Rev. Erudite Redneck, B.S., B.S., M.A., M.Div.

By The Erudite Redneck

“Smells like a used book store in your office,” says Dr. ER, who has a nose that won’t quit and used to work in a library, and is a lover of the printed word her own self, so I reckon she knows.

Sigh, here’s why:

Another day, another project left unwritten, another trip to another book store.

“Howdy. My name is E. Redneck. I’m a bookaholic.”

Here’s today’s catch:

1. Allan Nevins, ed., James Fenimore Cooper: The Leatherstocking Saga (New York: Pantheon, 1954).

Subtitle says it all: “Being those parts of The Deerslayer, The Last of the Mohicans, The Pathfinder, The Pioneers, and The Prairie, which specially pertain to Natty Bumppo, otherwise known as Pathfinder, Deerslayer, or Hawkeye; the whole arranged in chronological order from Hawkeye’s youth on the New York frontier in King George’s War until his death on the Western prairies in Jefferson’s Administration.”

I’ve skimmed The Last of the Mohicans. Reading this abbreviated version of it and the other four books in the series -– not too abbreviated; it’s still 833 pages – will fill in gaps in my understanding of the evolution of the image of the American Indian in literature and popular culture.


2. Bernard DeVoto, The Course of Empire (Cambridge: The Riverside Press, 1952).

Now I have the complete trilogy. The others are Across the Wide Missouri (Cambridge: The Riverside Press, 1947) and The Year of Decision, 1846 (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1943).

All are first editions, which means nothing except to a BOOKAHOLIC -– AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAA -– someone help me, please -- UUUNNNNGGGGGHHHHHHH


3. Victor Murdock, “It May Chance of Wheat” – A Grain of Wheat Paces Civilization (Kansas City, Mo.: The Lowell Press, 1965).

Another sign that I need help. Murdock was a former congressman, federal trade official and general mucky-mucky who wrote a column for 14 years in the Wichita Eagle -– about WHEAT.

Egad. As a former Texas farm-and-ranch editor, current newspaper columnist, grown-up farm kid and bread eater, I COULD NOT RESIST a compilation of columns about wheat!


4. In today's mail came something Dr. ER picked up for me in Ohio while visiting her sister and had shipped with some other stuff. Dr. ER is an enabler, Dr. ER is!

C. Fred Williams, S. Charles Bolton, Carl H. Moneyhon, LeRoy T. Williams, A Documentary History of Arkansas (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1984).

It's just what it sounds like: snippets and whole examples of primary documents from Arkansas history, from letters, journals, public documents, stuff like that, from Spanish explorers to secession to the Little Rock school crisis and such. YUMMY.


All in all, not a bad haul. And I coulda done worse. Books I put back on the shelf included a 1976 reprint of the 1897 Sears, Roebuck & Co. catalog, and ... and ... well I’ll be danged -– I can’t remember now, which means I didn’t really need the dang thing anyway.

But clearly I NEEDED a book about wheat, a five-in-one volume of Fenimore Cooper and the third link in the DeVoto chain of books about the frontier and the Western movement.

Clearly. Needed. (Hiccup.)

“My name if E. Redneck, and I’m a bookaholic.”

And all the people said, “Hi, E. Redneck!”

END