13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A superbly integrated account of one of America's most popular authors of the western novel, November 13, 2005
Zane Grey: His Life, His Adventures, His Women is a superbly integrated account of one of America's most popular authors of the western novel. Soundly documented and a seminal piece of biographical scholarship by Thomas H. Pauly (Professor of English, University of Delaware) fans of Zane Grey will learn that he was a disappointed aspirant to major league baseball, an unhappy dentist, and took up writing at the age of thirty. His personal life was as colorful as any of his novels which made him the most successful American author of the 1920s, a popularizer of hunting and fishing, an early conservationist and wilderness protection advocate, and a significant figure in the early development of the film industry. He became a world traveler and a man whose marriage was critical to his literary success. But his domestic relationship was stressed by long separations, deep depressions, and multiple affairs with women. Enthusiastically recommended reading, Zane Grey is an impressive biography of a complicated and multifaceted man that is as engaging and entertaining as it is informed and informative.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Thundering Herd, Blundering Hero, July 9, 2006
Without the journals and letters which the Gray Estate has allowed Professor Pauly to peruse and quote, ZANE GREY: HIS LIFE might never have been written. They help to deepen, immeasurably, our appreciation of Grey's peculiarly American character.
In so many ways his American-ness is absolute. The zest for living, the expansive nature, the hail fellow well met sportsman side, his relations with women, especially with Dolly, his long-suffering wife--a woman he couldn't live with, yet couldn't live without. In one letter she notes that they had spent 7 days together in the whole of the past 12 months. Grey's traveling begins taking manic proportions shortly before the First World War, and continues for another 25 years, during which time he spends great fortunes on living it up and doing some world class angling. One yacht alone cost $300,000, in the midst of the Depression, plunging him finally into what amounted to them as abject poverty. Dolly couldn't even afford a movie ticket, she was scrimping so much.
Gray was a handsome man, the photos in the book revealing a big, strapping he-man type whom Harrison Ford might have played in earlier days. He seems to have cut right through the Gordian knot of Victorian prudery and found carnal love right away. Pauly's book makes one wonder if sexual freedom wasn't practiced on a much wider scale back in the day than we had previously imagined.
Pauly's big find is that Grey spent most of his writing life cheating on Dolly more or less openly, and she turned a blind eye, sometimes a condescending one, to his wild private life. He had the "decency" to bring his women on his months long excursions, whether to Rainbow Bridge or to Tahiti. They were hired as secretaries perhaps, but somehow wound up in his bed straightaway, posing for pornographic photos, hundreds of them (none of which are reproduced in the book). Apparently Grey was addicted to porn. Professor Pauly is a little at sea with this thundering herd of women and lacks the novelistic background which might have helped us tell them apart, for the most part. However one or two of them jump out from the pack, particularly the would-be writers among them who hoped that the famous Zane Grey would help them sell their work. He would--but only after he signed it with his own name and for his trouble he'd pocket 85 per cent of the proceeds.
This cheating and petty larceny and the wasteful spending are all symptoms of an underlying depression, or so it seems. He often felt his reasons for living slipping away. There was always a bigger silver marlin over the next horizon. "Driven" isn't the word for it!
Pauly gets so caught up in the drama of the decline and fall of the great Western writer, that he forgets to include any material that would interest us in Grey's novels, most of which, he convinces us, are inferior dribble. Book after book is disappointing, but there must have been a few good books perhaps early on? For a critical biography, this one is all too critical!
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An Eye-Opener onto Zane Grey, January 18, 2007
This is the most information I've ever seen on Zane Grey anywhere. He certainly was not like any of the characters he created. Apparently a charismatic man, but rather self-centered. After he had 3 children with his wife, he stopped spending any time with her or the children - his younger son remembers spending only one full day with his father in his entire youth. Grey took a series of mistresses with him on his yearly travels - and wrote to his wife about them!!! And told her he loved her and that she understood him better than anyone!
There is a good bit of well researched info about his youth and about his life. I enjoyed reading this book and finding out more about Grey's life. If you have enjoyed reading either his Westerns or his books on fishing and the outdoor life, this book wiil give you a "behind the scenes" look at those stories.
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