Wister he's from a wealthy Philadelphia family he's an Easterner he comes out of the West falls in love with that in this book and in all of his writings when he described it was he describing what the West is really like or how much of an influence that his background being an Easterner have on what he wrote.

Well I think the setting of his stories and his novels is accurate. He kept voluminous journals when he came west every summer. And was very tuned into the geography so part of the attraction of his fiction is that if it makes realistic sense in where it set. On top of that setting he puts characters that make sense to Easterners. And I think that's why we like that book The setting is part of the country that everybody loves. Everybody loves the West well and in fact I mean if you're talking about specifics when you talk about Wyoming people when they read his works there are actual spots in Wyoming What were some of the settings that he used from our state. Well Medicine Bow is probably the most famous one because the opening chapters take place in medicine maybe about the first three chapters something like that yes the whole opening scene is the opening section of the book takes place in Medicine Bow after that he goes I think like two hundred and

sixty two miles into the interior of the state. Then after that the geography becomes less specific. But it seems to me ender around the DuBois area in the chrome heart area and there may be the big horns and there are some mention of Yellowstone and where these places that we had actually gone so when he went was it firsthand knowledge that he had. Yes he had Sure very specific first hand knowledge of the West he traveled every summer for several summers in a row and once he became a writer he came out to collect material and he hunted in the West and he lived on ranches in the West. So then I guess the next question is if he was physically in those places and he's describing real places was he describing real people or were they fictional characters. One time when I visited over in Dubois about 10 years ago I was giving a talk with the Humanities Council there and I was visiting with some people who were in charge of the museum there and they said that there was. A fellow who lived in Dubois who had I think a grandfather

or great uncle but at any rate some ancestor who was a few generations back who had indeed been the scout and the guide who had been Westerners mentor I guess in the wilderness during that time and who had been to some extent a model for the character of the Virginian. I don't remember the name of the fellow now but I imagine somebody around Dubois probably knows the answer. To that that God was George West I don't know if that's a name you know about but I'm sure a number of people who could claim that I was you know the person that the Virginian is based on or that's been a fun game to play for decades and decades and Lister himself would always kind of smile secretly when the when the subject came up who was the original Virginian The Virginian I think is a composite of characters that he might have met in the West. More likely he's a composite of easterners that he also knew his short stories that he was writing in the early

1890s are based fairly faithfully on incidents that he had heard about. While he was in the West and some characters. Well let me ask you John you're an author you've written these. You've written two hardcover Westerns one called one eyed cowboy wild I love that title and the other one twin rivers which is just come out. They're set in the 1890s but when you go about creating characters do you create composites as as we're talking about the potential that that Western would have done with the creative process here in terms of that kind of thing of putting it together. Oh yeah I think your character's going to be a lot more successful if they're composites. If you just modeled after one individual whom you know then that's going to be pretty narrow as the story progresses and if you're going to try to build a story around that character a character has to fit into the story not just be a duplication. So that might be largely scaled on one person but more likely even even then you're going to bring in quite a few other characters or quite a few other people's characteristics

that you know. To flesh out that character in a way that is going to function the novel. The idea that people say oh yes I recognize this character right here I recognize his character right here. They probably recognize some aspect about that character that's familiar and may not even be true may not be based on the person they think it is but they just make that recognition. But yeah it's very much a composite. Well you know I've always thought that sometimes people think the things that you made out are the things that are true and the things that you make up everybody recognizes something you don't that there is more truth in them it's an interesting thing when you're involved in that whole process which you're a part of the composite is going to be your imagination too it's not just like well I take a detail from this person in detail for this person and put them together. You know all of that goes into the mixing bowl but then the imagination is one that brings it all out as a product something that is recognisable as having its own identity or its own entity. Well what about this concept then that they tell us that the Virginian was the prototype. You know the words of the Virginian is that the ultimate western cowboy are you know are following the white

horse and we've got the charming schoolmarm and we've got that you know the friends and the colorful characters was the first one to come up with those concepts are they just the most successful why did why is it called a prototype Jane. I think it's called a prototype because this is a character who who is made into heroic type based on a very odd character in American history a laborer the Cowboys a laborer and has very hard work. And most of the time is very boring work. Yeah it's the kind of work that we don't know very much about because we don't see these cowboys. They're out on the trail or they're out on the ranch. It's something very attractive about that work. And if you take a look at the Virginian you don't see very much work happening in that book. There isn't ever a cow in the book. And the work that happens is a bit on horseback but

beyond that there's lots of interesting fascinating events and I think what Wister managed to do was take a laboring man who is important in the West economically and make him into a literary figure. By pruning out all the work that we have to do you know you're complaining that you know modern television shows about one of those people do besides hang out their apartment that's what's that right. That's interesting. Well he is a laboring man he is a working man but also he rises in the system he becomes Foreman and by the end of the story we find out that he has taken up claims of his own land that have good deposits of coal and so forth and so he is he's a good progressive American at the end of the 19th century he was very successful working person and that's appealing. I think that's why the book is so attractive is it shows the progress of a man in his 20s who by the time he is 30. Has made a decision that he will become a success in society and to do that he has had to shut himself of some of the younger adolescent fun that

he was having what she begins the book with a lot of adolescent fun. By the end of the book he is an adult and I think one reason why the book is so popular is it shows. An intriguing character type of cowboy being just like every American is growing up becoming an adult. That is the American dream as you're describing it you know that you have this this adolescence and you have these good times but then you grow up to be successful and you're on your own man I mean that's the rancher ideal isn't it that you're in. You don't work for anyone that you're your own boss I mean in that part of that whole concept. That's right. And. There's a good woman in there that helps you succeed this way. Oh absolutely there always needs to be a good woman who's whose central whose central task is to help the man. Become the man. Had there been I mean this as we're describing it was this a new concept in terms of the format for a novel. Had there been that kind of I mean it's such a routine thing now that I mean it's hard to think of it as being an original approach to a story.

I don't think it's an original approach to the store I think that's why it's popular for it's a very familiar approach for mainstream American fiction at that point to have it focused on a Western character that that would be original. Yes. Well what about Wister as an individual I mean I've really given a skeleton to him background what individual things that he as a person bring to this story. That we all live with now whether it's a television show and you know a movie play whatever. I think the brilliant touch in the Virginian is the narrator who is an Easterner who has never given a name. And and he presents the virgin through much of the novel from the point of view of this eastern bumbling fool who comes east kind of perhaps like Owen Wister and grows up to learns about the West shared some of his Eastern mannerisms and who presents the Virginian as an outsider would see him but also as someone who's very intrigued I think that's that's the touch that makes this book very

successful. And I suspect that Wister was drawing on himself for some of that characterization that there was more personal aspects to that than we had realized potential. And then so I was that narrator comes in and out of the book he doesn't narrate the whole thing there are chapters in which the narrator isn't present. But that sensibility is still present in Wister brought a sensitivity and a sophistication to the literature that I think has always been very attractive and he is a good writer on the sentence level he expresses ideas and emotions. Very well he describes scenes very well and he's he's a very very cultured writer in that sense he writes Maybe a little bit above the level of language that people use every day now. But still it appeals to today's reader and the reader can read that so I can really see that scene I can I can really imagine that scene where there's an indoor scene or an outdoor scene that might be part of it also because you could do indoor scenes an outdoor scenes or scenes of more spectacular. But what about some of those things in terms of the events that actually happened in the book I know people will say

well you know who is the prince in Virginia based on but there are some stories and they're all like the baby swapping story is that the first time that that ever can you can you Jane share with you member the baby's father. OK. I don't know if that event that's a typical kind of tall tale event that maybe if we looked at folklore a kind of the Mattie repetitive theme in folklore where all these people are at the dance and they're all dancing all night and the Cowboys pull a joke ok. They switch the babies in the babies go home and they're in the wrong spot. So they all have to come it's very funny and very funny scene. It's one of my favorite scenes in the in the novel it shows the Virginia and sense of humor which is something we haven't talked about. The Virginian has a spectacular sense of humor. And he uses it to make his way in the world he uses it to rise up. And he uses it to remind everybody that they're all humans.

So I'm I'm off track about the baby swapping story but it reminded me that he has a very fine sense of humor. Well it is and that adds another dimension to it in terms of things that Wister may have heard. How do you develop a character as you let them do things that you heard about somebody else really doing that sort of a fast look of American literature in the latter part of the 19th century. One tradition we might call it in literature of that time is what was called regional literature. So people would for example Hamlin Garland in about 1891 road main traveled roads which is about a foreign country in and around Wisconsin Soror in Jewett in 1896 writes a country the point infers which is in New England which state is it. I don't remember but if it's Vermont or New Hampshire but I was going to say not for my kind of been a carry over from Colorado or Wyoming right. Yeah. Any right regional and the nurse in southern literature at about that time also. And then another tradition that he's working with is the tradition of the tall tale which is comes from Mark Twain and some of the Southern humor humorous and so he is working with that

how another one that we could mention is the one about the frogs this story that he tells about the frogs. They're shipping cattle and the train is stalled and so everybody is off on the side on the side of the tracks waiting for them to get the tracks blocked I believe there's whatever it is it's a stall in the train. And the Virginia tells us long sort of a shaggy dog story about a frog ranch down into every Californian about a fellow who raises frogs and tells a strike on how many pages it goes on but it's a pretty lengthy windy that details tells tells it mainly for the purpose of making a fool out of his adversary was the villain in the story Trampas and the conclusion to the whole thing is that the frog ranch is all done and you translate you're done to it so he is able to humiliate Travis with through what we gather is very funny in the late 19th century. I don't find that frog story really funny but. Eating frogs legs it has to do with high faluting restaurants and having frogs legs instead of steaks. But it's it's a preposterous story about the farm itself and how the person becomes prosperous and then by the time he gets to the end Trappist realize that he's been had because he's been following

the story and then he's able to make fun of Trampas. So that's a way in which he uses humor to overcome his adversary. But when you're when you're talking about these stories I think for me the most famous one that's just part of our culture is when you call me that you know that whole saying that who says that I can't even you know that's what I thought it's such a part of the culture what are the circumstances where that line is sad. And was that something that really happened. Do you know what really happened I'm probably a hundred times so many times that. They're playing cards trappers call somebody calls him a son of a and then there's a blank in the book and then slaps him on the shoulder and that's fine. And the easterners observing this and he's mystified that somebody can use a word like that not offend him. And then when Trampas calls in that he lays his pistol on the table right he says when you call me that smile. And then the Easterner explains to the reader you know why why this is perplexing you know that that language can mean something in one context and not in the other. But I think

part of the reason that that has its fame is just because the B I T C H was left out of the text. The book just the way that both of you know to read the blog I don't know because that that has some to me that is the you know in some respects the epitome of our love of our world. That's like somebody in the eye and saying OK this is where the joking answer you know smile when you're going to say that this is the interesting thing about the Virginian is he's linguistically very sophisticated. He has a very finely tuned sense of language. Molly teaches him how to read literature through the course of the book. They read Shakespeare together and one of his growing up experiences is to become more and more sophisticated as a reader. But on his own rights without the necessity of reading Shakespeare he's very very good linguistically knows when to use certain kinds of language and when not to use certain kinds of language. That's another reason why this book is very attractive is the Virginian is a

master. At the words those moments they were talking about those moments when you think about it later on what you could have said in a certain situation in the Virginian always said what you wished you had said. We think the Virginian is the silent Westerner and he is not at all a silent Western. He talks quite a bit. Speaking of his a master the very first time we see him in that opening chapters called enter the man is the name of the chapter. The train has pulled off and medicine there and the narrator is looking out the window and he says several passages it says actually the book opens right. And yes several passengers were gathered around to watch this fellow roping a horse and so the first thing that he does is he ropes a horse in the corral and somebody remarks Well that man knows his business and that's our first view of them that he is the master and he's a masterful and he's a master at labor. He's a master of skill. He knows how to do his work which is another very important feature of this book is that here is someone who knows how to do his

work very well which is interesting too because the sign of the true mark of a real man was their ability to to work with horses. I mean you know the circumstances they were kind of a universally admired parade. When we think about the fact that it's just I don't know an interesting situation in that Owen Wister happened to come to the state of Wyoming. And so that Wyoming and many of the our geography and our people and the events happening here are are woven throughout this and become part of the very fabric of our belief of what the American cowboy should be. But what what's been the influence do you think on Wyoming in terms of what Wister did with what he found here. Wyoming has become that place for a lot of people that is mistake it's it's the mythic West. So in some movies and maybe one of you remembers a movie where some person said that he was going to move to Wyoming and everybody laughed because that would

be the last place in the world that you would move to because that's the wilderness. And I think that that Westerners novel make people think of Wyoming as the wilderness even though the point of the novel is becoming a civilization and becoming settled in the primary feeling that you come away with after you've read that book is that this place is empty. And I think. That's still true. I think it's a place of hope and optimism and renewal in those things that people associate with the West right. I think you know the thing that Wister did for Wyoming is he put Wyoming on the literary map you know. And for better and for worse if you ask somebody now in New Hampshire Vermont or one of those places that we don't distinguish well enough what they know about Wyoming they'll say Owen Wister wrote about that even though there have been lots of other writers have written about Wyoming. He is sort of now it's a who's who about Wyoming.

Another thing that he did rather than Wyoming but certainly includes Wyoming as he did really make Western American literature respectable again after it had been sort of degenerated through dime novel depictions in well from 1865 to 900 even a little bit after that. But he did make Western American literature respectable and that lasted for a little while longer then until other writers would also pick it up and continue to write in what people consider to be socially serious rather than just adventure literature and for volatile which is amazing to me. We are at the end of our time. You travel this far and if nothing else in Worcester gave us the opportunity to have this wonderful discussion. John I can't thank you for what you've shared with me every summer and thank you for joining us. For a copy of this or any Main Street Wyoming send a check or money order to Wyoming Public

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