How The West Won Me/The Knolland Parables
By Timothy Herrick
What is a New Jersey writer doing writing westerns. The genre is universal now, so such snobbery is ignorant. The western are America’s Greek Tragedies, deeply ingrained in our collective imagination. I think about America a lot, and my westerns I consider prose poems about America. I can trace my family lineage back to the Mayflower, I have as much right to that mythology as any writer from anywhere.
But whether it’s literary fiction or westerns or any other genre — prose poems about America or just prose poems — my subject matter is always the same: The Human Condition.
But, I’m probably more surprised than anyone by The Knolland Parables.
Why the western?
Film. A life-long long of cinema eventually led to my creating a fictional universe to explore the human condition set in the weird old west.
I must’ve watched Have Gun With Travel because I do not remember a time when I could not sing it’s majestic theme, but I didn’t grow up watching reruns of the classic TV westerns. Honestly, except for Star Trek, television was a mind-dumbing wasteland before Miami Vice, then it kept getting better but I was always more of a reader than a TV-watcher. I’ve ridden horses, loved the New Rides of The Purple Sage, and even had a memorable fieldtrip to a Dude Ranch with my 8th Grade Class. But the cowboy boom has mostly passed by the time of my Wonder Bread Years.
One youthful experience though must be mentioned. I was a boy scout, my father was scout master, and he organized the Indian Lore Dance Team, which I liked way more than the camping, hiking and knot tying. My father was a history buff, loved model trains and Native American culture and instilled these obsessions in his children. I didn’t grow up with Stetsons and Toy-Six Hooters, but rubber tomahawks and loincloths. For my Indian Lore Merit Badge, I made a Lakota Medicine Man custom, faux fur and buffalo horn hat and a hand-painted Ghost Dance shirt.
It was as an older adult when I got into the western via Hollywood. I’m a deeply addicted film buff. I’ll watch any movie once. Literature may be my calling, but I love cinema. Adulthood this love reached fruition but as a youngster I liked moves, old and new. Western films were not shown on TV as frequently as the other genre’s from Hollywood Golden. Melodramas, World War II movies and Horror Films filled those after school viewing hours. I never connected with the westerns I did see on the boob-tube. I was later to find out of course that was mainly due to bad edits for commercials and reductive censorship that oppressed 20th century American filmmaking and Media. They cut those Spaghetti and Peckinpah films to shreds, they seemed barely watchable to me.
I remember seeing Little Big Man in a Drive-In with the family, and as an adult Silverado and Unforgiven in the theaters. It’s not that I discriminated, but that seems to be about it for Westerns as I recall. I’m as democratic a film goer as I can be, and back then the video rental age was in full blossoms and ticket prices at the theaters extremely affordable. I also moved to New York City before the now near extinction of the revival movie houses, small theaters that screened old movies, also only few bucks.
But Westerns were the orphan child in this golden era for cineastes. I saw tons of film, but scarcely any Western.
The 90s was a very creative period in American film. Genre filmmaking, even on mega-budget scale, became more personal and authentic. Scholarship on film, movies and culture never better. I immersed myself in genres, especially Noir, but foreign films, silent films, world cinema. I deep-dove into directors, such as Cassavetes, Truffaut, Bergman and Kurosawa. Between the video-shops and the revival, a new market made film preservation financially feasible. Lost masterpieces recovered and restored, forgotten filmmakers and lost films recovered.
At the same time, film analysis kept getting better. Socials contexts, cultural connections – from movie reviews to film critique as a film – there was a lot more understanding and fantastic writing about film and lots of folks loved to talk movies, whether it was rented or on cable or in theater.
But, not yet for me, the Western was not yet in the purview. Ironically though my reading of 19th Century history scholars was heavy, second only to novels and fiction. My favorites were James MacPherson and Eric Foner, and William C. Davis, the issues those scholars discuss emerged at our funding and matured during the Manifest Destiney years of 19th century expansionism. The old west was as much a phenomena of Reconstruction Era politics as Jim Crow or the rise of worker rights.
Around 1999 or so, I started thinking very deeply about what America means. Spoiler alert: I love America, but hate Patriotism. But I became more interested in experiencing American culture, I followed Baseball more closely than ever for example. What is our common ground and why? The news had been getting very historical too. The Clinton impeachment and the Bush V. Gore debacle made everyone more aware of The Constitution, constitutional issues and interpretations were now constant reference points. Talk about another trend gaining power with time,
I pondered the paradox, as I still do, how the right and the left use the same documents – the Declaration of Indolence and The Constitution as well as speeches and writings by the founding Fathers, Abraham Lincoln, etc. – as the basis of criticism of America. This dichotomy has been epidemic in America since the colonial era and has only become amplified in the 21st century, but it was during the period of the Western expansion –19th Century America – the fulfillment of Manifest Destiney following the Civil War – when the clash of ideas, morality and who should hold power turned the most bloody.
I think it was 2001 when The Searchers changed my life. Thanksgiving in Williamsburg Virginia, visiting my beloved friend Nancy. Neither of us cared about John Wayne, but I’d read how this film was beloved by Scorsese, Spielberg and Lucas, it was available at her video store and since it wasn’t a new movie it would not be rented out for the holiday. What an ironic way to celebrate America for two film lovers with no interest in football.
Truth be told, she didn’t like it as much as I – although she watched it again after reading the awesome Empire of The Summer Moon by S.C. Gwynne and appreciated it more – I vaguely remember seeing Grapes of Wrath in the high school film class, but I’d never seen a John Ford. I’d discovered a new genre. I became obsessed. The video stores were starting to wither away, but their western selection was kind of limited to The Searchers. Over the course of the next ten years I’d become obsessive about the Western. DVDs were all the rage and beautiful packages and informative commentary for Seven Men From Now, Day of the Outlaw, Naked Spur, were now available. I have a more than a dozen John ford films, all of his westerns of course.
Then of course, Shane. What a revelation. I’ve re-watched that film dozens of time, it may be my favorite film of all time. More often than not, I openly weep when Joey cries, Come Back Shane!
At the same time – we’re talking “oughts” into “teens” – I also bought DVDS from Scott, the bootleg video seller in Union Square Park – I was working in the city and would visit weekly – blank DVD disks could be bought for pennies in bulk – where copies of obscure films from a variety of sources – from Criterion to recordings from video tapes. It’s not that I only bought westerns, but I got a lot of Westerns. You could get these bootlegs for like 3 for $5, eventually $1 per/ Saddle The Wind, Only The Valiant, Yellow Sky, the Iron Mistress, Django/. Literarily dozens probably close to 100. From all decades, Hollywood and Italian, though I think the psychological American westerns of mid-century are the best, like The Ox Bow Incident.
I also biographies of Ford and some books on the Western, as well as actual westerns, Searchers and The Unforgiven by Alan LeMay, Appaloosa and the sequels by Robert Parker, which I think are better Spenser and I have the same opinion For Elmore Leonard – I prefer his westerns to the crime fiction. . And of course, Larry McMurtrey’s Lonesome Dove series, which are great although the rare case where I believe the films are better.
I’d read all of Cormac McCarthy of course, Blood Meridian thrice. But I never considered them westerns until after he passed and obits called them such. I now see why.
Other than paid journalism, and not counting blogs or poetry, I’m a mainly a writer of literary fiction as it’s categorized, which is essentially contemporary fiction, often set in Jersey City and New Jersey.
Around 2015 or so a local writer’s group held a contest for a western story. I had this idea and inspiration, and I wrote Moonshoe, a short story. The local amateur writing group rejected it, but writers get used to that and I’ve been ostracized often by cliques formed by creatives in town.
But I really liked the story, so I googled possible publishers. I had no idea Western fiction was so vast and thriving – when I bought the Searchers at Barnes & Noble the Western Section was one shelf of books – and sent it to Frontier Tales, who published — and was even included in their Anthology. Elated and encouraged to consider sending more work, I came up with some ideas but put them aside for another writing project, a story collection about Jersey City artists that will someday be published. My intake of Westerns continues unabated, but the muse tugged me elsewhere.
A few years later… The pandemic hits, lockdown. I’m going through crisis, deaths of closed ones, personal setbacks, constant disappointments… the struggles of living. Also, lLife in America is not getting easier for those not in the one percent. Depression and anxiety are not unknown to me good times or bad. But you know, if you just wait things get better. I opened an email from the publishers of Moonshoe. J.C. Husley of Pale Horse Publications held a contest by invitation to write a novella based on a prompt, which was in the email, a description of cabin in the woods and being knocked out by an assailant who doesn’t take your gun.
Something clicked. I looked at those post-Moonshoe notes from a few years before and combined with the image in the prompt, I began writing The Gundersons. So in the story, a stranger comes to town and creating that town engaged my imagination. Deadwood is an obvious inspiration, I’d watched that series, especially the first two seasons, multiple times. In Westerns, more than other genre, the setting frames the characters, action and plots so intimately as to be a character itself. And that character is not a merely known topography, but America, the last best hope for Mankind as Abraham Lincoln hoped.
It’s where you want to be as a writer, in the flow. Words writing themselves. If only they could edit also!
So, I’m awarded publication and a contract for winning the contest. Series sell best, said Husley. He’d published what I write. I told him I want to a create a universe where the town is a metaphor for America and the stories are gnarly depictions of the human condition. I was limited only by my imagination, he said, but no profanity or using the Lord’s Name in Vain.
Usually my anti-authoritarian nature would either balk or find a way to circumvent for the sake of principal. But, actually I don’t like to use slang even in dialog, it’s rare for me and that’s what swearing and cussing is, nasty slang. Avoiding it was easy. Yes, we all know that curse words were used in the Old West and can be used beautifully – re: Deadwood – but 19th century language and idioms is so much fun and expressive I’d rather be rated R for violence than F-bombs.
It was the pandemic lockdown. COVID! Turns out, being a quarantined freelance writer is very similar to being a non-quarantined freelance writer. I never came down with COVID, got all the vaccines. For a mask I mostly used a bandanna. I had more free-time than usual, like we all did. As a writer, I depend on reverie and my thought-dreams most often flow richly and unrestrained when I walk. I love walking, especially in my hometown of Jersey City. Me and my bandanna hiked around town like I do nearly daily but my reverie was filled with Knolland, imagining my own Western, the characters and setting, subtexts and contexts.
Usually with writing I’m very disciplined, morning and afternoon. I only added to those hours, often writing into the wee wee hours. The muse wouldn’t let me go.
I spent months, an entire summer plus, developing the Knolland Universe, the decades before The Gundersons and the years following in the wake of the tale. Prequels and Sequels. I built on characters introduced or mentioned, and created a cast of new ones to tell the multifaceted story I needed to write. Then, around mid-August, I began the sequel, Lower Then Angels which was finished in early 2023. I called up Pale Horse, I’m ready to submit.
I closed the company two days ago, he told me. Thud! The world of genre-fiction publishing can be as unpredictable as rodeo bull apparently. After several apprehensive weeks, I was acquired by Dusty Saddles, far as I can tell the largest publisher of Western novels. The publisher Nick Wale liked my idea – it’s original –and a contract was signed for the Knolland Parables – to be launched with a reissue of The Gundersons – The Knolland Parables Book I and Lower Than Angels The Knolland Parables Book II (which is being published in two parts).
What felt at first a setback and has been the literal blessing in disguise. The covers look fantastic, pulpy, retro and weirdly emotional. I also revised slightly The Gundersons, for the sake of the series. My idea for the Knolland universe came after writing The Gundersons, but now I’m able to produce the series in a unified and cohesive format.
Why parables? These (mainly) New Testament stories-within-a-stories teach elusive lessons See, Parables are counter intuitive. That brother of mine has no right to that fatted calf. Yet, Dad does make a point about him being lost, and is now found. This constant not dichotomy but ambiguity I find not just in scripture, but life. My life-long study of history, philosophy, literature and The Western has only confirmed that truth is layered and conflicted. Bewilderment is both fun and spiritual. Parables encourage reflection because they’re paradoxical.
More than that though: Parables sounds cool. Foreboding. The American west both historically and in our collective imagination is land where what is right and what is wrong is rarely clear. It’s a struggle between peoples, nature and philosophies. What better place to explore the human condition through fiction. In my research of titles of novels and series in the genre, I’d stories, yarns and tales in titles but now parables. Not just sounds original, but it is.
The Knolland Parables are perhaps not typical westerns but truth be told, there’s no real typical westerns. It’s a genre filled with individual visions and subgenres, you’ve read one western you’ve only read one western. Mine tend to towards the surreal. Allegory and symbolism are essential to my technique, but here I also satire, mainly political satire – not contemporary politics, a horror show – but political as defined as ideologies and social structures. 19th Century America was where American ideals and capitalistic greed came together to form our current crisis of the week world.
I’m comfortable all classifying them as Acid-Westerns and not just appeal to an audience sure to appreciate The Knolland Parables, but because of how our ultimate oracle – Wikipedia – Defines it as combing the “metaphorical ambitions” and the excesses of the Spaghetti Westerns. That’s my Western creation myth. It goes on to talk about the counter culture and the psychedelic references, but the films like Topo, Dead Man, Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid are referenced as Acid-Western. El Topo, sure but I hadn’t expanded my consciousness enough to see how the other titles fit into the category.
I’m not so sure if Acid-Western is as clear a subgenre as say Zombie-Westerns, or Australian-Westerns. They’re just new twists of genre storytelling, although I’d bet that many of the makers of the Acid-Westerns listed as such in Wikipedia and elsewhere might be surprised to be included in the category. They’re just more surreal than other westerns but all westerns have some surrealism to them – surrealism just means dream-logic – elements of this technique are abundant in the genre.
Psychedelics are nearly mainstream and been part of the culture for half a century or more. It’s outgrown associations with the 1960s counter culture, and the surrealism and philosophical undertones are now more inherent in the genre than reasons to relegate a subgenre.
Besides, Acid is fun and LSD done far more good than bad in this world. The films classified as “Acid Westerns” are brilliant, many are ones that I love, own and studied. If The Knolland Parables must be a type of western, Acid-Western is the trip to take.