It's always sad when a
writer's untimely death motivates you to find that unread book and, a
day late as it were, finally read it. Such was the case for me
recently with Richard Matheson, who was better known as an sf writer,
or indeed a screenwriter, but who produced a number of westerns that
share a clean prose, clear storyline, firm narrative drive, and deft
characterisation. The Memoirs Of Wild Bill Hickok is
no exception, but it's also a revisionist version of gunfighter myth,
a sort of Little Big Man focussed
in on just one man.
The
excellent conceit of the novel is that it is indeed written by James
Butler Hickok himself, and he is no gunfighter, much less a hero. In
fact, he starts a sensitive soul, and grows into someone who's more
coward than anything else; even his name is acquired through accident
and misunderstanding. Fate seems to have a different path for Hickok
that the one he might imagine, and in this case, fate deals him tough
cards—not least his famous, fatal, aces and eights.
What
makes the book most effective is that Hickok's own writing begins to
follow the rough-edged frontier talk he has borrowed from the dime
novels who've created his legend; the sensitive man proud of being
well-read, winds up writing as if he really were the hero he's been
written to be, and in that chasm, in that conflict between the man
and myth, lies the story. It's fiction as life, and the scenes of Hickok on the stage have a true discomfort, even for the reader. And Bill finds his solace, as he did when he was a boy, in women, or failing that, as a man, in the bottle.
It
seems a simple tale on the surface, but it's Matheson's version of
Hickok's prose that gives this novel its edge, and makes it
memorable. It reminds us of just how controlled, how spare, and how
good Matheson was.
The Memoirs Of Wild
Bill Hickok by Richard Matheson
Forge (Tom Doherty
Associates) 1996, $6.99
ISBN 9780765362278
ISBN 9780765362278
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