Swarthout, Glendon

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Glendon Swarthout

Personal

Born April 8, 1918, in Pinckney, MI; died from complications from emphysema September 23, 1992, in Scottsdale, AZ; son of Fred H. (a banker) and Lila (Chubb) Swarthout; married Kathryn Vaughn, 1940; children: Miles. Education: University of Michigan, A.B., 1939, A.M., 1946; Michigan State University, Ph.D., 1955.

Career

Writer of novels, plays, short stories, and screenplays, 1963-92. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, teaching fellow, 1946-48; University of Maryland, College Park, instructor, 1948-51; Michigan State University, East Lansing, associate professor of English, 1951-59; Arizona State University, Tempe, lecturer in English, 1959-63. Military service: U.S. Army Infantry, 1943-45; became sergeant; awarded two battle stars.

Awards, Honors

Theatre Guild Playwriting Award, 1947; Hopwood Award in Fiction, 1948; O. Henry Prize, 1960; National Society of Arts and Letters gold medal, 1972; Spur Award for best novel, Western Writers of America, 1975; Owen Wister Award, Western Writers of America, 1991, for body of work.

Writings

JUVENILE FICTION

(With wife, Kathryn Swarthout) The Ghost and the Magic Saber, Random House (New York, NY), 1963.

(With Kathryn Swarthout) Whichaway, illustrated by Richard M. Powers, Random House (New York, NY), 1966.

(With Kathryn Swarthout) The Button Boat, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1969.

(With Kathryn Swarthout) TV Thompson, illustrated by Barbara Ninde Byfield, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1972.

(With Kathryn Swarthout) Whales to See The, illustrated by Paul Bacon, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1975.

(With Kathryn Swarthout) Cadbury's Coffin, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1982.

ADULT FICTION

Willow Run, Crowell (New York, NY), 1943, reprinted, AMS Press (New York, NY), 1982.

They Came to Cordura, Random House (New York, NY), 1958.

Where the Boys Are, Random House (New York, NY), 1960.

Welcome to Thebes, Random House (New York, NY), 1962.

The Cadillac Cowboys, Random House (New York, NY), 1964.

The Eagle and the Iron Cross, New American Library, 1966.

Loveland, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1968.

Bless the Beasts and Children, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1970.

The Tin Lizzie Troop, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1972.

Luck and Pluck, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1973.

The Shootist, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1975.

The Melodeon (autobiographical), illustrated by Richard Cuffari, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1977, published as A Christmas Gift, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1992.

Skeletons, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1979.

The Old Colts, Fine (New York, NY), 1985.

The Homesman, Weidenfeld and Nicolson (New York, NY), 1988.

Pinch Me, I Must Be Dreaming, St. Martin's Press, 1994.

Easterns and Westerns: Short Stories, edited by Miles Hood Swarthout, Michigan State University Press (East Lansing, MI), 2001.

Contributor of stories to Cosmopolitan, Collier's, New World Writing, Esquire, and Saturday Evening Post.

Adaptations

Seventh Cavalry, adapted from the short story "A Horse for Mrs. Custer," was filmed by Columbia Pictures, 1956; They Came to Cordura was filmed by Columbia Pictures, 1959; Where the Boys Are was filmed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1960; Bless the Beasts and Children was filmed by Columbia Pictures, 1971; The Shootist was filmed by Paramount, 1976; A Christmas to Remember was adapted as a television movie, Columbia Broadcast Service, 1978.

Sidelights

A prolific novelist, Glendon Swarthout was known for reader-friendly linear plots that maintain interest and attract readers of all ages. Active as both an educator and fiction-writer, Swarthout is best remembered for his bestselling novel Bless the Beasts and Children as well as The Shootist, a novel set in the American West where the author eventually made his home. Before becoming a full-time writer, Swarthout taught English at several universities, including Michigan State and Arizona State. He penned his first book, Willow Run, in 1943, and during his half-century writing career dabbled in a variety of other genres, from short stories and mysteries to film scripts and plays to articles for periodicals. The versatile writer additionally teamed up with his wife, Kathryn Vaughn Swarthout, on books for both young adults and children. A number of Swarthout's novels were adapted for the screen, including Where the Boys Are, The Shootist, and Bless the Beasts and Children.

Ironically, and in part because of his popular success, Swarthout did not always receive the critical accolades of other writers. "Swarthout," wrote Richard Schickel in Harper's, "had the misfortune of selling a couple of his early books to the movies and since his sensibility seems to lead him naturally toward the linear adventure story, no one takes him very seriously. But he is a good, entertaining writer—exuberant, optimistic, maybe a little childlike (in a nice way) in his love of archetypal characters and situations, but always intelligent and alive." Peter Corodimas in Best Sellers appreciated Swarthout's optimism. "At a time when many novelists are preoccupied with themes of absurdity and alienation," the critic explained, "it is enjoyable, not to say helpful to one's sanity, to read a novel about life which sees life the way novelists used to see it: at least as partly intelligible—which may in itself be a wrong view, but comforting nonetheless." A reviewer for the St. James Guide to Young Adult Writers called Swarthout, who died in 1992, a "master storyteller."

A Michigan Youth

Swarthout, born in Pinckney, Michigan, in 1918, envisioned a career in music rather than books when he was a youth. He took accordion lessons and also found pleasure in books while young, as sports were not his strong point. Tall and almost painfully thin, he began playing music professionally the summer of his junior year in high school, joining a college orchestra at a resort on Lake Michigan. Graduating from Lowell High School in 1935, Swarthout attended the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. Here he "got into music more seriously," according to The Official Glendon Swarthout Web site, "forming and singing lead for a four-piece band who played 'hops' and three summers in a row at the Pantlind Hotel in Grand Rapids, the largest hotel in Michigan outside of Detroit." Despite his love for music, Swarthout majored in English, and began seriously dating his childhood sweetheart, Kathryn Vaughn, whom he married in 1940 after both had graduated from Michigan.

After graduating from college, Swarthout took a job in advertising, writing copy for companies such as Cadillac and Dow Chemical. His heart set now on becoming a professional writer, Swarthout and his wife next decided to try journalism. Traveling by freighter to South America, he filed travel stories for over twenty newspapers in the United States. With the outbreak of war in 1941, the couple returned home. Still quite thin, he was turned down for the military; he and his wife thus went to work for the bomber plant at Willow Run outside of Ann Arbor, Michigan. While working full shifts at the factory, Swarthout completed his first novel, Willow Run, a book that details the lives of people working in such a factory.

As the war continued and fresh recruits were needed, Swarthout was deemed fit for service and was sent to Italy, where he worked as a writer for Third Division headquarters, recording, among other things, eyewitness statements for Medals of Honor. After rupturing a disc in his back, he was discharged in 1945. Back in Michigan, Swarthout returned to school and earned his master's degree, then began teaching college English. From Michigan he went to the University of Maryland, all the while continuing to write in his spare time, working on novels and as a congressional speechwriter. In 1951 he and his family—he now had a son, Miles—moved back to the University of Michigan, where Swarthout taught and finished his Ph.D. in Victorian literature. Meanwhile, his wife also earned her master's degree and started teaching.

Writing Breakthrough

During this same time, Swarthout's short fiction finally began to sell in publications from the Saturday Evening Post to Cosmopolitan. His "A Horse for Mrs. Custer" earned him $2,000 and became the first of his works to be adapted for film when it was released as a low-budget Western in 1956. The very day he completed his doctoral examinations, he began the novel They Came to Cordura, which tells of the Pershing Expedition to capture Pancho Villa in Mexico in 1916. Both a critical and popular success, the book was published in 1958. Writing in the Chicago Sunday Tribune, Walter Havighurst called Swarthout's second novel "strong, harsh [and] haunting," and a book that "will outlast most of the season's fiction." Similarly, David Williams, reviewing They Came to Cordura in the Manchester Guardian, felt that Swarthout "writes narrative like an angel." Taliaferro Boatwright, writing in the New York Herald Tribune Book Review, called the novel "profound and thought-provoking," while William Hogan of the San Francisco Chronicle described it as a "study in valor or courage." That same year, Swarthout's novel became a motion picture starring noted actors Gary Cooper and Rita Hayworth. The money Swarthout earned from Hollywood allowed him to concentrate more time to writing, though he did continue teaching both at Michigan and then at Arizona State University until 1963.

Swarthout next turned his hand to a contemporary comic novel about the annual spring break for college students. Set on the University of Michigan campus and on the beaches of southern Florida, Where the Boys Are became not only a bestselling novel, but also a top-grossing movie. Havighurst, writing in the Chicago Sunday Tribune, found the novel "very funny, and very grim," while Martin Levin, writing in the New York Times Book Review, called Where the Boys Are a "highly carbonated elixir of sex, sunshine and beer." D. R. Bensen, reviewing the novel in the Saturday Review, also had praise, describing it as "good comedy and first-rate social anthropology."

Western Themes

In 1959 Swarthout and his family moved West, settling in Arizona. Thereafter, many of his books had a Western theme to them. One of his best-loved titles, Bless the Beasts and Children, appeared in 1970. Like so many other titles from Swarthout, this one became a bestseller, with over two million copies sold, and also a popular movie. The novel tells the story of six misfit teenagers sent to a summer camp for disturbed boys. When the camp fails to deliver on its promise to make them into responsible men, the teenagers take to the road, intent on doing it for themselves. Brian Garfield, writing in the Saturday Review, called the novel "a compassionate book, a true book, a book of the heart; it is also a compelling drama that grabs you with a grip that can't be pried loose." Schickel described Swarthout as "a stylist who also entertains and instructs and I say good for him. It is not as easy as it sounds." Writing in the English Journal, John W. Conner found Bless the Beasts and Children to be "an exciting adventure yarn using adolescents as major characters. It is an excellent example of literature about adolescents rather than literature for adolescents."

Another successful Swarthout effort is The Shootist, the story of the last Western gunfighter in 1901. J. B. Books, dying of cancer, wants to go out fighting. In the town of El Paso, Books gets his wish when three local troublemakers want to make a name for themselves by confronting him in a shootout. Although S. K. Oberbeck in Newsweek called the novel "a gritty but sentimental literary tintype," Victoria Glendenning in New Statesman found that The Shootist "combines the mock-heroic Hollywood myth of the West with an ideal of true heroism—which is always a private and painful matter. Mr. Swarthout is equally fascinated by both, and he has written an original book." The novel was adapted for film by Swarthout's son, who also became a writer.

The Old Colts and The Homesman continue Swarthout's fascination with Western themes. In the former title, he tackles another living legend that has outlived his glory days, similar to The Shootist. In The Old Colts Wyatt Earp has money problems and enlists his old sidekick, Bat Masterson, to go back to Dodge City with him to rob a bank and get a repayment for what he, Earp, feels he is owed for a lifetime of lawman work. Charles Michaud, reviewing the novel in Library Journal, called this a "fast-paced, wry story." Swarthout's The Homesman, on the other hand, is a frontier novel that deals with weightier themes, telling the story of a spinster homesteader who takes four other women—who have gone crazy because of the hard winter—back to a church society that will put them into a home. "What follows is a dangerous journey into the soul," commented Michael J. Carroll in the Los Angeles Times Book Review. Carroll also noted that Swarthout's novel is "impressive, occasionally shattering, always convincing." More Western themes are also served up in the posthumously published short-story collection Easterns and Westerns, which includes Swarthout's O. Henry Prize-winning tale, "A Glass of Blessings." A reviewer for Publishers Weekly felt that the collection "is an excellent introduction to Swarthout, highlighting his remarkable versatility."

Appeals to Young and Old

Though all of his works appeal to readers young and old, Swarthout collaborated with his wife on six novels especially for young people. With Cadbury's Coffin, for example, he creates a "Victorian situation comedy," according to a reviewer for the Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books. Nancy C. Hammond, writing in Horn Book, observed that "ruthless relatives, despicable deeds, ingenuous innocents, and rumors of rich rewards propel the amusing narrative." And Drew Stevenson, reviewing the novel in School Library Journal, felt that Swarthout and his wife "have created a dark, brooding atmosphere which fits this unusual story live a glove."

With the novel Whichaway Swarthout moves onto familiar Western ground in a story about a fifteen-year-old-boy who becomes stranded on a windmill platform after his legs are broken in a fall. Book Report's Sharon Oothoudt felt that the novel "will be a classic that will be around for a long time for young people to identify with and to enjoy reading." Also writing in Book Report, Christine Fogerty called Whichaway a "survival story that shows how a boy uses his wits and a little luck to pull through."

In his long writing career, Swarthout created a body of fiction that has entertained more than one generation of readers, using a mixture of action and humor to create tales of courage and endurance.

If you enjoy the works of Glendon Swarthout, you might want to check out the following books:

William Golding, Lord of the Flies, 1954.

Louis L'Amour, Beyond the Great Snow Mountains, 1999.

Jack Warner Schaefer, Monte Walsh, 1963.

Biographical and Critical Sources

BOOKS

Contemporary Literary Criticism, Volume 35, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1985.

Contemporary Novelists, 4th edition, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1986, pp. 795-797.

PERIODICALS

Antioch Review, winter, 1989, William Baker, review of The Homesman, p. 107.

Best Sellers, October 1, 1968, pp. 262-264; March 1, 1970, Fred Rotondaro, review of Bless the Beasts and Children, p. 450; March 15, 1975, R. B. Wathen, review of The Shootist, p. 559; March, 1978, p. 325.

Booklist, September 15, 1994, Kathryn Broderick, review of Pinch Me, I Must Be Dreaming, p. 115.

Book Report, March-April, 1998, Sharon Oothoudt, review of Whichaway, p. 37; November-December, 1998, Christine Fogerty, review of Whichaway, p. 58.

Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, January, 1983, review of Cadbury's Coffin, p. 98.

Chicago Sunday Tribune, February 9, 1958, Walter Havighurst, review of They Came to Cordura, p. 3; January 17, 1960, Walter Havighurst, review of Where the Boys Are, p. 3.

Commonweal, June 18, 1943.

English Journal, January, 1972, p. 139; March 1989, Patricia Sanders, review of Bless the Beasts and Children, pp. 83-84.

Harper's, April, 1970, Richard Schickel, review of Bless the Beasts and Children, p. 107.

Horn Book, April, 1983, Nancy C. Hammond, review of Cadbury's Coffin, p. 176.

Kirkus Reviews, December 1, 1957, review of They Came to Cordura, p. 876; November 1, 1959, review of Where the Boys Are, p. 823.

Library Journal, March 1, 1970, C. D. Pipes, review of Bless the Beasts and Children, p. 915; April 15, 1975, Barbara Branstad, review of The Shootist, June 1, 1985, Charles Michaud, review of The Old Colts, p. 146.

Listener, January 10, 1980, pp. 62-63.

Literature Film Quarterly, Volume 14, issue 1, 1986, Kirk Ellis, "The Shootist: Going in Style," pp. 44-52.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, November 20, 1988, Michael J. Carroll, review of The Homesman, p. 14.

Manchester Guardian (Manchester, England), June 17, 1958, David Williams, review of They Came to Cordura, p. 4.

New Statesman, October 8, 1960, Maurice Richardson, review of Where the Boys Are, p. 540; May 9, 1975, Victoria Glendenning, review of The Shootist, pp. 633-634.

Newsweek, February 3, 1975, S. K. Oberbeck, review of The Shootist, pp. 64, 66.

New York Herald Tribune Book Review, February 9, 1958, Taliaferro Boatwright, review of They Came to Cordura, p. 3.

New York Herald Tribune Books, July 1, 1962.

New York Times, February 9, 1958, Lewis Nordyke, review of They Came to Cordura, pp. 4, 28.

New York Times Book Review, May 30, 1943, p. 18; February 7, 1960, Martin Levin, review of Where the Boys Are, p. 34; June 17, 1962, p. 24; October 5, 1969; April 5, 1970, Martin Levin, review of Bless the Beasts and Children, p. 30; February 2, 1975, Martin Levin, review of The Shootist, p. 12.

Persimmon Hill, spring, 1996, Miles Hood Swarthout, "The Westerns of Glendon Swarthout," pp. 68-75.

Publishers Weekly, August 1, 1994, review of Pinch Me, I Must Be Dreaming, p. 71; June 18, 2001, review of Easterns and Westerns, p. 62.

San Francisco Chronicle, February 12, 1958, William Hogan, review of They Came to Cordura, p. 29.

Saturday Review, February 6, 1958, Benjamin Appel, review of They Came to Cordura, p. 30; January 23, 1960, D. R. Bensen, review of Where the Boys Are, p. 19; May 2, 1970, Brian Garfield, review of Bless the Beasts and Children, pp. 41-42.

School Library Journal, December, 1982, Drew Stevenson, review of Cadbury's Coffin, p. 82; August, 1983, review of Bless the Beasts and Children, p. 27.

Spectator, September 23, 1960, Ronald Bryden, review of Where the Boys Are, p. 453; December 24, 1977, pp. 29-30.

Time, January 18, 1960, review of Where the Boys Are, p. 98.

Times Literary Supplement, August 1, 1958, review of They Came to Cordura, p. 433; May 9, 1975, Peter Campbell, review of The Shootist, p. 501.

Wall Street Journal, June 9, 1972, p. 8.

Washington Post Book World, July 2, 1972, p. 9.