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Welcome

I started this blog in 2013 to share my reflections on reading, writing and psychology, along with my journey to become a published novelist.​  I soon graduated to about twenty book reviews a month and a weekly 99-word story. Ten years later, I've transferred my writing / publication updates to my new website but will continue here with occasional reviews and flash fiction pieces, and maybe the odd personal post.

ANNE GOODWIN'S WRITING NEWS

Rewriting the history of the Wild West: Beyond the Horizon by Ryan Ireland

18/12/2015

20 Comments

 

After a boyhood at sea amongst drunks and cannibals, the man sets off across the empty plains of North America, navigating by the stars. When his wagon bursts its axle, he decides the place he’s got to is as good as anywhere to settle and, when a passing band of Mexicans sell him a pregnant woman in exchange for coffee, his simple life seems complete. But then the stranger arrives out of nowhere and, despite warnings from the woman in a language the man can’t understand, sends him on a fool’s errand to register his makeshift family at the mythical Fort James.


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The publisher’s media sheet asks if this is the scariest book ever. Not to this reader, but it’s certainly one of the bleakest. Unnamed, like the refugees in Tommy Wieringa’s novel the characters are stripped of their humanity, although the man’s tragic backstory and sense of morality elicit our sympathy. The few women are little more than “holes” for the men’s “peckers” and the men, white and Indian alike, are largely feral creatures or slaves. Amongst these, we meet the fearsome Chief, surviving for millennia clad in a dead man’s bones, and the stranger shape-shifting through history and seeing into both the future and others’ minds. As he slaughters entire villages, as he creates seemingly only to destroy, as he buries bones and artefacts to confuse future archaeologists, the stranger exist for one purpose: to rewrite the founding myths of the American West. As he says (p154):

Most men alive right now will never see a gun. Someday people will think differently. They’ll tell stories of the old west and gunslingers, showdowns and shootouts … Children will have guns for play, our heroes will carry guns. And us – the history of the future – we will be assigned our stories based on the present.

The Indian boy who becomes the Chief holds a similar position (p178):

Death only contributed to this world, creating yet another pocket in the earth of broken down carbons and fossilised remains. To die is to become part of the world indefinitely. Fools will talk of achieving immortality through their works – they tell stories and create as if they were God – but in the end it all turns to dust. The places where your wondrous creations entertained others’ imaginations become hollow spaces, cavities, for the world to fester.


History is cyclical, and people merely compost for generations to come! And, like the characters in the moments before they are to die at the stranger’s hands, we accept this (p133):

Nothing is sacred in this world. The taste of flesh and the feeling of a full belly is enough to blind any man to the horrors we create. Time, it is known, can heal all things, the layers of dirt and lies building up one on top of another like scar tissue.


Life is without meaning and the purposes and activities we create for ourselves are nothing but distractions from this painful truth (p265-6):

Most people dont want to hear that their lives for the most part are empty. They identify themselves by trade, the families they rarely see, but are constantly constructing, reconstructing in their minds … These great empty spaces … give the illusion of movement, of progress. Didnt we all come west because it was empty?


The delights of this novel lie in the originality of the premise and the eloquence of the prose. But for me, the omission of apostrophes, whether historically authentic or not (the words dont and didnt in the above quote aren’t like that as a result of a typing error – indeed, the AutoCorrect was intent on changing them back to something more conventional), was an affectation too far. I was also surprised at the quantity of direct speech not translated from the various European languages, the majority in Spanish that I could more or less understand. Nevertheless, it’s laudable that Ryan Ireland has ventured beyond the usual horizons of the novel form, and that Oneworld (who provided my review copy) have chosen to publish the result.
Thanks for reading. I'd love to know what you think. If you've enjoyed this post, you might like to sign up via the sidebar for regular email updates and/or my quarterly Newsletter.
20 Comments
Norah Colvin link
19/12/2015 06:37:52 am

It does sound like a bleak tale, Anne. Even the quotes you have included make it sound so."people merely compost for generations to come" seems particularly so. I'm not sure that I would find the book delightful though it is good to read something original and written in eloquent prose. Thank you for sharing your thoughts about the book. It will be interesting to hear what Charli thinks.

Reply
Annecdotist
19/12/2015 04:45:32 pm

Bleak, but interestingly so, Norah! And just to note that "people merely compost" is a quote from me not the book – I used to do my quotes in a different colour but for some reason they've changed how the cut and paste function so that it doesn't show this up any more, I could do them manually but it's a lot more work. Sorry if it caused any confusion.
I too will be interested to see what Charli thinks, especially regarding his bit about the mythologising of guns.

Reply
Norah Colvin link
27/12/2015 05:44:17 am

I see that now. Silly me. Excellent quote, Anne! I think that phrase resonated as I read, and when I saw the page numbers, referring to the following quote. Well, let's face it. I just didn't think it through. Don't go to any extra work because of my inattention.

Annecdotist
27/12/2015 11:56:08 am

No, helpful feedback, Norah! If I'm not going to do the quotes in a different colour, it might be clearer if I put the page numbers after the quote itself rather than before it – I remember now the reason I'd stopped doing it that way was that I didn't want the page numbers confused with the quote itself and it looked funny having just that in the different colour. But probably not many readers are so bothered about the page numbers – but I do try to be accountable!

Charli Mills
19/12/2015 05:10:30 pm

I could have much to say here for history, heritage and chosen genre. First, I'll disagree that the premise is original (taking that risk as I've not read the book). I've actually seen a trend in westerns lately to make the story and history as bleak and extreme as possible. This might be driven by the popularity of what I deem extreme westerns on HBO. However, I read a western last year by a different author with an almost exact premise, down to a character of "Chief." However, the book I read was more gruesome than bleak. I don't know where the bleakness is coming from but I definitely see a shift in the genre toward it and as a reader I can say I'm already weary of it.

Interesting that Chief would make such an erroneous historical content insinuating that few men ever had guns. the reason for our current gun culture in the US is directly tied to our heritage, which is , in part, what makes it a complex issue. Historically, no one went west without a gun. It was needed for sustenance, protection, power and even trade (many took guns for the purpose of trading). Not only that, but Militia laws prior to the US Civil War required every man between the age of 18-42 to own a long rifle and ammunition to muster and train two to three times a year. The Civil War itself brought huge innovations in firearms and this is what gives birth to the mythology of gunslingers on the plains because after the war many soldiers went west with revolvers in addition to rifles and the divisions of the war were often re-lived in saloons and power struggles over land, thus more shooting out west occurred after 1865 than before 1861.

And women. Here's where I take a deep breath and remember why I write this genre -- to include women beyond serving as a mortar to a husband's or brothel client's pastel. Women were more than wives or soiled doves. Oh, my, they even knew how to shoot. Good news for me is that the overplayed historical record is renewed through the telling of women's stories. And they are not as bleak as one might think! :-)

Despite my disgruntlement with the bleak premise being touted as "realistic" and the continuation of marginalizing women of the west, I will read this and have had the book on my radar. It's part of a series or trilogy, I think, but this is the debut. I also agree with the remaking of the genre, and I applaud any writer who is brave enough to break the dime-store or western romance standards. Yet the most realistic and well-researched westerns will remain with Louis L'Amour, who captures the reality of good and bad and shows that the west really did have heroes and morals among many broken by the war of brother against brother and the systematic government control over land and indigenous cultures. Thanks for reviewing this book!

Reply
Annecdotist
19/12/2015 06:37:38 pm

Oops, the following standalone comment should have registered as a reply to you, Charli

Reply
Annecdotist
19/12/2015 06:36:11 pm

Thanks, Charli for this detailed response – I hoped and expected you’d have something to say and you certainly haven’t disappointed!
So it’s not as original as I thought? I suppose that’s my comeuppance for pontificating outside my genre. Not that I read Westerns, but I didn’t actually see the novel as such – although I suppose the heading I’ve given my review does imply it. I was thinking more in the realms of speculative fiction, asking What if? And maybe not even restricting this question into North America but to the cyclical nature of time as a whole. Interesting then that there should be a general move towards bleakness in the Western, perhaps as you say to counteract the romanticism, although I’d have thought writers would have moved well beyond that by now.
Thanks for that historical background on the use of guns. I don’t think – although we could ask Ryan Ireland, he’s on Twitter – the reader is expected to take this as historically accurate but speculating on something that is so much part of the mythology of the wild West as a way of raising the possibility of thinking differently about it. I think it’s similar regarding the marginalisation of women in the novel, although of course that is hard to take. But none of the characters are treated well.
I wonder if this has got to you the way that inadequate therapists ruffle my feathers – it gets hard to suspend disbelief when it’s a subject you know a lot about. But interesting that this one was already on your radar and would love to know what you think if/when you get round to reading it.

Reply
Charli Mills
21/12/2015 05:08:26 pm

From some of what I've read recently, I don't think it's original, but perhaps I should not make such a judgement without reading the book first! But I had to check the title and author of one in my Kindle from last year because it sounded so familiar. I'd love it if you asked Ryan Ireland about how he balances mythology and history and how both relate to his book's expression on guns of the West! And as long as women continue to be marginalized, I suppose it gives me more to write about! I might one day have to do as you have done and specifically review westerns. Better get myself established before I spout off, though. :-) You at least, hold a degree and have experience in the profession! You do a great job of making connections and calling bull as you see it.

Reply
Annecdotist
27/12/2015 12:03:43 pm

I have asked Ryan via Twitter if he cares to comment, so you might get an answer – or an extension of the debate!
I still think there's a difference between novels potraying situations/history as if it's authentic and those that don't raise that expectation – for me, albeit as an outsider, this falls into the latter category. Likewise some fictional therapists are so wacky, I can't object to them as I don't think they could mislead.

Norah Colvin link
27/12/2015 05:50:17 am

I really enjoyed the above discussion between Charli and you, Anne. Sadly I have nothing to contribute to the conversation. :)

Reply
Annecdotist
27/12/2015 12:04:53 pm

I don't think Charli will mind me speaking for both of us if I say we appreciate you listening in.

Reply
Charli Mills
28/12/2015 09:32:31 pm

I like these open discussion on Anne's blog, and listening in broadens the circle, Norah.

Ryan Ireland link
27/12/2015 01:40:47 pm

Anne asked me on Twitter if I care to respond to the thread of comments on my book and I said sure. I’ll preface my comment with the idea that the reader’s interpretation is always correct; the author’s intent is secondary and most of the time irrelevant. So, please disregard any or all of what I’m saying here if you feel differently.

It seems like there are a few things being discussed, including the genre of the book. That’s a good question—I have no clue. Western? I mean it does take place in the west, but I purposely subvert the tropes of the Western (a genre I love but find deeply flawed in its tradition). So, it might be an anti-Western. Gritty realism? Gritty—okay. Realistic—no, there’s time lapses and all types of other weirdness going on. If I think back to when I wrote this, I believe my intent was to write an allegory. The allegory was about how the world we have today came into existence—that includes a culture that is obsessive over firearms and historically has treated every group other than white Christian men with contempt and violence (a pattern still repeated today).

So firearms: Charli’s historical view on guns is accurate—the culture of guns and their importance (and tie to patriotic/nationalistic values) spikes in the Civil War era. In my mind the book’s first time frame (the conventional setting) takes place in the 1840s, well before the Civil War standardized the gun industry as it did. Despite being an allegory, if I omitted guns to a post-Civil War Westernish tale, it would have been too much. Without guns, the characters’ hands have to get dirty and the inhumanity of nation-building is more explicit. The violence is meant to be visceral and alarming in the same way I find fervent nationalism to be disturbing. There is one gun in the book and the discussion surrounding it highlights why the gun as an invention is a tool uniquely designed for empire-building. More than that, I wanted the gun to become a symbol of the inevitable deconstruction of humanity (not as a species, but as a principle for living), the efficiency of killing/subjugating, and the outsourcing/distant nature of violence in the present age. In other words, the gun waiting to be fired—the Checkov convention—promises to be far worse than anything in the novel.

Side note: One of my original ideas was to craft a story that made no mention of light (fire, daytime, stars, explosions, etc) except for the sun. This would have included firearms as well. It would have also been allegorical—the light being a beacon of false promise, a moth and the flame type of thing. Thankfully, I abandoned this idea.

Treatment of women: Like I said, the treatment of human life was pretty bad for everyone except a select few. Again. Charli is accurate: Women in the old west were very capable and fulfilled roles far beyond what many Westerns typically show. A good book that explores this is The Personal History of Rachel Dupree by Ann Weisgarber, a historical (and accurate) Western. What I am more concerned with is the representation of women or the way that women are used in the traditional Western. Damsels in distress, whores, submissive housewives and mothers—these are roles women are forced into by a male-dominated narrative of the West. In an allegory, the woman portrays each of these roles and is met with violence and oppression by each of the men she encounters. The two ways to remedy this inadequacy it seems are to: 1. Write more stories with marginalized characters at the center; and/or 2. Write stories demonstrating the history of marginalization. I’ve chosen to do the second with Beyond the Horizon. I need to do more research before I can do the first method any justice.

And originality: My favorite type of music is folk because it operates from a tradition that acknowledges its predecessors. I like hearing a new song and recognizing the lyrics and the tune from another song or some combination thereof. It’s like meeting someone’s relative and recognizing their shared traits. The Western (including the anti-Western) operates heavily as a tradition. I hope my book adds (albeit in a very small way) to the tradition with some features recognizable and a few new ideas thrown into the mix.

I should also mention that Beyond the Horizon is a stand-alone book, not part of a series. The deal with my publisher, Oneworld, was for two stand-alone books. The next one, Ghosts of the Desert, is completely unrelated (and there are guns and named female characters and it’s entirely in English). Series are fascinating to me, but I just don’t have the mental capacity to create something that expansive.

I appreciate everyone’s interest and comments. Please let me know if you have other questions or if I’ve just muddied the waters more! Thank you!

Reply
Charli Mills
28/12/2015 10:25:38 pm

Ryan,

Thank you so much for responding! I was hasty out the gate, assuming your book was a western (and part of a series). Once Anne explained it was speculative, then I had a different understanding of the gun mythology. Of course, I now own your book and look forward to reading it. I'm fascinated, after reading your insights, as to how you handle the same marginalization I also have an interest in writing about. I chose path number one and do find it challenging to research women who were never included in the historical record except mere mentions that clearly put them in one role or another, thus dismissing their actual involvement in otherwise "well known" western events. I hang out in gun stores in northern Idaho...a lot. It's one of my best resources for local historians and story-tellers. What we say today of past events is relevant to understanding why and how minorities get marginalized. Mostly my in-store research has been both fun and fruitful, but I did encounter a rather unsavory recently who backed up his sexist point with racist evidence. It's ugly to look at such hateful and oppressive thinking, but the white male-domination that conquered the west is yet alive. I want to give life in stories to those who counter that oppression. It sounds like you are attacking it from the allegorical angle.

Ah! Folk music. The common woes and hopes of the common people. Have you heard "Union Man" by Blue Highway. It's about labor unions, but if you listen to the lyrics, it could also be sung by a southern man who chose to fight for the union instead of the confederacy. "You're either for the rich man or the union standing strong." Different generations, different fights but still the same: standing up against the oppression.

Yes! Women's historical fiction and anti-westerns can both add to the western tradition. I think there's still so much more left to explore and say. Thank you for joining Anne's discussion here and adding insight to your book. I greatly appreciate that you are writing outside the male-dominated box of tradition to explore those hard themes of inhumanity and expansion.

Reply
Ryan Ireland link
28/12/2015 11:36:21 pm

Union Man? I've not heard this one before; I'll have to have a listen. And really, don't worry about genre mix-ups. My agent, publisher and I have all had a hard time trying to classify Beyond. The book jacket says "literary fiction," but a lot of bookstores are stocking it in the Westerns. (And most of the media attention has focused on the idea that it is a twisted Western.) I wonder if where people find the book influences how they read it? I don't know.

Research at the shooting range? I imagine you have a whole catalog of stories in addition to the information necessary to talk about firearms with authority. (Another confession: I don't get into specifics about firearms in my writing because I know very little about them. My wife's aunt was kind enough to give me a tutorial for my upcoming book which has a lot of shooting in it.)

I like recognizing the stories that are told around the edges--the marginalia. I think that is where history is really written. You have a favorite lesser-known historical figure I should read up on?

Charli Mills
29/12/2015 01:17:29 am

This is a great time for genre-breaking and exploration as writers, but it also presents a challenge to the distribution arm that has relied on set genres for sales. I hope you get to write or speak about your book because what you have to say is compelling enough to get readers to buy it.

That's fabulous that your wife's aunt could be your firearms tutor! Stories tend to flow around the gun culture where people go out and shoot for sport (long range or cowboy action). Collectors also know a lot of history in general.

I like that -- stories around the edges. That's what I look for. Most of what I find are obscure stories that in the long run need the aid of imagination to complete. Where do you look to fill in your ideas, your allegories?

Sure! Look up Two Gun Hart. He was James Vincenzo Capone, the older brother of Al Capone. Each served on different sides of prohibition, but James was also a violent man. He's "famous" in my little section of Idaho, having busted moonshiners in Elmira and gaining the ire of those who didn't drink, but didn't like extra law coming into the area.

Also, look up the story of Miss Mary Chamberlain. She was a Kansas schoolteacher who was tarred and feathered in 1911 by a group of men supposedly egged on by jealous women. You can find disturbing histories in the margins that reveal more about attitudes than the main stories of the day.

Other stories of lesser-known historical figures can be found in the archives of old newspapers. I can spend way too much time on Newspapers.com. The site allows you to search earlier eras by geography. It's amazing what you can find buried in the old print. I'm fascinated with the subcultures built up around the early traders who lived beyond the Missouri Wilds pre-1840s. Occasionally you can find their stories in newsprint, but I try to find oral histories past down in families. Not always accurate, but gives good clues and ideas outside the norms.

I'd love to discuss more of your process or even offer up leads for anything you are working on. My email is [email protected].

Annecdotist
30/12/2015 03:53:29 pm

I'm delighted that this conversation between you two had taken off on my blog and, at this point, I can only watch from the sidelines as its way out of my area of expertise. I'm honoured that Annecdotal has forged this connection (and amused that two Americans had to come over to the UK to do so) and hope it continues to be fruitful for you both.

Annecdotist
30/12/2015 03:51:14 pm

Thanks for responding so eloquently, Ryan. I think one of the great things about Oneworld and other smaller publishers is that they can step outside genre, but sometimes readers sort of can't quite believe we've got a novel kind of novel in our hands. I think yours does work as an allegory – it reminds me of the myth of Sisyphus with people labouring to produce things that will eventually be destroyed, but then that's life.
As I'm sure you can tell, anything about guns in the Western tradition is beyond me, but if you don't want to add anything about your decision to leave conversations untranslated I'd be interested in that. I rather enjoy novels where the odd word is left in the original language to give cultural relevance, but of course you've taken it a lot further than that.
But no worries if you don't have time to do so, and wishing you all the best with your next novel.

Reply
Ryan Ireland link
30/12/2015 04:29:01 pm

Oh, boy—translations. That was a conversation I had with my agent, publisher, and editor. Everyone wanted it changed (or an appendix of some sort at the end of the book) to make it more readable. I didn’t want that. I guess I’m stubborn and I probably should have listened. Two things tend to receive the bulk of criticism in Beyond—the violence and the use of non-English languages.

When I first wrote this story, a large part of the allegory came from the Biblical story, The Tower of Babel. My story takes place in a West that is almost post-Babel—there’s a lot of destruction, ruin, and the people can’t understand each other. There are these people wandering around this wreck of humanistic hubris—this idea/country that dared to be god-like in its endeavor. The language confusion was also part of the quasi-realism I wanted to foreground—the West was far from cowboys and Indians. We had lots of nationalities and languages in the West and a basic lack of communication (coupled with illiteracy) led to a lot of conflicts. On the larger, allegorical level, I wanted to demonstrate how humans tend to project their own thoughts and feelings onto others. The conversations we pretend to have are really us whistling in the dark or reifying a sketchy history. (We see this with the man’s refusal to acknowledge the woman’s angst over the stranger, or the falsely tender dialogue he has with her.) Of course the foil would be the stranger who knows and understands all—a power that is intimidating.

So why not translate (or at least provide a key)? I wanted the reader to be in the place of the man rather than the stranger. The stranger needed to be powerful and mysterious and language was the main tool I used to do that. I figured many readers would know Spanish or French or German. All three? (Well, my agent does—as I found out.) Add in Arabic and Portuguese and almost every reader at some point will be frustrated by their lack of understanding. They’ll wonder what they are missing; they’ll have to guess at what the words mean; they’ll have to rely on analyzing the characters’ actions rather than the words. Hopefully they also feel inferior to the stranger. That was the goal anyway. I don’t know if I achieved it or if it just bothered the readers.

One last note: Despite seven years of Spanish classes, I am woefully inept at learning languages. For my first draft I used Google Translate. As it ends out, Google Translate is a terrible tool. My agent (who I mentioned knows many languages) corrected the French and German. I hired a translator for the Spanish and had a friend help me out with the Arabic. Really, it was a lot of trouble for something meant to irritate the reader. Like I said, I’m stubborn and the publisher relented and let me keep the untranslated dialogue. I have to say I am grateful to have a publisher that was committed to my vision of the novel ahead of what they could see as a problem for marketing.

Annecdotist
31/12/2015 10:00:44 am

Thanks for this, Ryan. I did indeed think about the tower of Babel as I was reading your novel, and can see what you’re getting at. As a reader, I have mixed feelings about novels that seemed to set out to induce in the reader a parallel process to the topic of the book, and extremely risky for the author as you’ve no control over how the reader will react. But I do admire you in sticking to your guns (ach, no pun intended) and trying to ensure that the published version is the book you wanted to write. I’ve no complaints about my own editing process, but I doubt I could have been as determined as you had there been major disagreements. The most I could manage was to insist on “said” rather than “asked” following a question mark.


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