I enjoy stories of the cold north and one good anthology was
THE NORTHERNERS edited by Bill Pronzini and Martin Greenberg
in their excellent series published by Fawcett. They are well
worth collecting.
One of my early reading pleasures was Jack London and he has
continued to entertain me whenever I revisit him. Kevin is
right when he points out that London did not write for the
pulps. However the pulps certainly existed prior to his death
in 1916. "Most of us" may arbitrarily say the pulp era began
later but issues of Adventure, for example, from pre-1916 are
fundamentally the same as those published in the 1920s.
Considering the writes who came later, James B. Hendryx had a
forty year career writing northerners in magazines like
Adventure and Short Stories and I've enjoyed what I have read
of his work. He was from Minnesota and perhaps he shouldn't
have strayed across the border into Canada as he did in some
stories but in my ignorance I enjoyed them as well.
I do remember how as a southerner I would be annoyed by
fiction and other popular culture presentations of
southerners that were cliched or just plain wrong. This was a
very common complaint in the south for many years. It's not
heard so much any more and I think that is as much because
the distinct south is disappearing as it is that the
presentations have become more accurate. Television and other
forces are erasing all our regional cultures.
Still there are times when non-southerners writing about
southerners hit sour notes. I was cautious when I began
reading Howard Browne's SCOTCH ON THE ROCKS a couple of days
ago (he says moving back on topic) as it takes place in rural
Texas in 1932. Browne is a long time favorite of mine but I
feared he would get it wrong, or worse, be condescending.
Within a few pages, I was able to relax. Even when he employs
pointed commentary it is witty and on the mark.
For example, when the featured rural Texas family first meets
the sharply dressed card shark with whom they will share the
next 50,000 words Browne writes: "His clothing, manner, and
speech labeled him an outsider, certainly a Yankee, probably
a Republican, possibly a Catholic or Jew. But since the
Dawsons were basically decent, normally hospitable, usually
quick to aid anyone in trouble, they were incapable of
telling this man to get the hell away from them."
I had to smile reading that because it was as believable as
it was funny. I was able to relax about Browne, a
non-southerner, writing about the rural south because he had
a basic understanding that allowed him to comment on and
describe the setting and the people with reasonable
accuracy.
I'll comment again on this novel when I finish it prior to
the end of Howard Browne month. I will say this now about
Browne: I wish he had spent less time as an editor and
television writer so we would have a larger body of fiction
from him. The man was a gifted writer and a natural
storyteller.
Richard A. Moore
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