East of the Border

I quarrel slightly with the tag "Western"that has been applied to this book .Not only does it limit its potential readership but is only partly accurate .Yes ,it does feature legendary names from the Old West focusing as it does on Buffalo Bill ,Wild Bill Hickok and the lesser luminary Texas Jack Omahundro but it looks at them away from their natural habitat of the West and instead places them in the East on a stage tour in which they play themselves in the rankest of melodramas and a deal of pleasure is afforded by quotations from the reviews of the performances taken from newspapaers of the time . They take it in turns to narrate the events of the tour .Texas Jack -the only one to be even modestly competent as an actor-is a calm ,level headed narrator ,a family man happily wed to Guiseppina ,a performer in the plays .Wild Bill is volatile and prone to drunken excess and unpredictable behaviour ,imbued with a sense of self disgust and fear that his way of life may be under threat ,shortly to vanish for good. Bill Cody is in no doubt that while a Westerner his future lies in the East and indeed outside the USA as a performer destined to earn his income recreating the past The recital of performances and logistical nightmares (finding extras to be slaughtered nightly etc) and the battles with theatre managers does tend towards a slightly repetitious feel but this a minor caveat.The book is warm hearted and funny as well as making serious points about the way the Eest is being transformed into myth just as it passes from memory as an actual entity. This is an enjoyable book and deserves a wide readership