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REVIEWS
UNDER THE BIG SKY: A BIOGRAPHY OF A.B. GUTHRIE JR.
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by Jackson Benson
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| University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln and London, 2009. Photographs, notes, index. 336 pages. $29.95 cloth. |
| No one has done more than Professor Jackson Benson to detail the lives of leading western writers. First, his huge biography of John Steinbeck remains the most thorough study of that major American author. Next, his biography of Wallace Stegner is the best literary treatment of that writer. More recently, Benson's biography of Walter Van Tilburg Clark, the author of The Ox-bow Incident, provides a sure guide to the life of still another leading western author. Now, in his fourth biography of a western writer, Benson furnishes the first complete life story of A.B. (Bud) Guthrie, Jr., best known for his notable novels The Big Sky (1947) and The Way West (1949), the latter of which won a Pulitzer Prize. |
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Benson's biography of Guthrie follows a traditional chronological path. After discussing Guthrie's birth in Indiana in 1901 and his boyhood and high school and college years in Montana, the author devotes a good deal of space to Guthrie's first years as a journalist in Kentucky. Guthrie's marriage to a Montana girl, Harriet "Scoop" Larson, and his family connections in the Treasure State kept him returning west each summer. Then follow substantial discussions of Guthrie's first flawed novel, Murders at Moon Dance (1943), which Guthrie himself dismissed as a forgettable work. Guthrie's big break, as Benson thoroughly discusses, was his landing a coveted Nieman Fellowship at Harvard (1944–1945), where he wrote much of The Big Sky and made invaluable connections with writing teacher Theodore Morrison, historian Bernard DeVoto, and poet Robert Frost. During the summer of 1945, Guthrie also attended the famed Bread Loaf Writers' School, met publisher William Sloane, and gained an advance for The Big Sky. He immediately telegraphed his wife "Swinging on a star. Five Thousand in advance" (p. 92). With the publication of The Big Sky, Guthrie's literary career exploded into enthusiastic headlines. |
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Benson's next chapters provide illuminating comments on Guthrie's major works, his return to a Montana home, and his crumbling marriage. The sections on The Way West and These Thousand Hills (1956) are more extensive than on The Big Sky, even though the author considers the latter Guthrie's best novel. There is also clarification of Guthrie's central role in preparing the screenplay for the classic western film Shane. But the treatments of the later historical novels —Arfive (1971), The Last Valley (1975), and Fair Land, Fair Land (1982) — and Guthrie's string of detective Westerns are very brief. |
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In early 1963, Bud and Scoop divorced; it "was a long-term emotional disaster for both," Benson writes (p. 167). The final third of the biography treats Guthrie's remarriage, his final writings, and his enlarging role as an environmentalist. Even before Carol Luthin broke out of an unhappy marriage, Guthrie had begun to court her. They were married in April 1969 — he sixty eight, she thirty-eight. It was a very happy union, but it separated Guthrie from his two children and his younger sister. From the 1970s onward, Guthrie became an increasingly outspoken environmentalist, which sometimes alienated him from his rancher son and his neighbors. But for Guthrie, truth and realism demanded that he preach sermons calling the unfaithful into line. Guthrie died in April 1991, at age ninety. |
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Benson's book about Guthrie exhibits several strengths. He provides the first full-scale biography of this major western author, in a refreshing and interest-catching manner. A life story that opens "Alfred Bertram Guthrie Jr. was a hell of a writer, but he could be an ornery cuss" suggests something lively and entertaining will follow (p. 1). Benson's work lives up to that promise. It is also based on thorough use of published sources, many oral interviews, and unpublished correspondence. Smoothly written throughout, Under the Big Sky also makes apt use of Guthrie's numerous quotable expressions and includes appealing pen portraits of several characters. |
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A few minor revisions would have made Benson's biography even stronger. More careful copyediting should have caught typos and grammatical problems. Readers should also get more western literary context, cultural circumferences Benson knows well. We needed more on H.G. Merriam, his pioneering regionalism, and his important early influences on Guthrie. The college friendship with Dorothy Johnson should have been noted. The book also lacks a definition of "the western myth." In addition, the text overflows with long block quotes. Some chapters include as much quoted material as authorial comments. Probably Benson would disagree; all his biographies are larded with long quotes. |
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These are minor quibbles. Benson's biography provides a thorough, well-written, lively, and authoritative account of A.B. Guthrie, Jr.'s life. May he give us another handful of equally good books on other leading western writers. |
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| RICHARD W. ETULAIN
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| emeritus, University of New Mexico |
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