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Show The Salt Lake Tribune, Sunday, March 2 i; 11, 1973 Best Sellers Sir Walter. Elizabeth Some for.il memories' A good queen, a great time Editor recalls Wyoming boyhood Ranch on the Laramie: Memoir of an American Boyhood," by Ted Olson; Atlantic-Little- , Brown & Co., 239 pp., $6.95. God damn he it, Kid, yelled, Cant you hold those horses?" lie gave me a cuff that sent me sprawling. with I "Weeping fury, squalled: God damn you to hell! I'm going to kill you. I scrabbled around for a weapon, and heaved the first thing my hand touched, a sizable cow turd. It glanced off his cheek, doing ho damage. He grappled indecisively for a broke then spell, away, There was work to be done. didnt speak more than was functionally necessary the "We rest of the afternoon, but by next morning the incident was as good as forgotten." Little Violence The foregoing squabble between Ted Olson and his elder brother Oscar, interrupting a laborious job of grubbing out. roots and debris from an irrigation canal, is the nearest thing to violence described in thus memoir of a retired former Foreign Service officer and former newspaperman, detailing his early life on a ranch 20 or so miles southwest of Laramie, Wyo., during the first two decades of the century. Pnor to the scuffle, Oscar had been manipulating the scraper (we called it a in my youth on a ranch), Ted was driving the team of horses. The blade struck a boulder, the resulting slack caused the horses to spurt forward and Oscar was struck on the jaw by the handle he was holding. acutely than his book revives Wyoming, Ted followed his writing bent and worked for ! succession of newspapers -in Wyoming, San Francisco, New York (on the Rerald-Tnbun- e copy desk), Denver, and back to Laramie. it. This is surprising in a way because, although Stegner also grew up on the rough Western frontier, his boyhood was a far cry from the idyllic one Olson describes. Both had loving mothers. But while Olsons father, a former sailor or, windjammers and later a Union Pacific engineer, was a man of substance and aua gentle, kindly, if thority, moody, man, Stegners father was an explosive incredibly cruel to his family, if "Big Rock Candy Mountain, surely autobiographical, is a true account. The Foreign Service The Depression and related sent circumstances Olson back to the otherwise it seems possible he might be still editing the small Laramie paper, perhaps also realizing his dream of finding a nearby ranch. But with the advent of World War II, he joined the U.S. Information Service, serving in Europe, the Middle East, Latin America and the Far East, and progressed from there into the Foreign Service with which he had important positions in Athens, Reykjavik and Washington. In retirement, Olson who so loves the mountains says he and his wife find it hard to explain why we seem to have taken root in a Washington suburb, without a mountain in sight. It is also interesting that a man with a variety of adventures around the world to draw from devotes his memoir to his halcyon days of wrangling horses, shocking gram, turning the cream separator and attending country dances. The author explained once that this book is not likely to become a John Wayne movie. A sheriff is murdered and a posse combed the cottonwoods and underbrush that line the Laramie River for the killer but there is little bloodletting in this western. This is perhaps the ultimate story of every boyhood on a ranch in which the boy actually enjoyed it, Ernest H. Linford. g exaggerated degree. It is a chronicle of two Norwho wegian immigrants began ranching in 1890, and their two boys and two girls who furnished the ranch manpower needed between haying and harvest mg seasons. Each Did Share It was a loving closely knit family living in a log, plaster-chinke- d house without electricity, plumbing or telephone. Each did his chores in accordance with his or her age and each took in capabilities, stride the blizzards and assaults of mosquitoes and deerflies. Each devoured the incredibly fine books and magazines the Olsons had managed to card accumulate, played games in evenings and joyed music from the wax inders the early-daof Edison. en- Ted Olson went to elementalog ry school in a building a mile from the ranch, walking back and forth in all kinds of weather. In todays social terminology the Olson children might have been classified as culturally deprived. But when Ted went to high school in Laramie he soon was editor of the student paper and before he was 20 years old Yale University had published a volume of his poems. (He mentions neither in "Ranch on the Laramie.) neer-do-wel- l, Laramie Ranch Five years after the death of Olsons father, his mother in 1917 sold the ranch they loved, and ever since Oscar Sold and Ted both have dreamed of buying it back, or one just like it. Instead, after his graduation from the University of Mystery goes nowhere sun The "Back to Fire Mountain, by Richard Scow croft; Atlantic Little, Brown & Co., 323 causes which by the merest accident are made to look murderous. But the reader knows they are dying natural- pp., $7.50. the only mystery, then, ly is what the author is getting , and that he never tells. Prof. Scowcroft, who heads the creative writing program at Stanford, has written a sort of a mystery that has something to do with the myths people base their lives on and a lot more to do with Agatha Christies Ten Little Indians. The usual opening: five peo-- . pie called, they know not why or by whom, to a mysterious island where they are stranded, (Here, it is an old e lodge situated between and raging river, with the bridge out.) One by one, of course, they die. The Scowcroft twist is that everyone dies of natural cliff-sid- a-- . The trouble is he doesnt take the form seriously: even parody is an art, and a parody of a mystery should, like the mystery itself, have a purpose. One of the characters is even Ten Little reading this is not parody but a form that spoof, degrades both object and per- Indians: petrator. There are lots of parody indeed, it is mysteries arguable that Christie has been parodying herself for but they all take years themselves seriously, within It was the age of Elizabeth. And what an England it was. Wallace E, Stegner A Novel Raw and Tough America long-vanishe- d Stegners epic: its back to frontier Stegners title comes from the song the hoboes sang in their jungle encampments alongside the railroad tracks hoboes, wary as cats, with one eye out for the railroad detectives, living from hand to "The Rock Candy Big Mountain, by Wallace Stegner; Doubleday & Co., Inc.; 611 pp., $8.95. It was 30 years ago that Wallace Stegners great novel of the American West first saw print to much critical mouth, swinging on and off freight trains. In this book (is it autobiographical?) we have the more respectable wanderers. There is Elsa Norgaard, discontented with life on a Minnesota farm, running away to join an uncle on the North Dakota prairies. More than that, larger than life, we have Bo Mason, a bom boomer. (A term once applied to men who jumped from job to job.) Against everyones advice, Elsa marries Bo, and then their life is an odyssey compounded of misery and joy, as the story unfolds. Bo sells his acclaim and substantial neglect by the reading public. Perhaps what Stegner had to say was all too close to the lives of people at that time, for it covered the span from homesteading days in the Dakotas, Montana and Saskatchewan through the era of bootleg booze, and almost any young adult had at least secondhand knowledge of it all from his parents. Love of England Men died for Queen Mary of Scots for the love of the woman. Men died for Queen Elizabeth for the love of England," writes Schoonover. Stepping into Elizabeth's life, into Englands history, was Walter a Raleigh, Westcountry man reared in a poor family and growing up on the bleak and dismal moors where life was cruel and frequently cheap. Raleigh was an extraordinary man, although highly ambitious and frequently despised by the populace. He possessed great skills in chemistry, engineering and medicine. He was a ruthless cavalry leader, an explorer who envisioned English colonies in America, a courtly poet and historian. He was truly the last Elizabethan. Utah State University will again be the scene of a rendezvous for scholars, writers and students of the Wesc for five days beginning June U and featuring eight authors, in the area of each "The West: Its Literature and well-know- n History. So successful was the session last summer at the Logan campus that the Western Writers Conference has now been scheduled as an annual event. a England after her death. Elizabeth, the .daughter of Henry VIII, always subordi- nated her personal desires to her countrys needs, but .she could never hide her love for the handsome men of the realm. She insisted on keeping munsingiuear Director Glenn R. Wilde said visiting lecturers in June will include Robert M. Utley, director of Archeology and Historic Preservation for the National Park Service; Wil- - Baperback Beet Sellers them close by the court. Dakota pool hall to homestead West country men7 like Rain Saskatchewan as a wheat leigh,' Drake, Gilbert and farmer. It is the familiar Grenville, often rose to power story of the West. Hailstorms in England but they were conand then drought ruin the sidered too wild, too eccentnc their own terras; their plots, crop. to be trusted with positions of however hackneyed, have begreat responsibility in the like On it goes, much middle and end, ginning, in a kingdom. Death of a Salesman though occasionally it takes of a credentials Raleighs Bo an epilogue for the author to faster tempo. grows older, warric- - both in France brave He more seedier, has what been desperate. explain just earns a good packet of money and Ireland won him' the going on. and then loses it all. Always queens favor, And when he he is out for the fast buck and dropped his cloak over a Scowcrofts epilogue, about the new business that will water puddle to keep her feet a third of the book, explains he also won a lot of nothing in terms of the plot, make him a fortune. Until, in dry, and only what was already the end, with Elsa dead of points. apparent about the characters cancer, he shoots himself and Knightly Error that the events that deter- his doxy in a sleazy hotel, and He was knighted and made mined the course of their lives his son Bruce is left to finish a member of Parliament and werent at all what they the story. henceforth was known as Sir seemed. We never do find out Walter Raleigh. But he, too, This is a long book, in the who wrote those unsigned letmade a mistake. He, too, of the ters calling the family togethis but a it 40s, style married one of the queens er, and we are left to believe rewarding one for it is a and she barring the supernatural, chronicle of an America long promptly slapped him into the as in Memento Mon that vanished, an optimistic and Tower. the author didnt care enough not a bitter America. The trip There he lived Pke a royal back is worth the effort. to figure that one out. Hal monarch with servants and L. Beck. Burton, Newsday Daid New York Tlmei Service This analysis Is based on reoorts obtained from more than 125 bookstore: In 64 communities of the United States. FICTION Jonathon Livingston Seagull. Sort of an allegory about a seagull's quest for berfectlon. 2. Wheels. Ha'ly. Facts galore about the automobile Industry with a minimal story to propel the reoder through them. 3. The Day ot the Jackal. Forsyth. A novel loaded with excruciating suspense about . plot to kill Gen. De 1. Bach. Gaulle. The Word. Wallace. A new version of the Bible crops uo and a P R. man (only you Dick Daring) must track down Its authenticity. 5. The Exorcist. Blotty. A child Is possessed by a devil and a priest resorts to the ancient rite of exorcism to save her GENERAL 1. Chariots ot the Gods. Von Damk-en- . What purports to be evidence that there were visitors from outer space long ago. 2. Eleanor & Franklin. Lush. The lives of Mr and Mrs President with on the latter and drawn emphasis from her papers. 3 The Game of The Foxes. Farogo. Dirty tricks during the second world war enliven this account of espionage of the time 4 The Happy Hooker. Hollande". The (and fictioof a New York nal) memoirs 4 ladies-in-waitin- g madam Report trom Engine Co. 82. Smith. fireman writes with gritty realism about what it is like to be on the firing line. 5 A REPEAT OF OUR "GREATEST GRAND SLAM EVER" GUITAR CLASS! GIRLS SHOPS GOLF Olympus Foothill Fash'on Place Karen SHIRTS Gibbs . . . just returned from Latin America Concert Tour! Assistant Teaehe iarK, Aiarsna :ii; aruncr, tom Hniniains ENROLL NOW Rental Instruments Available little girls take to the layered leak for spring . . . scorches Instruments rented for $3 00 and $6.00 rent applies to purchase. Sweat trickles stingingly into are . weeds eye corners How . tediously static much I didn't like weeding I realize anew as I write this, from the vividness of detail, the emotional content of my But if I ever recollections was the mutiny rebelled, quickly supressed and not re- mo. All . GS3ma3!J? . mrmmm JZ peated. I learned early that I could not pick and choose among chores. It was a useful lesson, though I'm afraid it took me a good many years to be properly grateful that I had learned it young." From Stegners Boyhood g Last year's Pulitzer Wallace novelist, btegner, in a dust jacket piece, says, "I had just such a childhood" as Olson's, with minor variations, and I have never had it revived more Classes start AAardi 26th, 1973 . . , Register prior to that date. Call NOW! We must repeat . . . CALL NOW. These classes are always filled early. Here at Castleton's, we believe little girls are every bit as fashion-minde- d as their mothers. That's why we have so many of the newest young looks for Spiing. Here, our young edition or the layered look, for girls size 7 to 14. Begin with wide flared pants of easy-car- e knit in Spring Navy, $11.00. Add the coordinating cardigan, knit of rayondurene with RedWhiteNaw trim and mottled finish, $9.00. Beneath it, a matching sleeveless vest, polyesrercotton $6.00. Prize-winnin- CQTOVECD MALL VALLEY FA,M MALL Thu Week 1 Jonathan Livingston . Seagull Bach 2 The Odessa File. Forsyth 3 Green Darkness. Seton 4 Jenkins 5 August 1914. Sol- - Weeks On List 1 40 4 12' 19 3 7 ihenitsvn 6 The Sunlight Dialogues. Gardner 7 The Persian Bov. 6 Renault S The Camerons. Crlghton 2SI 16 16 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 GENERAL Dr. Atkins' Dleg Revo- IS lutlon. Atkins The Best and The Bright2 IS est. Halberstam You're O.K. I'm O.K. 47 Harris Harry S. Truman. 12 3 Truman Johnny. We Hardly Knew Ye. 13 5 ODonnell & Powers The Joy Of Sex. Comfort 12. The Implosion Conspiracy. 1 Nizer Journey to Ixtlan. IS Castaneda Experts on West plan USU talks Falls to James And when it came time for Raleigh to meet his death on the block, the axe was not directed by the Tudor Queen Elizabeth, but by the scholarly, effeminate King James who ascended the throne of FICTION Annual event (Coovright) down on neck and shoulders. . But Elizabeth was complex, projecting her incredible administrative abilities as the leader of a burgeoning country and vainly attempting to hide her personal weakness a love for brave and handsome men. Spoof backfires on author From his father or older brother he learned how to run the cream separator, and farm machinery, how to fish, and churn, turning out butter to Toil to other ranchers and grocery stores in Laramie. nd he loved it all. except weeding the garden. Distasteful Weeding "... Cen-tur- excellent food handmaidens, and wine. He was finally reto leased help lead the attack on Cadiz against the rebuilding Armada and later was able to return to his normal way of life. Then he went to the New World in an attempt to establish another colony where his son, Walter, was killed and he incurred the disfavor of King James. This time he was thrust into the Tower and later went to the block. In Jus farewell speech he mentioned the late queen, who he had referred to as Diana during her life. This biographical novel is well worth the time if your in- -' terests run to that period or if you have a particular interest Jack in Elizabeth R. Schroeder. y one-roo- , Had Elizabeth been simpler she might have been less but less tragic, England great, says author Lawrence Schoonover in his enticing biographical novel of England and her queen in the 16th It was an age of ferment; an age of savage cruelty, high adventure when it was thought to be equally good to live or die so long as you did either bravely. When men lived, they really lived. And when it came time to die, on the block if necessary, it was done with grace and style and with scarcely a whimper. It was an age when England ruled the seas, smashing the Spanish Armada, pirating at will and establishing colonies in the New World. cyl- Schoolhouse One-Roo- ! Herald-Tribun- il Happy Memories, Mostly Most of Ted Olsons memories of his boyhood on the Big Laramie River, near Jelm and Sheep Mountain, are happy. To other former ranch boys recalling work, loneliness, deprivation and savagely cold winters, the story is nostalgic almost to an To Love A Queen: Walter Raleigh and Elizabeth R, by Lawrence Schoonover; Little, Brown and Co., 383 pp.t $7.95. New York Times Service This Analysis is based on reports obtained from more than 125 bookstores in 64 communities of the United States. liam E. Stafford, writer, poet and professor of English at Lewis and Clark University; Richard Ellis, associate professor of history at the University of New Mexico, and author of three books in the field of Western Indians; Frank Waters, author of more than 20 reflecting his dual heritage of white and Indian; J. Barre Toelken, a folklorist, a medieval scholar, and a folk singer, was honored in 1971 by the E. Harris Harbison Award for Gifted Teaching; W. Eugene Hollon, professor of history at the University of Toledo, author of "The Lost Pathfinder, the story of Zebulon Pike; William Eastlake, a prolific writer of articles, novels and screenplays, his The Bronc has been called a People classic; and Thomas D. Clark, Distinguished Service Professor at Indiana University, who has written Frontier America: The Story of the Westward Gold Rush Movement, Diary of Elisha Douglass Perkins," and Kentucky, Land of Contrast. Conference sessions will continue through June 14 and conclude on June 15 with .a Symposium in which all eight authors will participate. Dr. Utley, who wrote Custer and the Great Controversy," "The Last Days of the Sioux Nation, and Frontiersmen in Blue, will open the conference with his observations on The West as viewed by the historian and the creative writer. Topics discussed will include Indian and White: Cultures in Conflict on the Contrast; American Frontier; Culture on the Moving Frontier; and the Symposium The West: Past, Present, and Future. Advance registration for the sessions is presently being accepted, Mr. Wilde said. |