Time, I think, for a Rex Benedict revival. I have just finished reading the above book with Bo, Last Stand at Goodbye Gulch, and it has much the same fine qualities as Good Luck Arizona Man, on which I blogged earlier. Two more of his cowboy stories sit ready on the side table, Goodbye to the Purple Sage and The Ballad of Cactus Jack.
There is not much to be found about Mr Benedict online, but Last Stand at Goodbye Gulch includes this glimpse of the man:
About the Author
Rex Benedict writes that his biography can best be set forth in periods:
“There was the Oklahoma Period, where I was born and raised; the Northwestern State College Period, where I was educated; the U.S. Navy Period, where I flew from aircraft carriers; the European Period, where I translated and dubbed movies; the Greek and Roman Revival Period, where I pined among the relics; the Freighter Period, where I cruised endlessly on blue seas; the Corsair Press Period, where I privately published my greatest works and gave them all away; the Translation Period, where I translated many books, including The Decameron, into many languages, hopefully the right ones; the Juvenile Novel Period, where I astounded myself and others by writing Westerns; and finally the Terrace Period, where I now sit on West 88th Street in New York City, marvelling at it all.”
An antiquarian book site gives Rex Benedict’s date of birth as circa 1920. It also describes him as a British poet, so who knows. The rather perfect cover illustration for Last Stand at Goodbye Gulch is by Quentin Blake. It was published by Hamish Hamilton, London, in 1975. The first American edition was in 1974.
Norman Geras’s last post on Normblog was titled A book list with a difference, or alternatively, 100 works of fiction you might enjoy. As a small tribute to him, I offer a complimentary list of fiction books. There is no overlap with his list as all of these come from the bookshelves of my children. They are still young and they have as yet read hardly any of Norm’s kind suggestions. Like his, this is not a ‘best of’ or a ‘must read’ list, but a list of books that we have enjoyed, some of which you may know, and some of which you might like to try.
The first one is by Ian Beck:
• Picture Book
This is an extraordinary book for the very young, its images simple yet intensely rich. As the children have grown older they have enjoyed many more of his books, for example his edition of Edward Lear’s The Owl and the Pussycat, and a version of The Nutcracker written by Berlie Doherty, and more recently his Tom Trueheart children’s novels.
My son Bo is off on a canoeing and camping adventure this weekend. He knows a little of canoeing but is more experienced with kayaking. Here’s something he wrote about it last year for school:
Entering the flow, my boat suddenly tipped over; what had I forgotten? I was tipped over many more times and was only able to save myself with a few support strokes, the spray from the rooster tails was getting through my spray deck, and then I realised, I wasn’t edging! It was the most basic rule of white water kayaking and I had forgotten it! Just before I hit the Rooster tails I managed to put on an edge. It was the closest shave I’d had for a long time.
When you finish reading the last paragraph you may be wondering, who is this person, where are they and what on earth do rooster tails have to do with white water kayaking? Well, my name is Bo Jacobs Strøm, and I am spending part of the summer, before starting secondary school, white water kayaking at Shepperton Weir in Surrey. The most confusing thing in this piece will probably be all the kayaking words I’ll be using so here is what they mean: an edge is when you tilt your boat one way while keeping your balance (this can save you from capsizing by making the water go under your boat instead of hitting the top and capsizing you), a support stroke is a stroke from the paddle which stops you capsizing, a spray deck is a flexible cover which is fitted to the top of a kayak keeping the users bottom half dry (and stopping water getting into your boat), an eddy which is a pocket of flat water caused by a rock in the white water, and finally a rooster tail is white water which hits a rock and goes spurting up in the air.
For the past three days I had been experiencing coldness, wetness, and a lot of fun at Shepperton Weir where I had gone with the Pirate Club, a kayaking and canoeing club based in Camden. I went so I could do white water kayaking and have fun, and that was exactly what I did do.
White water kayaking was something I hadn’t done for a long time so I was a little bit worried about capsizing and so on but, although I sometimes I had a close shave, I got on well in fact the only thing I was still worried about on the second day was the swimming in white water practice...
I was standing on a rock in the middle of the white water about to jump into the flow, I was terrified, but everyone else had managed to get into the eddy so I knew it could be done. I jumped. It was just as fun as kayaking in the white water and I actually managed to get into the eddy pretty quickly. As I hit the water shut my eyes and the next thing I knew was that I was being swept down stream. I quickly made sure my feet would not snag on a rock, aimed my head at the eddy, turned over onto my front and swam for all I was worth into the eddy, now thoroughly convinced that white water kayaking would be my sport from now on.
So that’s my experience of Shepperton Weir, a great place to go if you're beginning to learn white water kayaking and for any kayaking the Pirate Club (where I spent a lot of the rest of my holiday) is a great place, especially as one of the instructors might compete at the Rio 2016 Olympic games.
Yesterday was another of those saturdays filled with running around with the kids to various arrangements. Peggy was invited to her friend Maddy’s birthday party, so the first thing on my list was to walk down to the Owl Bookshop to get a present. For a midsummer birthday I picked Moominsummer Madness.
Back at the house, cousins had arrived to go to a drama class with Peggy while I took Bo to get a haircut, and then on to his guitar lesson.
After guitar, lunch in hand, we took a bus into Marylebone where Bo was playing in a little piano concert with fellow students of Paul Tame. Susanna met us there, having picked up Peggy and cousins from drama, passed cousins on to grandparents, and Peggy on to Maddy’s party which was to begin with rock climbing and end with a sleepover.
The piano concert was for a small audience of family members, a presentation as part of preparing for grade exams. We listened to some wonderful young players. There’s no shortage in this world of children able to do clever things, given the chance.
After the concert we had to buy a cricket helmet. Bo has inherited an unusually think skull from his father, so none of the helmets at his cricket club fit him.
On the way home, we passed by Gosh Comics, where Bo got a Lucky Luke comic and I bought a children’s board book for myself, Little Fur Family by Margaret Wise Brown and Garth Williams, pictured above. I love the work of both of them, but had never before read this hirsute classic. It was as wonderful as I’d hoped.
The night ended with Bob talking about the central part played by Communists in America’s 20th Century folk music movement. This was in reference to Burl Ives, subject of one of my recent guest posts at Bob’s Beats. In turn I talked about Forest School Camps where singing folk songs, both American and British, is a central part of their wild camping trips for children. I enjoyed hearing Bo come back from his most recent camping trip singing Process Man and Blackleg Miner. Thankfully the experiences described in these songs are as remote to my children as those in Burl Ives’s whaling songs were to me as a boy.
Peggy and Maddy have a favourite FSC song too, Queenie, AKA Strip Polka. Oh dear!
_
Illustration from Little Fur Family, story by Margaret Wise Brown, pictures by Garth Williams. Copyright 1946 by Harper & Row Publishers, Inc. Illustrations copyright renewed 1974 by Garth Williams.
Last Saturday we all went with Susanna to Golden Lane Estate in central London, where she was doing a project at the Exhibit gallery, making an animatied film with local kids. The film will imagine prehistoric creatures and plants coming back to life and reclaiming the estate. This is Bo’s drawing for the film.
In the street in Córdoba, we saw an extraordinary looking man, a big man, a Black man, wearing cap, t-shirt, jeans, and a big billowing dusty flamenco dress. He was working the cars at the traffic lights, selling air fresheners I think. I saw a smartly dressed woman on a scooter give him a big smile and a greeting. But scooters don’t need air fresheners. As the bus moved on towards the railway station we saw another man doing the same routine at the next junction, also in a flamenco dress.
The night before in Córdoba we’d taken the kids to a flamenco show, past their bedtime, in a funny colourful place, first drink included in the price, a small audience of tourists already there, some of them also with children. The group on stage would do a wordless number, then a pause, come back with a singer and do a song, a pause, come back with a different singer, pause, come back with a dancer, and so on. One singer particularly gave it the whole arm, breaking heart, breaking voice, blood, sweat and tears. Then in the next pause he started working the tables. The patter about the flamenco group, no — the flamenco family. The price of the CD, the tape, the DVD. Signed by the whole group. Dedicated to the children. Of course we bought a CD. Resent it? I loved it. That's how it’s done. Tear your heart out for them and then get the money before they can look away.
Earlier in Ronda, we’d visited the bullring. The children played in the dust of the arena. The bullring museum included photos of one their most famous 20th Century bullfighters posing with various unnamed characters, recognisable amongst them Ernest Hemingway and Orson Welles. Outside the bullring stood a man and horse, both in full costume, posing for photos with tourists for a fee.
From Ronda to Córdoba, from Córdoba to Madrid.
Coming out of the Madrid metro into Puerto del Sol on a sunny afternoon, we were disoriented and overwhelmed, and in the noisy crowded square a toreador, a woman dressed as Hello Kitty, and other costumed photo opportunities for sale. Also a mariachi band. Street sellers hawking sunglasses and twinkling knick-nacks. Everything here and now all pressing into the hot square between the tall, tatty, city buildings. Exhausted as we were, we fled, but it’s that part of the city I most want to revisit.
We were booked into a hostel on a street off the square, booked on the internet, in a hurry, last minute. There was a small doorway. A bell gave access to the dark narrow hallway lined with postboxes, leading to a small old lift. I can’t remember what floor reception was on. The fourth? Everything was brown. The one sign of the 21st Century was the coin-operated internet terminal. Our hearts sank. But now I can at least say there weren’t fleas in the beds, unlike the earlier hotel in Ronda which put on a much flashier front.
In our room, the noise rising from the street was as loud as if we were still down there. We could hear an incessant squeaking noise, lots of shouting and laughter. I did my best to ignore it, dizzy from lack of lunch. The children ran round the room, bouncing on beds, antic kittens, leaning over the balcony rail — a clown! It was a clown in the street, speaking in squeaks and mime. Our son got the phone to take a picture, over the railing, visions of it being dashed on the pavement several stories down. The clown was playing tricks on passers by, swapping his bag for theirs, hopping onto one for a piggyback ride, jumping into the street in front of a bus and refusing to let it pass. And finally throwing down his cap and gesturing for applause, then gesturing for money.
Though it didn’t end as simply as that — the business of harvesting payment was as big a performance as the rest. Once the crowd had put money in the hat he did a whole bit of business sitting on the pavement to count it, then looking up to count the crowd, then pursuing someone he suspected of not paying. And when the clown got a coin from this fellow he bit it of course, pulled a disgusted face and mimed shoving it up his bum. Then a woman came to give him more money. He smiled, she didn’t have to, he had so much already, but when she then walked off without giving it to him he pursued her, desperately making clear he really did want her money.
Below is a clip of Orson Welles, via Cartoon Brew, from some years after he was photographed at the bullring in Ronda, talking about performers and audiences, and why a television studio audience is not a real audience: because they haven’t payed. He maintains that the real audience is becoming extinct - an exaggeration, though it’s true that many performers now work without direct contact with their ultimate audience, and have a much less tangible relationship with them than the clown in Madrid or the Córdoba street seller. This has economic as well as cultural importance, as Mark Mayerson describes in a post from 2008, The Final Customer, on the distant relationship between most commercial animators and their audience.
Our young cat comes from a long line of admirals. Here for example is Admiral Purry, who appears in one of the illustrations from Little Golden Book No. 1, Three Little Kittens, from 1942, with art by Masha.
