Texas Reads>> archiveGlenn Dromgoole

11.19.2017   Story collection offers a treat for Elmer Kelton fans

Fans of the late Elmer Kelton are in for a treat.

      Wild West, a new collection of eleven of Kelton’s earliest short stories from the 1950s, has been published by Forge Books (366 pages, $27.99 hardcover). The stories, which gave the author his start as a fiction writer, originally appeared in some of the western “pulp fiction” magazines like Ranch Romances, Six-Gun Western, and Triple Western.

       “I was fortunate to come along a few years before the end of the pulp-magazine era,” Kelton wrote in his autobiography, Sandhills Boy. “They were good training for beginning writers as well as bread and butter for many prolific professionals.”

       The pulps began dying off in the late 1950s as TV replaced short stories as a source of entertainment. Kelton turned to writing novels and eventually wrote more than forty of them, while also working full-time as an agricultural journalist in San Angelo for forty-two years.

       The stories in Wild West — ranging from eleven pages to more than fifty pages — have never been collected in one volume. Kelton, winner of seven Spur Awards, died in 2009 at age 83. In 1995 his fellow western authors voted him the best western writer of all time.

Mavericks fans: Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban writes the foreword to Tim Cato’s book 100 Things Maverick Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die (Triumph Books, $14.95 paperback).

       Listed Number 1 is “Dirk Nowitzki Means Everything,” and Cuban certainly agrees, calling Nowitzki “the best player on the court and the coolest person off of it that I’ve ever seen.”

       Number 2 on Cato’s list is “2011 Was Different,” the year Dallas won the NBA championship.

       Number 3 is “Mark Cuban” and Number 100 is “An Oral History of the 24 Hours After the 2011 Finals.”

       In between, Cato covers a lot of games and names, including Steve Nash, Rolando Blackman, Don Nelson, Rick Carlisle, Jason Kidd, Roy Tarpley, and the 20 three-pointers made in the 2011 “Mother’s Day Massacre” playoff win over the Lakers, 122–86.

       It’s not just the good years that get ink in the book. Number 85 is “The 11-Win Season,” when Dallas almost set a record for ineptitude in 1993, losing seventy-one games while winning just eleven. Cato rehashes all eleven wins that year.

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Glenn Dromgoole’s latest book is West Texas StoriesContact him at g.dromgoole@suddenlink.net.

>> Read his past Texas Reads columns in Lone Star Literary Life here.