I've noticed lately that the two huge stacks of paperbacks and digest magazines right behind my chair at the computer desk in my studio have started to lean rather precariously. Some of them have even slid off the tops of the stacks and fallen on me while I was working, which can be pretty startling. ("It's raining old paperbacks!") So I've decided that the only thing to do is read the blasted things, which will allow me to gradually move them to the shelves in the other room. I have a few library books checked out which I need to read first (such as a large print edition of THE MAN FROM NOWHERE, a Western novel by the great T.T. Flynn, one of my favorite authors), but once those are cleared away, I'm going to start on the project of whittling down those stacks.
Just don't ask me about the numerous other piles of books sitting elsewhere in the room. I'll get to 'em all eventually, honest I will . . . if I live long enough . . .
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I've never heard of TT Flynn. What's his best book... I'll try to snag one.
Flynn was a prolific contributor to the Western and detective pulps during the Thirties and Forties. In the Fifties he wrote a handful of full-length Western novels, the best-known of which was probably THE MAN FROM LARAMIE, which was made into a film with James Stewart. I haven't read that one, but I have read the novels THE ANGRY MAN and RIDING HIGH, both of which are good. THE MAN FROM NOWHERE, which I'm about a third of the way through, is good so far. In recent years there have been several paperback collections of Flynn's pulp stories, such as RAWHIDE and HELL'S HALF ACRE. Those ought to be pretty easy to find, but the full-length novels haven't been reprinted in paperback recently. I love the pulp stuff myself, but it's not as well-written as the later novels.
What do you think of the westerns by Frederick Manfred and A.B. Guthrie? I'm a fan of Manfred's Siouxland books (SCARLET PLUME, LORD GRIZZLY, RIDERS OF JUDGEMENT, etc.) and Guthrie's BIG SKY, WAY WEST, LAST VALLEY, etc. I've also enjoyed all of Larry McMurtry's westerns, even his comical Berrybender books of recent years. I really liked Edwin "Bud" Shrake's BORDERLAND and wish he'd write another western one of these days. Thomas Eidson's ST. AGNES' STAND is another fine western I read recently, though it's been sitting on my tottering TBR stack for years.
I have to confess I've never read anything by Manfred, and the only Guthrie I've read was one of his later novels which was a contemporary Western/mystery (can't recall the title). But I read all four of McMurtry's Berrybender novels not long ago and enjoyed them quite a bit, although the sort of mock Victorian style got a little old before I finished them. I have Shrake's BORDERLAND in one of those big stacks of books in my studio that I mentioned a few days ago but haven't read it yet. Shrake wrote another Western that was published by Bantam in the early Sixties, his first book, maybe, but I can't remember the title of that one, either.
I've got that Shrake book, too. It's called BLESSED McGILL. The Manfred stuff is great... CONQUERING HORSE, LORD GRIZZLY, SCARLET PLUME, RIDERS OF JUDGEMENT. I haven't read his other books yet, though I have'em all. I haven't read Guthrie's mysteries, just BIG SKY, WAY WEST, THE LAST VALLEY, THESE THOUSAND HILLS and FAIR FAIR LAND. Guthries westerns are actually a series, which begins with THE BIG SKY, and I think it won him a Pulitizer or something. They made THE BIG SKY and WAY WEST into movies, too.
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