Just finished The Legend of Colton H Bryant

[MikeWaters]

Originally Posted by landpoke

Would it be worth my time or would I get the same effect by assuming somebody done somebody wrong at some point setting off an endless cycle of metaphoric murder and recrimination?

there are wars and battles and empires won and empires lost before you ever arrived. Mortals cannot understand the goings of the Gods.

[Solon]

Originally Posted by landpoke

I agree. Take a book like The Killer Angels. Would anyone consider that non-fiction? It's subject matter occurred, but nobody argues that the conversations therein are anything but the author's own supposition.

Same deal here. She took the life of a rig hand, made up a bunch of crap that she would have liked for him to have said and then passes it off as the truth. All in the service of her anti-energy agenda. I doubt her subject matter would have agreed in any way, shape or form with the crap she's peddling.

It's a thorny issue that's been around for a long time.

From Thucydides, book 1 (Crawley translation):
With reference to the speeches in this history, some were delivered before the war began, others while it was going on; some I heard myself, others I got from various quarters; it was in all cases difficult to carry them word for word in one's memory, so my habit has been to make the speakers say what was in my opinion demanded of them by the various occasions, of course adhering as closely as possible to the general sense of what they really said.

I agree that today's standards of non-fiction should exclude things like "creative" non-fiction or invented dialogues.

[Solon]

Originally Posted by landpoke

It was a quick read. I banged it out over two sessions a week apart. I'll post my full review later, but first impressions are it is what I thought it was.

I just finished it. Unimpressive, to say the least.

If you're going to write a post-modern novel, you'd better have your act together. Fuller's unwillingness to engage in a real narrative structure, coupled with some pretty drippy descriptions of Wyoming, were ultimately distracting and juvenile. In many ways, the short episodic chapters read like "what I did for summer vacation" papers from 5th grade.

Plus, the kid's not all that remarkable - to me, at least. I can, without exaggeration, say that I know at least five kids from high school whose rodeo / legal / hunting / etc. exploits were much crazier than this kid's. [Back me up, MRD: I'm thinking in particular of a certain truck-driver's kid who painted his face before football games, loved to sleep with fat girls (he called it "hogging"), had a Ford Bronco named "Buck," and could outwork, outeat, and outswear almost anyone.] At no point does she make a compelling case for why Colton's story is worth telling more than anyone else's. So the kid didn't hobble his horse one night and it ran off. He got it back a year later. What, exactly, does the author intend for me to feel when I read this story?

Nothing against the kid - he comes across as a nice enough man who died tragically and young. It's just that I get the feeling that this British woman arrived in Wyoming and became enamored with the first "cowboy story" she heard, never really understanding that these stories are pretty much a dime a dozen.

Finally, there are what I felt to be some pretty glaring inaccuracies in her account. While I understand it's a work of fictional non-fiction (if I can say it that way), she seemed to have a poor understanding of western geography, customs, and how oil drilling works - or am I off base, landpoke?

Overall, not a waste of time. The names and places made me a little homesick. But I'm guessing her intended audience is non-western or non-American, city-slickers who would also be excited to read exotic stories about a Wyoming cowboy.

[landpoke]

A couple of things I didn't think she captured correctly (other than everything in the book that is):

Safety procedures on a rig. This is the real world and we don't have someone looking over our shoulders all the time to make sure we're doing things the right way. As adults certain things are expected of us, for instance following the safety procedures. It was pretty clear to me that he should have been roped off on the catwalk, but choose not to do so because of the inconvenience. The argument that a $2000.00 railing should have been installed is a red herring intended to gloss over the fact that the victim put himself in a situation where he could fall. A situation that was easily avoidable if the procedures were followed.

The back and forth travel was made to seem much more frantic than it actually is. Depending on the company the crew generally works a week to ten days on and an equal amount of time off. Yet she made it seem like he was never home and those times he was able to sneak home he would have to rush back at odd hours. Which could have been the case, but it sounded more like a personal choice to me.

I also can't get my mind off the fact that nobody made Colton work the rigs. He understood the risks and the rewards and made a conscious choice to assume those risks. I've struggled with this a bit because nobody likes to blame the victim, but he had a choice. He could have swung a hammer, worked on a ranch, gone to Rock Springs and worked in the mines or any number of other jobs suitable for someone with his skill set. Yet he kept going back to the rigs.

Landscape, well she glosses over the fact that this is a lot of sagebrush nothing that we're despoiling here. I like it, but it's definitely not the Tetons or the Winds. I imagine if you took pictures of the area and asked the average American would they be opposed to drilling this land most would say no.
I also think she, as many have before her, disneyfied the place. It's not real, but rather some idealized wild place full of man-children who fall easy prey to the vicious big city hucksters who run the oil companies. Man-children who aren't smart enough to know what's good for them or the place where they reside.

I probably didn't answer your question(s) there, but that's my latest screed. I suppose I should wash my hands of Ms. Fuller lest I become obsessed and travel over to Jackson to douse here in the filthy products of my business.

[Solon]

Originally Posted by landpoke

A couple of things I didn't think she captured correctly (other than everything in the book that is):

Safety procedures on a rig. This is the real world and we don't have someone looking over our shoulders all the time to make sure we're doing things the right way. As adults certain things are expected of us, for instance following the safety procedures. It was pretty clear to me that he should have been roped off on the catwalk, but choose not to do so because of the inconvenience. The argument that a $2000.00 railing should have been installed is a red herring intended to gloss over the fact that the victim put himself in a situation where he could fall. A situation that was easily avoidable if the procedures were followed.

The back and forth travel was made to seem much more frantic than it actually is. Depending on the company the crew generally works a week to ten days on and an equal amount of time off. Yet she made it seem like he was never home and those times he was able to sneak home he would have to rush back at odd hours. Which could have been the case, but it sounded more like a personal choice to me.

I also can't get my mind off the fact that nobody made Colton work the rigs. He understood the risks and the rewards and made a conscious choice to assume those risks. I've struggled with this a bit because nobody likes to blame the victim, but he had a choice. He could have swung a hammer, worked on a ranch, gone to Rock Springs and worked in the mines or any number of other jobs suitable for someone with his skill set. Yet he kept going back to the rigs.

Landscape, well she glosses over the fact that this is a lot of sagebrush nothing that we're despoiling here. I like it, but it's definitely not the Tetons or the Winds. I imagine if you took pictures of the area and asked the average American would they be opposed to drilling this land most would say no.
I also think she, as many have before her, disneyfied the place. It's not real, but rather some idealized wild place full of man-children who fall easy prey to the vicious big city hucksters who run the oil companies. Man-children who aren't smart enough to know what's good for them or the place where they reside.

I probably didn't answer your question(s) there, but that's my latest screed. I suppose I should wash my hands of Ms. Fuller lest I become obsessed and travel over to Jackson to douse here in the filthy products of my business.

You're right. We should just move on.

I thought the exact same thing about the kid: nobody made him work the rigs. He made good money doing it, and was more than happy to take it for a dirty, inconvenient, maybe dangerous job. Certainly dangerous if you're too dumb to wear your safety harness.

Keep drilling, landpoke. And after I graduate, maybe I'll come work the rigs. God knows I'll need the money.