Repeat of a Review by Phil Abbott
Readers should note I can count the number of Western novels I have read on three fingers: Portis’s True Grit; Clark’s The Oxbow Incident and Proux’s Brokeback Mountain. My interest was piqued by recently watching Deadwood. Kelton’s The Time It Never Rained was recommended to me as perhaps the best contemporary novel about the American West.
Kelton struggled to find a publisher. He wrote a draft in the later
fifties. Unable to find a press, he re-wrote the novel in the early
sixties only to fail again. Only after receiving positive reviews of The Day the Cowboys Quit, was The Time It Never Rained
published in 1973. From the today’s perspective the novel is hardly
innovative. The narrative is linear. There are no picaresque characters.
Exploration of racial tension (which Kelton expanded in each draft) is
relatively limited. The Time It Never Rained
is a family saga about the drought that plagued West Texas in the
1950s. Before the drought began, Rio Seco was a relatively prosperous
community of proud and independent ranchers. When the rains finally
returned in 1957, the town has all features of The Last Picture Show. Young people have left; ranches have been auctioned; those remaining are angry and dispirited.
Despite its narrative and stylist simplicity, however, Kelton’s The Time It Never Rained
is an engrossing novel. The central character, Charlie Flagg, a cattle
and sheep rancher, is a figure who exemplifies all the features of a
lost masculinity, and by implication, a lost West. Scrupulously honest
and hard working, his loyalties are simple. His family and the land are
the primary source of his affections. There are some cracks even in this
lost world. Flagg’s marriage shows subtle signs of disintegration and
one wonders if his wayward son’s behavior is the result of a silent but
demanding father. His relationships with the Mexican workers on his
ranch are correct and cordial and on occasions affectionate, but as one
young Mexican explained to a loyal employee they are also “patriarchal.”
The young women on the ranch, both Anglo and Mexican, are treated with
exceptional respect by Flagg, but also with a chivalrous manner that is
only possible for one who has defined gender relationships on
permanently unequal terms.
Perhaps the
defining aspect of Flagg’s character is a ferociously protected
independence. His refusal to accept government aid indirectly leads to
the loss of almost all of his land and stock. On the other hand, Flagg’s
resistance to the new economy in which ranchers and the government are
partners is for the most part justified. When federal bureaucrats are
not incompetent, they are predatory. Thus the tragedy of the West Kelton
depicts is one in which the lone rancher’s fate is failure. He will be
destroyed by nature or the government. At the
close of the novel, the rains finally come but Flagg’s last remaining
livestock, a herd of goats, are destroyed in a stampede. Flagg’s
reaction to his crestfallen spouse is a classic reiteration of the
American Dream: “There is still the Land. A man can always start gain. A
man always has to.” This engendering of
American enterprise has both a conservative and a revisionist aspect.
American greatness is dependent upon the maintenance of masculine
values. These values also lead to excess and disaster.
You can find more review links on Todd Mason's blog.
7 comments:
Never heard of this until now (but then I've read even fewer novels that can be classed as 'Westerns' than you - many thanks for the education.
This one knocked Phil out and several people he passed it on to.
Sounds really worth seeking out.
So...Phil never read LONESOME DOVE?
Jeff M.
Westerns make up a big portion of my reading, although I haven't read one in a while. I think I'll make my next book a western and this one sounds interesting.
Nope. He had an antipathy to anything with cowboys in it for years. Now he was also red THE SISTER BROTHERS.
Nicely put. I've known of this novel for a long time but don't think I"ve read a review of it until now. You make it sound like it should be on my must-read list. A product of drought stricken 50s, I suspect it would strike a chord.
While the role of women in the novel is not surprisingly gendered, it seems equally so for the men, who are locked in a patriarchal belief system that treats them no more kindly, though it may pretend to privilege them.
Wow. I'm rather surprised, as this *is* the default book people mention when they mention Kelton...
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