Author Topic: Bret Harte  (Read 2165 times)

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Offline franksolich

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Bret Harte
« on: January 19, 2010, 06:45:07 AM »
The other day, because I was bored, all work having been done, I took a book off the shelves here that had belonged to my father, one of those slipcased Heritage Club editions, Tales of the Gold Rush by Bret Harte.

According to the introduction, Bret Harte was immensely popular in his day.

But what I'm getting out of those tales are half-told stories, not complete ones.

Anyone else ever get this sense from reading Bret Harte?
apres moi, le deluge

Offline Aaron Burr

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Re: Bret Harte
« Reply #1 on: January 19, 2010, 02:59:30 PM »
Yes and no. Yes because Bret Harte is no Mark Twain, and no because Bret Harte wasn't exactly writing with an eye on posterity. His chief attraction is that he chronicled life in the gold camps. Outcasts of Poker Flat and The Luck of Roaring Camp are both pretty maudlin potboilers aimed at a somewhat turgid readership. Compared to Twains Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County it's pretty easy to see that while Twain had a gift for connecting with a wide audience, Harte wrote on the assumption that his readers were acquainted with the outlandish tales of the Wild West that reached the incredulous (and ignorant) readers back east.

It would be like someone reading a so so novel from our time a hundred years from now. Most of the references, and even the tone of the story would be lost upon the casual reader.

But yeah, the first time I read Harte I was disappointed. Half the time I was expecting Snidley Whiplash to tie some fair maiden to the railroad tracks.

Some really good books from that time period, in my opinion, would include Francis Parkmans' Oregon trail (an absolutely hair raising true story of wandering the American West in the 1830's) and an anonymous journal entitled Diary of a Forty Niner which may or may not be entirely true but does chronicle the history and mining techniques in the High Sierras.

And I'll just put a plug in here for Grass Beyond the Mountains by Richmond Hobson. It was written in the 1930's and is a true account of two young American Cowboys and their attempts at opening up the last great cattle frontier east of the Canadian Rockies. It's much more accessible to the modern reader while still remaining true to it's Old West roots.

It's also a great reference work when discussing the finer points of horses and horsemanship. I had no idea what a fog heaved, bog trotting, spindle backed fire breather was before I read this book.  
 
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« Last Edit: January 19, 2010, 07:33:00 PM by Aaron Burr »