Zane Grey: His Life, His Adventures, His Women (Paperback)

by Thomas H. Pauly (Author) "Pearl Zane Gray's pioneer heritage was imprinted on his consciousness with the name his parents gave him at his birth on January 31, 1872..." (more)
Key Phrases: record broadbill, honeymoon journal, first broadbill, Zane Grey, Tuna Club, New York City (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist
These days, if readers know Zane Grey at all, they generally know him as the guy who wrote clunky but very popular paperback westerns. But eight decades ago or so, Grey, a former baseball player and dentist who turned to writing at the ripe old age of 30, was the hugely popular author of a string of best-sellers. This is the first full-length biography of him to appear since 1970, and according to Pauly, it's the first comprehensive account aimed at recording the facts. (Earlier efforts were aimed at creating a legend.) Grey was a man of many interests, an unabashed womanizer, a world traveler, and a champion of the American wilderness and the men and women who tamed the Old West. Pauly explores all facets of the novelist while avoiding devoting too much time to mining the man's novels for nuggets of his life. Grey's personal passions informed his novels, but his books were not mere fictionalized bits and pieces of his life. He was a man who stood apart from his work, and Pauly brings that man robustly to life. David Pitt
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review
"Much has been written about Zane Grey in the century since his first book was published. Sadly, very little of it will stand the test of time. Thomas Pauly 's book, on the other hand, ranks with the best that has ever been written on the subject. It is thoroughly researched, well documented, and fascinating. Quite simply, it is a masterpiece. A must-read for every serious student of the Old West." -- Joe L..Wheeler, Ph.D., cofounder and executive director of Zane Grey 's West Society, publisher and editor of Zane Grey 's West magazine "Pauly 's work is unsurpassed. Not only has he thoroughly researched the existing material on Grey, he has industriously tracked down all sorts of family archives, letters, journals and other materials barely used by previous authors." John Cawelti, author of Six-Gun Mystique --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 408 pages
• Publisher: University of Illinois Press (July 27, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0252074920
• ISBN-13: 978-0252074929
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #527,281 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 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

By	Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Zane Grey: His Life, His Adventures, His Women (Hardcover)

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.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Thundering Herd, Blundering Hero, July 9, 2006

By	Kevin Killian (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Zane Grey: His Life, His Adventures, His Women (Hardcover)

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!

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Spurious research..., July 11, 2007

By	F. Hanafin Elliott - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Zane Grey: His Life, His Adventures, His Women (Hardcover)

This book contains spurious research... the author was only able to examine records briefly... give us a break! He is factually inaccurate in many areas, i.e., birthplace of Lillian Wilhelm Smith. The author inaccurately copied information from Donna Ashworth's well-researched book on the topic.

If this clown is teaching somewhere, students beware!

Fran Elliott
Sedona, AZ