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Zane Grey: His Life, His Adventures, His Women
Zane Grey was a disappointed aspirant to major league baseball and an unhappy dentist when he belatedly decided to take up writing at the age of thirty. He went on to become the most successful American author of the 1920s, a significant figure in the early development of the film industry, and a central player in the early popularity of the Western. Thomas H. Pauly's work is the first full-length biography of Grey to appear in over thirty years. Using a hitherto unknown trove of letters and journals, including never-before-seen photographs of his adventures--both natural and amorous-- Zane Grey has greatly enlarged and radically altered the current understanding of the superstar author, whose fifty-seven novels and one hundred and thirty movies heavily influenced the world's perception of the Old West.
- GenresBiography
408 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2005
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
July 26, 2013
Having never read a Zane Grey novel, I don't know what led me to this book. Biography is my preferred genre, and the "adventures" part promised a good story. I think I dismissed "his women" as maybe something about his bachelor life or maybe some Annie Oakley types he met out west.
Was I surprised! I think his contemporary fans (as I envision them) would have been shocked. Pauly spares the details, but the picture is clear. Their lives with Grey belie their photos, which show these women as wholesome and modern for our times and theirs. Grey's condemnations of "jazz age morals" certainly helped to build his image (or brand) and the hypocrisy was a well covered trail. Pauly says this was only knowable in the last 10 years.
The early letters of wife Dolly are almost too painful to read. She deserves a bio of her own. She apparently took stock of her position and found fulfillment in raising children, business (a bank president!) and travel.
Grey was clearly intelligent, remarkably handsome and athletic. His flexibility is exemplified in transitions from dentistry to baseball, to roping mountain lions, to writing, to pioneering in the film industry, and inventing his own reel for sport fishing. He emerged from childhood with emotional and financial needs.
Pauly does a good job in presenting all of this. The book details what is known of his childhood and early adulthood, how he came to travel west, the novels, the movies, the outdoor life. Pauly has piqued my interest in the Zane Grey novel... perhaps I'll try one.
Was I surprised! I think his contemporary fans (as I envision them) would have been shocked. Pauly spares the details, but the picture is clear. Their lives with Grey belie their photos, which show these women as wholesome and modern for our times and theirs. Grey's condemnations of "jazz age morals" certainly helped to build his image (or brand) and the hypocrisy was a well covered trail. Pauly says this was only knowable in the last 10 years.
The early letters of wife Dolly are almost too painful to read. She deserves a bio of her own. She apparently took stock of her position and found fulfillment in raising children, business (a bank president!) and travel.
Grey was clearly intelligent, remarkably handsome and athletic. His flexibility is exemplified in transitions from dentistry to baseball, to roping mountain lions, to writing, to pioneering in the film industry, and inventing his own reel for sport fishing. He emerged from childhood with emotional and financial needs.
Pauly does a good job in presenting all of this. The book details what is known of his childhood and early adulthood, how he came to travel west, the novels, the movies, the outdoor life. Pauly has piqued my interest in the Zane Grey novel... perhaps I'll try one.
April 17, 2024
I made my first trip to Pittsburg in September 1974. When I passed through Zanesville, Ohio I saw a sign for the Zane Grey Museum. On the many trips back and forth for the past 50 years I continued to promise myself to stop, but never had the time until May 2nd, 2007. I bought this book and finally read it this week. I grew up thinking I was a cowboy thanks to Zane Grey and Roy Rogers. I had a chance to work on a hay crew on a 64,000-acre ranch in Wyoming where my mom's two brothers worked, and Jim was the foreman, in 1960 but turned down the opportunity. I have been to Arizona and The Grand Canyon but not the Rainbow Bridge. This book took me back to my childhood and reminded me of the reasons I loved my dreams. I have visited every state but North Dakota and had plans to go to the Badlands in 2020 but got sidetracked by COVID. Zane Grey was an amazing author, sportsman, and fisherman. His personal life was a mess. During his time as an author Hollywood produced not just a lot of Westerns, but they were actually the majority of movies for a long period of time. I highly recommend this book.
September 25, 2015
Zane Grey made more money, caught bigger fish, and sold more books than Donald Trump ever could. He was the classiest, most romantic inventor of a new Western genre that American literature ever had, and he did more to open up the desert west as a site of adventure and mystery than anyone before or since. He bought over thirty boats in his lifetime, set a dozen world records, and slept with as many different women--all seemingly with the blessings and support of his wife/business manager. The whole time, he extolled traditional values, condemned women for smoking in public, and railed harder against the free-spirited Jazz age than any villain from The Spoils Before Dying.
But do not be fooled by this book's prurient title--Pauly is more historian than tabloid dreamer, and the pages of footnotes finishing this book are both his badge of honor and an indication of his priorities. Pauly researched the treasure troves of Grey's unpublished journals and letters and photos to produce his tome, putting together a meticulously factual account of the life of America's wealthiest writer that, often, bogs itself down in the minutiae of Grey's repetitive sport fishing career, which undoubtedly made better film than reading. While Pauly deals more frankly with the novelist's long roster of mistresses than anything else has before, his touch is so light that it is sometimes hard to tell whether Zane Grey got around to sealing the deal with certain of "His Women." Sex is referred to obliquely, as in Grey having "a romance" with a woman, or going "deeper" into their "relationship." Which is fine by me--I'm not dying to read about the romantic exploits of a middle-aged man with women young enough to be his daughter--but it also seems different from the book suggested by this title.
Pauly follows Grey from his boyhood to his death, cataloging his accomplishments and struggles and triumphs with an even-handed, scholarly voice that I ended up liking as much as not. And Grey is a fascinating character, as much for his paradoxes and flaws as for his virtues. But this is bedside reading, a diversion before shutting off the lamp.
But do not be fooled by this book's prurient title--Pauly is more historian than tabloid dreamer, and the pages of footnotes finishing this book are both his badge of honor and an indication of his priorities. Pauly researched the treasure troves of Grey's unpublished journals and letters and photos to produce his tome, putting together a meticulously factual account of the life of America's wealthiest writer that, often, bogs itself down in the minutiae of Grey's repetitive sport fishing career, which undoubtedly made better film than reading. While Pauly deals more frankly with the novelist's long roster of mistresses than anything else has before, his touch is so light that it is sometimes hard to tell whether Zane Grey got around to sealing the deal with certain of "His Women." Sex is referred to obliquely, as in Grey having "a romance" with a woman, or going "deeper" into their "relationship." Which is fine by me--I'm not dying to read about the romantic exploits of a middle-aged man with women young enough to be his daughter--but it also seems different from the book suggested by this title.
Pauly follows Grey from his boyhood to his death, cataloging his accomplishments and struggles and triumphs with an even-handed, scholarly voice that I ended up liking as much as not. And Grey is a fascinating character, as much for his paradoxes and flaws as for his virtues. But this is bedside reading, a diversion before shutting off the lamp.
May 26, 2012
The indepth research is amazing. Reading the indepth research is innauseum. Too,too much detail.
What an absurd man this Zane Grey was. A family willing to look the other way with his melancholy, depression and philandering.
I was going to take a van load of teenage fly fishing students to see his home and National Historic site in Lackawaxon. Don't think I am going to do that for fear that someone would think that I look to him as hero for our kids.
What an absurd man this Zane Grey was. A family willing to look the other way with his melancholy, depression and philandering.
I was going to take a van load of teenage fly fishing students to see his home and National Historic site in Lackawaxon. Don't think I am going to do that for fear that someone would think that I look to him as hero for our kids.
January 24, 2016
"The first full length biography of Zane Grey in over 30 years."
The title captures the essence of the book.
Each"The first full length biography of Zane Grey in over 30 years."
The title captures the essence of the book.
Each facet (life, adventures, women) was thoroughly explored.
Extensive bibliography and notes
4*
The title captures the essence of the book.
Each"The first full length biography of Zane Grey in over 30 years."
The title captures the essence of the book.
Each facet (life, adventures, women) was thoroughly explored.
Extensive bibliography and notes
4*
December 5, 2012
In the end I had to skim a lot of this book. I got so upset reading how Zane Grey lived his life! He was rather selfish man and egotistical man, I think. Lots of details about his fishing and yatching life that did not interest me. However, I did think it was good for me to know more about this writer.
July 16, 2018
An in-depth discussion of author Zane Grey, known for his western novels that propelled the genre forward.
Grey, as it so happens, is kind of a douche. But it was interesting to learn all of this nonetheless.
Grey, as it so happens, is kind of a douche. But it was interesting to learn all of this nonetheless.
September 7, 2018
Zane Grey liked to fish and hunt and travel to exotic locations. He left his wife at home and mostly spent his time away with young girls. Nevertheless he stayed married for many years.
December 19, 2024
Despite the numerous offerings out there, Pauly claims to be writing the first serious biography for Zane Grey, which, maybe so. He certainly does a good job of placing Grey in his place and time, for the most part, although I question the occasional claim. For example, he says that "Grey [formulated] a concept that quickly became a cornerstone convention of the Western: a man grows weak and ineffectual when he commits himself to one woman and her expectations," however the idea of women taming men is all over novels of the nineteenth century. Even in Owen Wister's The Virginian, the heroine turns the hero into "an innocent boy," which I have never liked. But I don't like that novel as a whole, while I appreciate a lot of Grey's stuff.
And while Grey plays with that trope in relationships like Jane Withersteen's with Lassiter in Riders of the Purple Sage (Jane spends pretty much the whole book trying to get him to give up his violence), in the same book you've got Bess and Venters, who have a much more balanced relationship where neither one seems bound and determined to change the other. They influence each other, sure, but they aren't actively trying to make the other over into their own image. And in other novels Grey's heroines outright refuse to pressure the hero to change and end up empowering him instead.
With that title, I was a little afraid there wouldn't be much commentary on the novels but he does a good job there. And although I knew that Zane had a heck of a time getting Riders of the Purple Sage published, I either had forgotten or never knew that one guy rejected it saying “the interest is centered too much in the women.” Obviously Zane's female characters didn't stop men from reading or loving the book once it got into print (although I suspect it was the movies that shot that book to the fore in terms of Grey's total output).
I was intrigued by Pauly's arguments that within about a decade Grey's main readership shifted from progressive cityfolk in the east to rural folk further west, which is a new one on me. I knew Grey's early heroines were progressive for their day but didn't realize how rapidly things changed on that front during the "roaring twenties."
When it comes to adventure, I did cringe some over the lion hunting stories (most of the lions captured "for zoos" did not survive...), but in the end it was the fishing I found a bit much. I don't doubt sport fishing was a huge part of Grey's life but I kind of zone out when Pauly goes on for pages and pages about this fishing trophy and that fishing kerfuffle. "The Tuna Club" comes up constantly through a few chapters -- Grey wanted in, he didn't want in, he agreed with their rules, he broke their rules, he offended this member or that... which got tiresome. I'm not a huge fan of feuds even when they're over something I care about, and I find it hard to get excited about awards even when it comes to stuff that matters to me. And I am not much interested in record-weight fishies or how to catch them.
But fishing was such a driving force in Grey's life I can't really fault Pauly for covering it so thoroughly.
Finally, I had no problems with how Pauly covered "the women," and have to wonder if some of the other readers read the Introduction, where Pauly states, "Of the women discussed in this book, only Nola Luxford and Lola Gornall are not in this collection," which I would guess meant all the other unmarried women who travelled with Grey and who he pursued as an adult were his lovers.
I'd always kind of wondered about Zane Grey's multiple trips into the boonies with ladies not his wife, but I hadn't guessed he was a complete narcissist who thought he had every right to any woman he wanted and could get hold of, or that his wife Dolly was such an enabler. Their relationship was not quite Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir territory, because at least Dolly Grey got marriage, three kids and lots of cash out of the deal, which de Beauvoir did not.
Plus Dolly seems to have actually liked and been friends with some of Grey's other ladies (I always got the impression de Beauvoir despised Sarte's other paramours). And Dolly and Zane seemed to have honestly loved each other to the end, while I have often wondered if Sarte could love anybody. Dolly Zane thought Grey was "just made that way" when it came to his inability to be sexually loyal, and I suppose she excused some of the ladies on the same grounds.
Still, their relationship was not quite the noble and redeeming love between one man and one woman that Grey's westerns often extol! Personally, I give Grey points for hanging in there with his wife and financially supporting her and all, but I suppose others might call Grey a hypocrite (which he most definitely was) and admire Sarte for living out the philosophy he claimed to hold. The both of them did their level best to live in a world that's incompatible with reality, but Grey's vision of hard work, etc., served him somewhat better in the end.
And while Grey plays with that trope in relationships like Jane Withersteen's with Lassiter in Riders of the Purple Sage (Jane spends pretty much the whole book trying to get him to give up his violence), in the same book you've got Bess and Venters, who have a much more balanced relationship where neither one seems bound and determined to change the other. They influence each other, sure, but they aren't actively trying to make the other over into their own image. And in other novels Grey's heroines outright refuse to pressure the hero to change and end up empowering him instead.
With that title, I was a little afraid there wouldn't be much commentary on the novels but he does a good job there. And although I knew that Zane had a heck of a time getting Riders of the Purple Sage published, I either had forgotten or never knew that one guy rejected it saying “the interest is centered too much in the women.” Obviously Zane's female characters didn't stop men from reading or loving the book once it got into print (although I suspect it was the movies that shot that book to the fore in terms of Grey's total output).
I was intrigued by Pauly's arguments that within about a decade Grey's main readership shifted from progressive cityfolk in the east to rural folk further west, which is a new one on me. I knew Grey's early heroines were progressive for their day but didn't realize how rapidly things changed on that front during the "roaring twenties."
When it comes to adventure, I did cringe some over the lion hunting stories (most of the lions captured "for zoos" did not survive...), but in the end it was the fishing I found a bit much. I don't doubt sport fishing was a huge part of Grey's life but I kind of zone out when Pauly goes on for pages and pages about this fishing trophy and that fishing kerfuffle. "The Tuna Club" comes up constantly through a few chapters -- Grey wanted in, he didn't want in, he agreed with their rules, he broke their rules, he offended this member or that... which got tiresome. I'm not a huge fan of feuds even when they're over something I care about, and I find it hard to get excited about awards even when it comes to stuff that matters to me. And I am not much interested in record-weight fishies or how to catch them.
But fishing was such a driving force in Grey's life I can't really fault Pauly for covering it so thoroughly.
Finally, I had no problems with how Pauly covered "the women," and have to wonder if some of the other readers read the Introduction, where Pauly states, "Of the women discussed in this book, only Nola Luxford and Lola Gornall are not in this collection," which I would guess meant all the other unmarried women who travelled with Grey and who he pursued as an adult were his lovers.
I'd always kind of wondered about Zane Grey's multiple trips into the boonies with ladies not his wife, but I hadn't guessed he was a complete narcissist who thought he had every right to any woman he wanted and could get hold of, or that his wife Dolly was such an enabler. Their relationship was not quite Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir territory, because at least Dolly Grey got marriage, three kids and lots of cash out of the deal, which de Beauvoir did not.
Plus Dolly seems to have actually liked and been friends with some of Grey's other ladies (I always got the impression de Beauvoir despised Sarte's other paramours). And Dolly and Zane seemed to have honestly loved each other to the end, while I have often wondered if Sarte could love anybody. Dolly Zane thought Grey was "just made that way" when it came to his inability to be sexually loyal, and I suppose she excused some of the ladies on the same grounds.
Still, their relationship was not quite the noble and redeeming love between one man and one woman that Grey's westerns often extol! Personally, I give Grey points for hanging in there with his wife and financially supporting her and all, but I suppose others might call Grey a hypocrite (which he most definitely was) and admire Sarte for living out the philosophy he claimed to hold. The both of them did their level best to live in a world that's incompatible with reality, but Grey's vision of hard work, etc., served him somewhat better in the end.
August 20, 2010
This book is about fishing. Zane Grey loved to fish and he loved to break fishing records. The last half (?) of the book is devoted to his pursuit of grander and bigger fish and his zeal to be listed in record books for catching the largest fish ever. It is also about the curse of writing and how difficult it is to write. Grey had a depressive illness and that proved a barrier to his writing. Grey also loved women who were not his wife, although he professed to love his wife the best and they stayed together until his death. Other women helped his depressions and he was most always involved with another woman or three in his trips away from home to do research for his books. Some of what I read in this book would almost characterize Grey has a sex maniac, but that is just me. He did incorporate some of his sexual misadventures into his books in not sexual scenes but romantic scenes. HIs women were strong and iconoclastic and probably not portrayed quite right by the women who played those roles in the many movies based on Zane Grey's books. I have never read Zane Grey, but my grandad had a Zane Grey paperback going most of the time. Who would have thought my grandad was interested in romance? I remember seeing pictures of Zane Grey at the time, although it was not common to picture the author on books in those days. Nevertheless, I saw a picture of him somewhere and his hairdo was laughable to me as a youth. Now, I think he looks sexy and debonair and manly beyond the pale. There are many pictures in this book that show Grey in different southwestern, fishing and romantic settings. Grey loved Arizona and New Mexico and the mystery and spirituality of Native American culture. He was actually one of the first to see Rainbow Bridge in AZ after it was discovered by white people. He was friends with the Witherills that found Mesa Verde and saw in his lifetime the demise of the native American lifestyle that he found so inspiring. All of this and more is written about in this very interesting biography. Afficiando's of the Western and those interested in early Arizona would probably really enjoy reading this biography. There is alot of fishing though.
October 30, 2013
There is a huge amount of research that went into this book. Very detailed almost to the point of dragging the story down at times. All in all a very thorough biography of arguably the most popular writer of the 1920's, and one that is still popular today.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews