Go West, Grey fans: Western writer Zane Grey is enjoying increased popularity, especially among 'highbrows.'

Insight on the News, August 3, 1998 by Val Richardson

Western writer Zane Grey is enjoying increased popularity, especially among `highbrows'.

They seem unlikely folks to pay homage to the world's best-known writer of Western novels, but here they were, mingling with fans and old-timers at the annual convention of the Zane Grey's West Society. The 16th gathering recently convened in Grand Junction, Colo., nestled in the shadows of the Grand Mesas, the red-rimmed, flattop mountains that Grey once explored and later used as a setting for his novel, The Mysterious Rider.

Take Joe Wheeler, for example. A retired English professor, author and fellow at the Center for the New West in Denver, Wheeler could be described as an intellectual. But he's also a Grey buff and, as far as he's concerned, that's not a contradiction. "He's the logical successor to James Fenimore Cooper," Wheeler says. "He's the last author to chronicle the American frontier while the frontier still existed."

Grey, who died in 1939, is best known for books such as Riders of the Purple Sage, Heritage of the Desert, Arizona Aims, The Light of Western Stars and Nevada. But Grey isn't just for cowboys anymore. Among those who attended the convention were historians, doctors and executives, along with a generous portion of retirees and just plain "Zaneys," as his fans call themselves.

Students of the writer argue that his stories of heroic cowboys and brave pioneer women were pivotal works of social history that defined the West for the vast majority of Americans. Indeed, they place him in some highfalutin literary company. At the conference, historian Stephen May compared the influence of the Colorado River in Grey's work to that of the Thames in the novels of Charles Dickens and the Mississippi in Mark Twain's. Others credit Grey with writing some of the first chronicles of Western geography, landscapes, rivers and plants.

The Western code of honor laid out in his books continues to influence how Americans view themselves and how they are viewed in the eyes of the world, notes Wheeler. Grey's cowboys, with their determination to do the right thing in a lawless world, are growing more appealing as Americans tire of moral relativism.

"Today we have a deromanticization of the West," says Wheeler. "You can't tell the hero from the villain. And that's what people are moving away from. They're moving back to a more romantic era where there was a code of right and wrong and you could tell the good guys from the bad guys."

All this for a man who started his career as a dentist to please his father but longed to pen adventure novels. In 1906, after several unsuccessful stabs at writing, Grey met an old plainsman named Col. Charles "Buffalo" Jones, who took him to Arizona to rope mountain lions for zoos. The notes from his trip became the basis for his first success, The Heritage of the Desert. Grey never looked back, traveling regularly to the West and returning to his home in Pennsylvania to record his adventures into novels.

The society's success reflects a possible Grey renaissance. At the first meeting in 1983, about two dozen fans attended. At this year's gathering there were almost 150, with hundreds more on the society's mailing list. Universities are starting to treat Grey with more respect, too, assigning his novels in modern or Western literature courses, says Wheeler. Grey's youngest son, Loren, a psychologist and author, recently completed a videotape series on his father's life and work. He operates a similar organization, Zane Grey Inc., based in Woodland Hills, Calif.

At the moment, Loren Grey's mission is to find a publisher for his father's work. The author's longtime publisher, HarperCollins, has no plans to reissue the novels in paperback, much to the frustration of society members. "One of the ways I find out how old people are is ask them if they've heard of Zane Grey," he says. "If they're over 50, they have. If they're under 50, they haven't. The problem today is, kids don't read."

Nevertheless, hundreds of people have joined the Zane Grey's West Society (www.zanegreysws.org), which always hosts the conferences in a locale mentioned in one of his books. Next year, they will meet in Oregon's Rogue River country, where the author set Rogue River Feud.