Magic Wagon - Hardcover

Joe R. Lansdale

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1892284952 ISBN 13: 9781892284952

Publisher: Subterranean Press, 2001

Synopsis

The true charm of the story, though is in its telling, which melds Iaconic humor, colorful colloquialisms and outrageous figures of speech into a Twainesque tall tale. This novel endures as a modern western classic -PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

About this title

From Publishers Weekly

In 1986, years before he became known for his hardboiled crime thrillers, Lansdale crafted this wry, nostalgic elegy to the Wild West published in a small print run with limited distribution. A mild-mannered precursor to his brassy The Big Blow, this entertaining episodic novel is also set in turn-of-the-20th-century eastern Texas, where crooked traveling medicine shows and aging gunslingers define the closing frontier. Narrator Buster Fogg's family is wiped out by a twister in an early sequence described with surreal verve. Buster hitches on with Billy Bob Daniels, a patent-medicine pusher and trick shooter who claims to be the illegitimate son of Wild Bill Hickock, joining an entourage consisting of a kindly ex-slave named Albert, and Rot Toe, the wrestling ape. Adventures on the road which include swiping the mummified remains of Billy Bob's "pa" and swindling settlers with their concoction of watered-down whiskey stoke personal tensions that only aggravate troubles when their wagon rolls into Mud Creek and Billy Bob is called out by Texas Jack, a dime-novel desperado who, legend says, intimidated even Wild Bill. Lansdale's affection for the classic western is never in doubt, although he spends much of the novel skillfully deflating the romance of heroic reputations made as much by luck and exaggeration as by skill with a gun. The true charm of the story, though, is iin its telling, which melds laconic humor, colorful colloquialisms and outrageous figures of speech into a Twainesque tall tale. This novel endures as a modern western classic.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Subterranean Press
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 1892284952
• ISBN 13: 9781892284952
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1