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Not in My Backyard

Brian Balogh | University of Virginia

Victoria Lamont discusses B. M. (Bertha Muzzy) Bower’s life, from her beginnings on a Montana cattle ranch to her success as a writer of serial westerns, all the while contending with the conflicting pressures of editors, husbands, children, and her own creative aspirations.

Image courtesy of interviewee. May 9, 2024

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This video video is a spoken overview of a biography dedicated to Bertha Muzzy Bauer, known as BM Bauer, a prolific Western author who published 60 novels and hundreds of short stories between 1904 and 1940. The speaker has been interested in Bauer's work since the 1990s while pursuing a dissertation on women in Western American writing. They were subsequently connected with Bauer's grandson, Reed Doke, who sought to document his grandmother's life after previous attempts by her family to write a biography fell short due to personal hardships.

The speaker outlines the extensive research involved in the project, including visits with Bauer's grandson, examination of her personal materials, and analysis of her correspondence found in various archives. BM Bauer's literary contributions often reflect her personal experiences, particularly her tumultuous first marriage, which motivated her to write.

The biography presents Bauer as a passionate writer who used her authentic life experiences to create relatable characters, often satirizing the tropes prevalent in popular Westerns of her time. The speaker argues that while Bauer was an important figure in Western literature, her legacy did not endure as prominently as those of her male counterparts like Zane Gray due to publishing practices that obscured her identity as a woman.

This video video emphasizes Bauer's nuanced depiction of cowboys as working individuals rather than idealized heroes and showcases how her writing contributed to the broader genre of Western literature. The speaker hopes that this biography will challenge the notion that women did not actively participate in the creation of Western literature and asserts BM Bauer's significance in this literary space. Overall, it aims to present a well-researched and compelling narrative that not only enlightens scholars but also engages casual readers curious about Western literature.

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This book is a biography of popular western author

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Bertha Muzzy Bauer, known as BM Bauer.

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Uh, and I have been interested in Bauer since

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I was a graduate student way back in the 1990s.

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And I was, working on a dissertation on,

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Western American writing by women.

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And Bauer was one of the writers I was, interested in.

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And so, I've been, working with her,

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fiction for a long time.

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Uh, there, when I started reading her stuff,

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there wasn't a lot known about her outside

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of her novels.

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Uh, she was very prolific.

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She published 60 novels, hundreds of, short stories,

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throughout the,

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from about 1904 till about 1940.

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And, it astonished me that this author was so prolific

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and next to nothing was known about her.

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Um, and then, I was put, I was actually put in touch,

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sort of,

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step into the future a few years.

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And I was, I became an associate professor,

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here at the University of Waterloo.

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Um, and I was put in touch with,

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BM Bauer's grandson, his name is, re doke.

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Um, and his family, had been trying to

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write and publish their, their,

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BM Bower's biography.

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Um, two generations of them, first Bower's daughter,

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started to write a biography

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and tried to get it published.

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Um, and then, Bower's granddaughter, tried

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to take up the, the project,

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and they just weren't in a good position to,

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be able to see it through.

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They were both, single parents with kids to raise,

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and they were, working.

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Um, and,

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so they had a really hard time getting it finished

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and also, finding a publisher.

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And so, Bauer's grandson Reed,

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collected all the papers together,

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and he decided that he would put out feelers in the academic

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community and see if anyone was interested,

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in the project.

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And, he reached out to a colleague who knew,

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some of my work.

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I had published a couple of articles, about BM Bauer,

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and I was working on a

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Book.

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Um, and, so, they put me and Reid in touch.

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And, so we had a phone call,

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and I found out more about Bower's story,

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and I was just hooked.

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And that was, it's been a long time.

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It's been, since about 2010,

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that this has been coming into, into being.

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Um, but that's, that's where this project came from.

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It was a lot of detective work,

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and a lot of jigsaw puzzle assembly.

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Um, so, Reid, Bower's grandson,

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he had quite a lot of material.

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Um, so I spent a couple of, I, visits with him.

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I would go down for a couple of weeks. He lives in Arkansas.

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I live in Ontario, Canada.

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And so I went down to, Arkansas

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and looked through, the, the materials that he had.

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He had letters. He had, Bowers,

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Manu, some of her manuscript records,

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which were very valuable.

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Um, a lot of notes that his, his mother

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and his sister had collected when they were

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working on the biography.

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Biography. So I had that material.

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Um, there were still some big holes.

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Um, I found, quite

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an extensive archive of Bower's correspondence

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with her book Publishers, little Brown

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and Company, that's at the Hilton Library at Harvard.

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So, I hold up there for about a week,

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and just photographed everything, they had,

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and that was, proved, very crucial

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to this biography in terms of understanding

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Bower's relationship with her, publishers,

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the sort of arc of her career.

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So there, so that was an important, source,

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a lot of research in digital newspaper archives,

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which really helped me understand, Bower's activities,

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particularly where she was in the public eye when she wasn't

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in the public eye.

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Um, I interviewed her two living grandsons,

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Reed Doke and, bill Bauer.

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And, they shared,

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their family stories with me.

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They have a kind of a rich, sort

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of oral tradition that they passed down in their family

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about, BM Bauer,

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and also, Bauer's Fiction.

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Um, she was very,

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she was very passionate about

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writing from where she lived.

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Um, she liked to use her immediate experience as

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an inspiration, not so much in an autobiographical sense,

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but more in terms of authenticity, in terms

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of getting the richness of the characters

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and the richness of the place.

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And so that really, I sometimes use that,

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for example, I'll talk maybe a bit about this later,

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but, Bower's first marriage,

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was quite an unhappy, marriage.

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And I knew this from the stories that her family told me.

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Um, but the specifics of it were kind of hazy.

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Um, but she did write,

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a novel about an unhappy marriage, in a,

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in a western setting in Montana,

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where she spent her early life.

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And so, I, in the biography,

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if you read it, you'll see I, I use passages from that novel

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to kind of speculate a little bit about, you know,

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this might be Bower kind of, mining her own past

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as a way to write this novel about an unhappy marriage.

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So I did, use her, her fiction,

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to inform the biography.

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So it was a, a real kind of jigsaw of all those,

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different sources kind of pieced together.

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She was born in 1871 in, Minnesota

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to a, settler family.

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And, they moved to,

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Montana when Bauer was 19.

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Um, and at the age of 19, she was kind of itching to,

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get out of the house, get out into the world.

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Uh, there were not a lot of opportunities,

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for women like Bauer in Montana, at that time.

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Um, and, she,

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so she ended up eloping with, a,

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the son of a neighbor.

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His name was, Clayton Bauer. They called him CJ Bauer.

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Um, and, that turned out to be a bad decision.

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Uh, they were not happy together.

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Um, but one thing that was fortuitous about that marriage,

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was that, Clayton, worked

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as a cowboy, and that became important to Bauer.

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Um, later on, she, she started

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writing when as the marriage broke down,

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they had three children.

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Um, by the time the youngest children was,

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I think just a, a few years old, the marriage,

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had broken down,

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and Bauer was, desperate to get out of it.

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And she started writing, just to make money, sh

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well, not, I shouldn't say just to make money,

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but the, the sort of desperation

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of her situation really motivated her,

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to, to write.

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She had always, show she was always a great reader,

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right from, from youth.

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Um, and I think, she had always entertained ambitions,

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and even dreams to be a writer.

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Um, and it was the, just the breakdown of her marriage

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that really motivated her to really,

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become a serious writer.

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And it took her about four years of slogging,

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writing short stories, getting rejected,

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fighting with her husband.

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Um, and, finally she had,

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a breakthrough

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after about four years, she was noticed,

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by, an editor at one

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of the earliest, pulp magazines.

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Um, it was called Popular Magazine.

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And they were looking for, new authors to sort

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of launch this new magazine.

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Um, and they, published her first novel.

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It was called, chip of the Flying U.

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Um, and it was a, a huge success.

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Um, and that, she, from that moment on,

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she was a writing machine.

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She wrote on average two novels a year, for the rest

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of her life, as well

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as short fiction screenplays.

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Um, so that's kind of the arc of,

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Bauer as a, as a writer.

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Um, in terms of her, her personal life,

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it was complicated.

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Uh, she was married three times.

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Um, she,

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she was a very adventurous person.

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Uh, she invested in a lot of, she made a,

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a lot of bad decisions in terms of her finances,

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just a very sort of adventurous,

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tumultuous life.

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Um, she spent a lot of her time digging herself out.

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She was never, she was al she was almost always

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behind in terms of, in financially, which is one

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of the reasons she was so prolific, was,

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she had barely, finished a book

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and she would spend the money on a new car,

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and she'd have to write another book, you know, to pay

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for her daughter's, university tuition.

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Um, so yeah, that's kind of sketches out,

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vows, personal life,

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just a really fascinating, person.

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And in my book, what I, what I try to do is sort

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of map out this very, dynamic

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and varied life in terms of her, well,

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some examples of her books.

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Two of my favorites are her first book, called,

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chip of the Flying You, chip is her Cowboy hero.

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Um, and that was her first big success.

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That was the book that enabled her to leave her marriage

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and kind of strike out on her own.

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Um, and, it's,

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she was very sort of intentionally

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and deliberately writing that book in response to another,

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famous Western that had been published a couple of years

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before, called The Virginian, by Owen Worcester.

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Um, and Owen, that that novel really started the tradition

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of the, of kind of glorifying vigilante violence,

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glorifying, the rugged individual cowboy hero.

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And I think, I don't know this for sure,

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but, I, I, I, I believe

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that Bauer probably hated that book.

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Um, and she wrote Chip of the Flying U really as an ar,

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as a, as a, refutation,

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of the Virginian.

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And so it's, it's, it's,

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her, her, her Western fiction is very satirical.

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There's a lot of humor in it.

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Um, she really likes to poke fun.

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Um, at, as, as popular westerns became,

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more and more prominent, she liked to poke fun at the,

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the more violent and sensational westerns

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and kind of undermine them.

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Um, so there's a scene in, one of my favorite scenes,

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from, chip of the Flying U is at the very beginning,

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and there's a, a woman doctor who has arrived at the ranch,

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and the Cowboys decide to play a joke on her.

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So they, as she is arriving at the ranch,

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being escorted by chip on a horse drawn, wagon,

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the Cowboys have prepared, a mock hanging.

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Um, and so,

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and they wanna, they wanna, they wanna terrify her.

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They wanna make her sort of faint and be hysterical.

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Um, and, she sees them doing this.

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They, they've got this sort of straw man hung up on a,

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on a tree branch, and she sees them doing this.

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Um, and she knows right away what's happening.

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And she says, to Chip, she says, hurry up.

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I wanna be there at the death.

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Um, as to sort of refute this idea of this sort of fainting,

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hysterical, woman arriving in the West.

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Um, so that sort of, in a nutshell, kind of, I think, kind

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of captures the sort of feel of, the way that Bauer,

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wrote about, the West.

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Um, in terms of her relationship to mass culture,

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it was complicated,

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because her publisher, particularly,

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Charles McLean at Popular Magazine,

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was a, was afraid that if readers found out she was a woman,

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that her books wouldn't sell as well.

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And so he really discouraged her from,

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he really discouraged her from pub doing any publicity.

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And he also convinced her book Publishers Little Brown not

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to, do any publicity.

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So for most of her career, most readers did not,

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know who BM Bauer was,

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and most of them assumed, that,

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BM Bauer was a man.

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Um, and so

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although she was at her height, she was,

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incredibly popular.

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She was considered the preeminent western writer

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alongside of Zane Gray.

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Um, she actually started her career, about 10 years

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before Zane Gray did.

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She proceeded Zane Gray,

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and was, considered,

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they were the two preeminent Western writers,

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of the day.

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Um, but

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because she wasn't, she was

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so discouraged from publicity,

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her reputation, did not outlast her her death.

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Um,

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and that's just, you know, we think about

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author's reputations and where they come from,

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and we think they just sort of happen naturally,

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but they are actually intentionally made,

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through the interventions of, publishers, reviewers,

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editors,

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and, is,

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we know a lot more about Sane Gray

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because he had quite a machine, behind him.

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So after he died, his, his wife, know, made sure

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that there was a biography published

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and made sure that people knew who he was.

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Um, and, the same was not true for Bowers.

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So, her, she, her reputation,

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because it, it reput our author's, reputations are,

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are things that people make there through labor.

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And, Bower's family was not financially well off

18:33.175 --> 18:36.215
after her death, and there just weren't the resources

18:36.275 --> 18:40.215
for them, to keep her, memory going.

18:41.005 --> 18:45.975
Bower's legacy is, is, is is layered.

18:46.775 --> 18:51.395
Uh, although, I, I, I would venture

18:51.455 --> 18:55.595
to say that most people watching this,

18:56.525 --> 18:59.395
might not know very much about Bauer

18:59.415 --> 19:03.845
unless they are experts in my field, right?

19:03.955 --> 19:05.965
Women's, Western writing by women.

19:06.025 --> 19:09.765
But I think a lot of people, won't necessarily,

19:10.825 --> 19:12.365
even have heard of her.

19:13.475 --> 19:14.895
Um,

19:15.355 --> 19:19.415
but I think that she really left her stamp on,

19:20.435 --> 19:24.215
popular culture and on the popular Western.

19:25.675 --> 19:30.375
Um, and I think where we can find that stamp is, she,

19:30.795 --> 19:34.975
she really, disliked the violence

19:35.235 --> 19:39.175
and the sensational that came to,

19:39.815 --> 19:41.975
dominate the Western, particularly in the

19:42.135 --> 19:43.335
twenties and and thirties.

19:44.905 --> 19:49.495
Um, and, that tradition,

19:49.715 --> 19:52.695
really came from the Virginian

19:53.475 --> 19:56.255
and, that I talked about earlier.

19:56.555 --> 20:00.875
And the author of the Virginian Owen Worcester,

20:01.215 --> 20:03.275
was writing from a different vantage point,

20:03.375 --> 20:07.515
and he really, wrote about the cowboy from a kind

20:07.515 --> 20:09.035
of upper class perspective.

20:09.295 --> 20:12.115
And so he created this cowboy that's very different

20:12.115 --> 20:16.575
to his employer, and he dominates the other cowboys,

20:16.755 --> 20:20.095
and he eventually becomes a powerful rancher himself.

20:20.235 --> 20:24.455
So it's sort of co-opting the cowboy to serve this sort

20:24.455 --> 20:27.855
of corporate story, you know, how to rise up in the world,

20:28.715 --> 20:30.335
through good behavior.

20:31.275 --> 20:36.095
Uh, and, Bauer, really disliked

20:36.095 --> 20:41.055
that she knew cowboys from a working cowboys perspective,

20:41.875 --> 20:46.495
and she wrote about cowboys as workers, as laborers,

20:46.675 --> 20:50.615
all also as part of a community, not

20:50.715 --> 20:54.135
as these sort of rugged larger than life individuals.

20:54.675 --> 20:58.615
Her cowboys were very human. Um, they were very fallible.

20:59.515 --> 21:03.375
Um, she liked to play with gender with her cowboys.

21:03.375 --> 21:07.455
There's one, cowboy she wrote about,

21:07.915 --> 21:09.375
she called him Andy Green,

21:09.515 --> 21:14.295
and he had this secret past as a circus rider,

21:14.355 --> 21:17.255
and he would, they made him wear tights

21:17.275 --> 21:20.335
and ride on the back, you know, stand on the back of a pony,

21:20.755 --> 21:24.215
and he found this very feminizing, so he was quite ashamed

21:24.215 --> 21:28.215
of it and, and hoped that his cowboy friends wouldn't,

21:29.055 --> 21:31.695
wouldn't find out about this secret past, right?

21:32.035 --> 21:34.815
So that's an example of Bowers kind of a cowboy.

21:35.115 --> 21:39.655
And I think that tradition has, continued in,

21:40.115 --> 21:42.975
popular western storytelling.

21:43.115 --> 21:46.975
So I think that's one, aspect

21:47.195 --> 21:48.775
of her legacy.

21:49.875 --> 21:53.655
Um, I think another aspect of her legacy,

21:54.035 --> 21:58.455
is found in, people like, writers like,

21:58.505 --> 22:00.735
Annie Pru and Judy Blunt.

22:01.635 --> 22:04.575
Um, and these are later women writers

22:04.835 --> 22:06.335
who are really writing,

22:06.465 --> 22:10.575
about the West from a women's perspective,

22:10.715 --> 22:15.535
and really using that perspective as a critical lens,

22:15.535 --> 22:19.535
through which to kind of story, the,

22:19.755 --> 22:24.015
the west and kind of, maybe dismantle

22:24.585 --> 22:27.735
those mythic masculine, paradigms.

22:28.195 --> 22:31.295
And I think Bauer was also doing that,

22:31.435 --> 22:34.015
but she was doing that a little bit more surreptitiously

22:34.015 --> 22:36.655
because there was not really a, that's,

22:37.475 --> 22:40.935
she really was often writing from a very

22:40.985 --> 22:42.335
precarious position.

22:43.315 --> 22:46.895
And so she really was under pressure to give the market

22:47.245 --> 22:50.695
what it demanded, and it wanted stories about cowboys.

22:51.555 --> 22:55.975
Um, but I think that you can see in some of the satire,

22:56.915 --> 23:01.455
and the humor, a a sort of,

23:01.545 --> 23:06.495
early example of women writers who were already

23:07.205 --> 23:11.095
kind of re rewriting that story from, from a different,

23:11.435 --> 23:12.935
outsider's perspective.

23:13.405 --> 23:17.895
Well, when I was writing this book, I really wanted to,

23:18.245 --> 23:22.135
walk that fine line of good scholarship.

23:22.835 --> 23:26.885
So I want scholars to be able to use this

23:26.945 --> 23:30.815
as a reliable, well-documented,

23:31.365 --> 23:34.935
scholarly book that they can use in their own research if

23:34.935 --> 23:39.855
they're interested in, moving forward with work on,

23:40.275 --> 23:42.095
mo there were other women who were writing

23:42.685 --> 23:43.935
when Bauer was writing,

23:44.275 --> 23:46.605
and there's not a lot known about them.

23:47.705 --> 23:49.045
Um, so,

23:49.745 --> 23:54.245
but I also, wanted it to be a good story.

23:55.065 --> 23:59.805
Um, and so I really hope that readers,

24:00.115 --> 24:03.245
that it will be a rewarding read.

24:04.065 --> 24:07.965
Um, just as a, just for someone who's reading for pleasure,

24:07.965 --> 24:11.465
reading for interest, someone who's curious,

24:12.005 --> 24:15.745
and who wants to, who's interested in learning more about

24:16.605 --> 24:21.305
the Western and where it came from about, women writers

24:21.565 --> 24:25.905
and just a, a really great story about a really,

24:27.065 --> 24:29.185
fascinating, woman.

24:29.445 --> 24:34.385
And I guess the most ambitious thing that I'd like,

24:34.975 --> 24:38.585
this book to sort of leave as its legacy is to really put,

24:38.605 --> 24:42.705
to rest this idea that,

24:44.215 --> 24:46.605
that,

24:47.305 --> 24:50.165
the Western is this male author tradition

24:50.265 --> 24:53.085
and that, women didn't have anything to do with it.

24:53.745 --> 24:56.805
Um, and to this day, I still read articles that claim

24:57.795 --> 25:00.205
that women didn't write westerns.

25:00.505 --> 25:04.525
So we don't need to care about what they thought.

25:05.105 --> 25:07.445
Um, and, that is just not true.

25:08.305 --> 25:13.165
And I hope that reading about this woman who wrote 60 novels

25:13.165 --> 25:14.565
and hundreds of short stories

25:14.945 --> 25:18.245
and gave Zane Gray a run for his money, I hope

25:18.405 --> 25:22.605
that this will, finally,

25:22.915 --> 25:25.645
make folks pay attention to Bauer.

Exploring the Legacy of BM Bauer

00:00:00 - This book is a biography of popular western author Bertha Muzzy Bauer, known as BM Bauer. and I have been interested in Bauer since I was a graduate student way back in the 1990s. And I was, working on a dissertation on, Western American writing by women. And Bauer was one of the writers I was, interested in.
00:00:35 - fiction for a long time. there, when I started reading her stuff, there wasn't a lot known about her outside of her novels. she was very prolific. She published 60 novels, hundreds of, short stories, throughout the, from about 1904 till about 1940.
00:01:04 - and next to nothing was known about her. and then, I was put, I was actually put in touch, sort of, step into the future a few years. And I was, I became an associate professor, here at the University of Waterloo. and I was put in touch with, BM Bauer's grandson, his name is, re doke.
00:01:42 - write and publish their, their, BM Bower's biography. two generations of them, first Bower's daughter, started to write a biography and tried to get it published. and then, Bower's granddaughter, tried to take up the, the project, and they just weren't in a good position to,
00:02:12 - They were both, single parents with kids to raise, and they were, working. and, so they had a really hard time getting it finished and also, finding a publisher. And so, Bauer's grandson Reed, collected all the papers together, and he decided that he would put out feelers in the academic
00:02:45 - in the project. And, he reached out to a colleague who knew, some of my work. I had published a couple of articles, about BM Bauer, and I was working on a Book. and, so, they put me and Reid in touch. And, so we had a phone call, and I found out more about Bower's story,

Unraveling BM Bauer's Life and Legacy

00:03:15 - And that was, it's been a long time. It's been, since about 2010, that this has been coming into, into being. but that's, that's where this project came from. It was a lot of detective work, and a lot of jigsaw puzzle assembly. so, Reid, Bower's grandson, he had quite a lot of material.
00:03:49 - I would go down for a couple of weeks. He lives in Arkansas. I live in Ontario, Canada. And so I went down to, Arkansas and looked through, the, the materials that he had. He had letters. He had, Bowers, Manu, some of her manuscript records, which were very valuable. a lot of notes that his, his mother
00:04:20 - working on the biography. Biography. So I had that material. there were still some big holes. I found, quite an extensive archive of Bower's correspondence with her book Publishers, little Brown and Company, that's at the Hilton Library at Harvard. So, I hold up there for about a week, and just photographed everything, they had,
00:04:55 - to this biography in terms of understanding Bower's relationship with her, publishers, the sort of arc of her career. So there, so that was an important, source, a lot of research in digital newspaper archives, which really helped me understand, Bower's activities,
00:05:25 - in the public eye. I interviewed her two living grandsons, Reed Doke and, bill Bauer. And, they shared, their family stories with me. They have a kind of a rich, sort of oral tradition that they passed down in their family about, BM Bauer,
00:05:57 - she was very, she was very passionate about writing from where she lived. she liked to use her immediate experience as an inspiration, not so much in an autobiographical sense, but more in terms of authenticity, in terms of getting the richness of the characters

Bauer's Unhappy Marriage and Writing Journey

00:06:27 - And so that really, I sometimes use that, for example, I'll talk maybe a bit about this later, but, Bower's first marriage, was quite an unhappy, marriage. And I knew this from the stories that her family told me. but the specifics of it were kind of hazy. but she did write,
00:07:01 - in a western setting in Montana, where she spent her early life. And so, I, in the biography, if you read it, you'll see I, I use passages from that novel to kind of speculate a little bit about, you know, this might be Bower kind of, mining her own past as a way to write this novel about an unhappy marriage.
00:07:32 - to inform the biography. So it was a, a real kind of jigsaw of all those, different sources kind of pieced together. She was born in 1871 in, Minnesota to a, settler family. And, they moved to, Montana when Bauer was 19. and at the age of 19, she was kind of itching to,
00:08:05 - there were not a lot of opportunities, for women like Bauer in Montana, at that time. and, she, so she ended up eloping with, a, the son of a neighbor. His name was, Clayton Bauer. They called him CJ Bauer. and, that turned out to be a bad decision.
00:08:37 - but one thing that was fortuitous about that marriage, was that, Clayton, worked as a cowboy, and that became important to Bauer. later on, she, she started writing when as the marriage broke down, they had three children. by the time the youngest children was,
00:09:09 - had broken down, and Bauer was, desperate to get out of it. And she started writing, just to make money, sh well, not, I shouldn't say just to make money, but the, the sort of desperation of her situation really motivated her, to, to write. She had always, show she was always a great reader, right from, from youth.

Resilience and Creativity: BM Bauer's Journey

00:09:41 - and even dreams to be a writer. and it was the, just the breakdown of her marriage that really motivated her to really, become a serious writer. And it took her about four years of slogging, writing short stories, getting rejected, fighting with her husband. and, finally she had,
00:10:11 - after about four years, she was noticed, by, an editor at one of the earliest, pulp magazines. it was called Popular Magazine. And they were looking for, new authors to sort of launch this new magazine. and they, published her first novel. It was called, chip of the Flying U.
00:10:47 - and that, she, from that moment on, she was a writing machine. She wrote on average two novels a year, for the rest of her life, as well as short fiction screenplays. so that's kind of the arc of, Bauer as a, as a writer.
00:11:19 - it was complicated. she was married three times. she, she was a very adventurous person. she invested in a lot of, she made a, a lot of bad decisions in terms of her finances, just a very sort of adventurous,
00:11:49 - she spent a lot of her time digging herself out. She was never, she was al she was almost always behind in terms of, in financially, which is one of the reasons she was so prolific, was, she had barely, finished a book and she would spend the money on a new car, and she'd have to write another book, you know, to pay for her daughter's, university tuition.
00:12:23 - vows, personal life, just a really fascinating, person. And in my book, what I, what I try to do is sort of map out this very, dynamic and varied life in terms of her, well, some examples of her books. Two of my favorites are her first book, called, chip of the Flying You, chip is her Cowboy hero.

BM Bauer's Satirical Take on Western Fiction

00:12:56 - That was the book that enabled her to leave her marriage and kind of strike out on her own. and, it's, she was very sort of intentionally and deliberately writing that book in response to another, famous Western that had been published a couple of years before, called The Virginian, by Owen Worcester.
00:13:28 - of the, of kind of glorifying vigilante violence, glorifying, the rugged individual cowboy hero. And I think, I don't know this for sure, but, I, I, I, I believe that Bauer probably hated that book. and she wrote Chip of the Flying U really as an ar, as a, as a, refutation,
00:14:01 - And so it's, it's, it's, her, her, her Western fiction is very satirical. There's a lot of humor in it. she really likes to poke fun. at, as, as popular westerns became, more and more prominent, she liked to poke fun at the, the more violent and sensational westerns and kind of undermine them.
00:14:34 - from, chip of the Flying U is at the very beginning, and there's a, a woman doctor who has arrived at the ranch, and the Cowboys decide to play a joke on her. So they, as she is arriving at the ranch, being escorted by chip on a horse drawn, wagon, the Cowboys have prepared, a mock hanging.
00:15:06 - and they wanna, they wanna, they wanna terrify her. They wanna make her sort of faint and be hysterical. and, she sees them doing this. They, they've got this sort of straw man hung up on a, on a tree branch, and she sees them doing this. and she knows right away what's happening. And she says, to Chip, she says, hurry up. I wanna be there at the death. as to sort of refute this idea of this sort of fainting,
00:15:41 - so that sort of, in a nutshell, kind of, I think, kind of captures the sort of feel of, the way that Bauer, wrote about, the West. in terms of her relationship to mass culture, it was complicated, because her publisher, particularly, Charles McLean at Popular Magazine,

The Forgotten Legacy of BM Bauer

00:16:13 - that her books wouldn't sell as well. And so he really discouraged her from, he really discouraged her from pub doing any publicity. And he also convinced her book Publishers Little Brown not to, do any publicity. So for most of her career, most readers did not, know who BM Bauer was,
00:16:45 - BM Bauer was a man. and so although she was at her height, she was, incredibly popular. She was considered the preeminent western writer alongside of Zane Gray. she actually started her career, about 10 years before Zane Gray did. She proceeded Zane Gray, and was, considered,
00:17:16 - of the day. but because she wasn't, she was so discouraged from publicity, her reputation, did not outlast her her death. and that's just, you know, we think about author's reputations and where they come from, and we think they just sort of happen naturally, but they are actually intentionally made,
00:17:50 - editors, and, is, we know a lot more about Sane Gray because he had quite a machine, behind him. So after he died, his, his wife, know, made sure that there was a biography published and made sure that people knew who he was. and, the same was not true for Bowers.
00:18:21 - because it, it reput our author's, reputations are, are things that people make there through labor. And, Bower's family was not financially well off after her death, and there just weren't the resources for them, to keep her, memory going. Bower's legacy is, is, is is layered.
00:18:51 - to say that most people watching this, might not know very much about Bauer unless they are experts in my field, right? Women's, Western writing by women. But I think a lot of people, won't necessarily, even have heard of her. but I think that she really left her stamp on,

Bauer's Counter-Narrative in Western Literature

00:19:25 - and I think where we can find that stamp is, she, she really, disliked the violence and the sensational that came to, dominate the Western, particularly in the twenties and and thirties. and, that tradition, really came from the Virginian
00:19:56 - And the author of the Virginian Owen Worcester, was writing from a different vantage point, and he really, wrote about the cowboy from a kind of upper class perspective. And so he created this cowboy that's very different to his employer, and he dominates the other cowboys, and he eventually becomes a powerful rancher himself. So it's sort of co-opting the cowboy to serve this sort
00:20:28 - through good behavior. and, Bauer, really disliked that she knew cowboys from a working cowboys perspective, and she wrote about cowboys as workers, as laborers, all also as part of a community, not as these sort of rugged larger than life individuals.
00:20:59 - she liked to play with gender with her cowboys. There's one, cowboy she wrote about, she called him Andy Green, and he had this secret past as a circus rider, and he would, they made him wear tights and ride on the back, you know, stand on the back of a pony, and he found this very feminizing, so he was quite ashamed of it and, and hoped that his cowboy friends wouldn't,
00:21:32 - So that's an example of Bowers kind of a cowboy. And I think that tradition has, continued in, popular western storytelling. So I think that's one, aspect of her legacy. I think another aspect of her legacy, is found in, people like, writers like, Annie Pru and Judy Blunt.
00:22:04 - who are really writing, about the West from a women's perspective, and really using that perspective as a critical lens, through which to kind of story, the, the west and kind of, maybe dismantle those mythic masculine, paradigms. And I think Bauer was also doing that, but she was doing that a little bit more surreptitiously

Challenging Gender Norms in Western Literature

00:22:37 - she really was often writing from a very precarious position. And so she really was under pressure to give the market what it demanded, and it wanted stories about cowboys. but I think that you can see in some of the satire, and the humor, a a sort of, early example of women writers who were already
00:23:11 - outsider's perspective. Well, when I was writing this book, I really wanted to, walk that fine line of good scholarship. So I want scholars to be able to use this as a reliable, well-documented, scholarly book that they can use in their own research if they're interested in, moving forward with work on,
00:23:42 - when Bauer was writing, and there's not a lot known about them. so, but I also, wanted it to be a good story. and so I really hope that readers, that it will be a rewarding read. just as a, just for someone who's reading for pleasure, reading for interest, someone who's curious,
00:24:16 - the Western and where it came from about, women writers and just a, a really great story about a really, fascinating, woman. And I guess the most ambitious thing that I'd like, this book to sort of leave as its legacy is to really put, to rest this idea that,
00:24:47 - the Western is this male author tradition and that, women didn't have anything to do with it. and to this day, I still read articles that claim that women didn't write westerns. So we don't need to care about what they thought. and, that is just not true. And I hope that reading about this woman who wrote 60 novels and hundreds of short stories
00:25:22 - that this will, finally, make folks pay attention to Bauer.

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