Legacies: A History Journal for Dallas and North Central Texas, Volume 3, Number 1, Spring, 1991 Page: 39
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birth in Dundee, Texas, to the present. The next
three chapters analyze his work by neatly dividing it
into Anglo novels, Indian novels, and historical
nonfiction. The book concludes with a chapter on
Capps' view of writing, based largely on interviews
with Capps, and a three-page summary comment on
Capps' place in Western writing. Even the analysis
of Capps' published work is bent toward the man
and his writing convention. Descriptions of individual
books are usually mingled with Capps' explanations
or comments by literary influences such
as Mody Boatright. This approach tells us more
about Capps the writer but less about his works.
Clayton does an excellent job of tracing Capps'
literary development and describing his style. He
does less well at placing Capps within Western
writing.
Clayton provides keen insights into Capps'
determination to write painstaking, realistic Western
fiction based on solid historical knowledge. He
suggests that Capps' failure to reach a wider audience
resulted, in part, from his reluctance to vigorously
promote his work or make artistic compromises
to public taste. Yet Clayton's failure to
explain why more popular writers such as Louis
L'Amour and Elmer Kelton outsell Capps and how
their writing styles differ from his leaves Capps in
somewhat of a contemporary vacuum, cut off from
more popular contemporaries.
Capps' work also appears in a historical
vacuum, cut off from pioneer Western writers such
as Owen Wister, author of The Virginian, or the
popular Western formula writer Zane Grey. Capps
clearly departs from the older amateurish writers,
but his uniqueness might be seen more clearly within
the history of the popular Western.
Clayton does an excellent job of relating
Capps' Texas background and education to his writing.
Capps' comments on his own style and works
are smoothly interwoven with the general analysis.
In the process, we learn many valuable things about
the craft of Western literary realism. The book
includes the usually interesting story of an author'sstruggle to keep himself afloat until discovered.
Clayton also discusses the influence that the University
of Texas and teachers such as Harry Ransom
and Mody Boatright had on Capps.
Time and a more educated reading audience
may make Capps' realistic novels more popular.
Capps has had consistent critical success.
Three of his novels, The Trail to Ogallala (1964),
Sam Chance (1965), and The White Man's Road
(1969), won the prestigious Spur Award given by
the Western Writers Association. Three more novels
were runners-up for this award. The gap between
critical and popular success may close in the future.
Meanwhile, this book skillfully analyzes Capps'
craft, while leaving unanswered some questions
about his relative lack of commercial success.
- Jerry Rodnitzky
University of Texas at Arlington
Other Review Copies Received
Francis Edward Abernethy, ed., The Bounty of
Texas (Denton: University of North Texas Press,
1990, 220 pp., $19.95)
Edmund Deane, ed., Branches of The Living Vine:
A Seventy Five Year History of Highland Park
United Methodist Church (Highland Park United
Methodist Church, 1990, 256 pp., $32.95)
Dianna Everett, The Texas Cherokees: A People
Between Two Fires, 1819-1840 (Norman, Okla:
University of Oklahoma Press, 1990, 173 pp.,
$21.95)
Oliver Knight, Fort Worth: An Outpost on the Trinity
(Fort Worth: TCU Press, 1990, 310 pp., $16.95)
Reprint of 1953 edition with an essay on the 20th
century by Cissy Stewart Lale.
Roger M. Olien and Diana Davids Olien, Easy
Money: Oil Promoters and Investors in the Jazz
Age (Chapel Hill, N.C.: The University of North
Carolina Press, 1990, 216 pp., $29.95 cloth, $11.95
paper)
Jane Pattie, Cowboy Spurs and Their Makers
(College Station: Texas A & M University Press,
1991, 172 pp., $39.95)
39
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Dallas County Heritage Society. Legacies: A History Journal for Dallas and North Central Texas, Volume 3, Number 1, Spring, 1991, periodical, 1991; (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth35118/m1/41/: accessed May 5, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Dallas Historical Society.