Rex Benedict in Manhattan

Above: Giusi and Rex in the late 1960s.

Rex Benedict was amongst other things the author of a series of unusual Western novels written for children, two of which have previously featured on this blog, Good Luck Arizona Man, and Last Stand at Goodbye Gulch. Biographical details of the writer are scarce, so I was very pleased and grateful when John F Higgins got in touch via a mutual friend to share his childhood memories of Rex:


As a young boy, from 1967-70, my mother and I lived at 23 West 88th Street in Manhattan, a half-block from Central Park. The area was nowhere near as upscale then as it is now, but it will still a marvellous area to grow up in. A large part of my memories from that time are about our upstairs neighbour, Rex Benedict.

Rex and Giusi (“Juze-ey”) lived with their cat, Sonnet, in a 1 bedroom apartment directly above ours. Their flat had a nice, small terrace—their view was of the backs of our (north) neighbour’s buildings—and an even smaller study, in which Rex had his manual single-sheet desktop printing press! Many days after school, or on weekends, I would go up there and watch him put in one letter at a time, upside down and backwards, for whatever page in whatever self-printed book of prose (“Fantasano”) or poetry he was working on for his Corsair Press. Sometimes he let me do the typesetting. It was fascinating… especially the thin-or-thick blank pieces of metal he had to put in as spaces between words or at the ends of sentences or paragraphs.

Rex was a thin, tanned, gentleman with the most prominent Adam’s Apple of anyone I ever met, before or since. He brewed his own coffee using a stovetop espresso maker on his gas stove and rolled his own cigarettes… incessantly!. He had a wonderful, authoritative but not overbearing voice and often wore casual pants and short-sleeve shirts.

Rex and I bonded over Star Trek, which was just on its original run at the time. He and I would watch the episodes weekly on his black and white television set and shared a love of the Spock character. I am certain I learned the Vulcan hand salute in his presence. I seldom watch an episode of the original series now without thinking of him. Very fondly.

My mother and I moved to a Boston suburb half-way through 1970 and even though Rex mailed me a copy of Good Luck Arizona Man, we did not succeed in keeping in touch and, much to my lasting regret, I never saw him again. I am sure he was writing Arizona Man while I was still in New York but I’m not sure what memories I have of that; since he did not typeset it at home I have no tangible memories to hold on to. I just remember loving it when I read it and always wished his books had been more popular.

I think of Rex often and every now and then have tried to find out on the web what became of him. Sadly, he passed away some years ago and Giusi some time after. I will never forget him.

— John F Higgins



A collection of Rex Benedict’s Corsair Press books. Fantasano is a prose book, and the rest are thin collections of Rex’s poems. “In The Green-Grass Time” is dedicated to John F Higgins, as it was inspired by his adventures in Central Park.

Vivat Rex Benedict

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.

Another 100 books you might enjoy - a post for Norm

Norm is gone, but Normblog is not. The ideas are vital, the words speak, intimacy with the mind endures.

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.

More picture books by a variety of authors:

Good Luck Arizona Man

This was one of my favourite books in those long gone days, and it was a pleasure to read it aloud to Bo in recent weeks. The Puffin paperback gives no details on the author, Rex Benedict, and I can’t find anything online except the titles of a few other books also written in the 1970s.

The story concerns a fair-haired boy, Arizona Slim, raised by Apaches who goes looking for lost Apache gold, and for the secrets of his own origins, in the Guadalupe Mountains of Texas. The tale is vividly told, and whether much of it is accurate fact or more the imaginings of the writer, either way it’s impressively done.

The secrets to good luck and happiness, according to Arizona Slim, include never using your real name, changing it regularly, and allowing no thing to exist in your mind which you don’t want to exist, replacing it with something you prefer. Being able to cover your tracks, make your heart stop beating, and learning to breathe through your eyes are all helpful skills as well.

So now I rode into the night, free again and unburdened with White Eye complications. I now knew one more secret about myself and I was afraid to think too much about it. Instead, in pure Apache fashion, I put William Brodie away and became again the Good Luck Man, Arizona Boy, Arizona Slim, or whatever I wanted to call myself - tall for my age, wise for my years, and once again Apache-happy with my life.

I had my horse and I had the stars. I had lost my trackers long ago. Now I could head for those ghostly mountains - the Guadalupes - and find Old Wickiup’s gold.

Everything was beautiful.

Later that same night when Moon Dance and I had made camp along the first slopes of the Guadalupes, I felt that everything was perfect, which to an Apache means that everything is normal. About halfway through the night, while I was pickin’ out the stars in the Mexican sky and thinkin’ how truly fine in life it is to be a good-luck man and untormented by all the foolish things what un-good-luck men look for and die for and never find, I heard the distant trample of horses goin’ fast.

. . .