Storyteller
I have known a few. Some good, some bad, some whose stories leave you with a longing to hear more.
I have not yet read Travels with Charley. I intend to, very soon. I have just stumbled upon Bill Steigerwald’s “Travels without Charley”. In it, Steigerwald sticks his thumb in the legend, by using his mad sleuthing skills to discover that Steinbeck’s book was “A fraud”.
Well, then.
Bill, you ignorant slut. Steinbeck was a storyteller. A blisteringly good one, lest you forget. I don’t know, and I don’t care, if Travels with Charlie is billed as a 100% true to life, but if the stories it tells are 1% as good as the other stories Steinbeck has told, the good news is his book will be selling long after everyone has forgotten who the hell Steigerwald is, the pissant.
Some of it is about the story, and some of it is about the man. Both are better than any pissant will ever be, IMO.
A similar thing happened to Colonel Richard Meinerzagen; Garfield’s book- which he titles “the Life and Legend of a Colossal Fraud” is all about how the Colonel’s accounts of things often don’t jibe with the facts, and lot of other things about him.
Well, sure. meinerzhagen was the only naturalist ever to take credit for someone else’s work, or crib his results from someone elses research, it never happened anywhere else. What horseshit. I find it difficult to care, but that part of his life has been overblown to show him to be “A collosal fraud”? Really? The contemprary and schoolmate of Winston Churchill, The man about whom T E Lawrence said
Meinertzhagen knew no half measures. He was logical, an idealist of the deepest, and so possessed by his convictions that he was willing to harness evil to the chariot of good. He was a strategist, a geographer, and a silent laughing masterful man; who took as blithe a pleasure in deceiving his enemy (or his friend) by some unscrupulous jest, as in spattering the brains of a cornered mob of Germans one by one with his African knob-kerri. His instincts were abetted by an immensely powerful body and a savage brain….
What was it that Lawrence said about Garfield? Oh, that’s right, not a goddamned thing.
Menerzhagen was a Man writ large. He may have been a prick and was almost certainly a murderor. His demonstrably true exploits were enough on their own to deserve notice. He killed people with his bare hands when he felt it necesary. He was a fearless and powerful big game hunter and has several species named after him. His hunts are well documented by others and beyond question. Did he actually do all those other things he wrote about, or claimed to have done, in times of war? Did what he recorded exist to mask some possibly even more unsavory truth? Without a time machine nobody will ever know. What I know, is that his memory, and the things he actually did, will always outshine anything some liberal shitbag like garfield will ever do. The idea that garfield’s book is an “Expose” is ludicrous. And as always, even if the Colonel’s exploits are all fabrication, they are a billion times better fabrication than garfield’s ‘Truth”. I find not one thing in Garfield to suggest we take his word over Meinerzhagens.
in ‘Confessions of a Dangerous Mind”, Chuck Barris claims to have been a CIA hitman during the height of his bizzarre TV career and the cold war. Really? This is the movie Roger Ebert, that miserable cunt, gave three and a half stars. After all, it’s just entertainment, right?
I’ll stick with entertainment about actual men, and decent storytellers, despite the desire of the small minded to tear them down, and I will ignore the entertainment about clowns who are portrayed as heroes, by fools.
My Dad had tons of stories, I even wrote some of them on my now-ignored blog. In the spirit of Winston Churchill, all I’ll say of the veracity of them it that of COURSE they’re all true, or they ought to be, and more an better besides.
Someday I’ll put all those stories up on Facebook so the rest of the family can read them.
Better than Travels With Charley is William Least Heat Moon’s first book, the travelogue Blue Highways. It has the advantage of being more recent than Steinbeck’s, and hasn’t been debunked, either. It was published in the late 1970’s and tells of Heat Moon’s travels around the USA in a van.
Other literary fakers include Patrick O’Brien, who invented his Irish heritage; beloved veterinarian author James Herriott (Alf Wight), many of whose stories were manufactured out of whole cloth, and sailor Tristan Jones, ditto.
“Patrick O’Brien, who invented his Irish heritage; beloved veterinarian author James Herriott (Alf Wight), many of whose stories were manufactured out of whole cloth, and sailor Tristan Jones, ditto. ”
Indeed. All entertaining storytellers whose work- fictitious or otherwise- will live long after them.
Get your hands on some JPS Brown… The Outfit or Jim Kane, to start with.. don’t read his western novel series… I found it wearisome… he has a few new ones out on Kindle, all great so far… he really puts into words the life of the people on the border and the thinking of the Mexican’s who live the cattle life… I think you’d enjoy them…
Thanks, RD, I will. A reccomendaton from you is like a silver dollar in my pocket, and I mean that as sincerely as it gets.
I like Rourke, true or not.
It’s probably harsh to say O’Brian invented his Irish heritage. He was actually Irish to some degree on the distaff side, but he never made anything up about it; because he did not include any autobiographical information as many authors do in their books, it was simply assumed for years that he was Irish. Granted that he never did anything to disabuse people of the notion, but I don’t think you could say it was he who invented his supposed background.