Elmer Kelton
Subtitle: essays and memories
By: edited by Judy Alter and James Ward Lee
Publisher: TCU Press
Published: 2011
Place of publication: Fort Worth, Tex
Language: eng
Number of pages: 137
ISBN-13: 9780875654263
Subjects: Western stories; In literature; Criticism and interpretation; History and criticism
Description: When Elmer Kelton died in the fall of 2009, the literary world lost a consummate writer, a man the "New York Times "called a "novelist who brought the sensibility of the old-style western to bear on a modern Texas landscape of oil fields and financially troubled ranches." Kelton was also a modest, kind man, always willing to advise a struggling writer or write a blurb for a first time published author, or assign publishing rights to his six masterpieces to a small university press. TCU Press owes a great debt of gratitude to Kelton, and this volume, "Elmer Kelton: Memories and Essays," attempts to explore just what it is that made Kelton its leading author. Editors Judy Alter and James Ward Lee gathered together a group of Kelton aficionados who had either published or taught or sold his books, or were simply friends. In several meetings, they divided up the main themes of Kelton's writing: Alter provides the overview of Kelton's career; Felton Cochran, longtime owner of Cactus Books in San Angelo, describes how the friendship between bookstore owner and author grew over the years; Ricky Burk, pastor of the church from which Kelton was buried, talks about the man's influence in his community; Kelton's son, Steve, explains how Kelton's career as journalist permeated his novels; Ruth McAdams, who has taught Kelton for years, explores how he deals with the themes of endurance and change; Joyce Roach delicately covers how race and ethnicity figure in Kelton's plots and the development of his unforgettable characters; Lee gives readers his inimitable take on the Hewey Calloway Trilogy--"The Good Old Boys," "The Smiling Country, " and "Six Bits a Day"; and Bob J. Frye takes a wry look at Kelton's use of humor throughout his career. The book also contains Kelton's own view of the history of the Western novel, a response to revisionist criticism. And finally Cochran provides us a list of most, not all, of Elmer Kelton's extraordinary body of work.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references.
Table of contents: title: Two careers in one / Judy Alter; title: My friend Elmer Kelton / Felton Cochran; title: A eulogy / The Reverend Ricky Burk, senior pastor, First United Methodist Church of San Angelo; title: Journalism's influence on Elmer Kelton's fiction / Steve Kelton; title: Hang and rattle : change and endurance in The time it never rained / Ruth McAdams; title: Convergence : race and ethnicity in the work of Elmer Kelton / Joyce Roach; title: The Hewey Calloway trilogy / James Ward Lee; title: Reading instead of roping, writing instead of ranching, and qualifying for walrus hunter : humor in Elmer Kelton / Bob Frye; title: Elmer Kelton speaks out - on the history of the western novel / Elmer Kelton.