The Good Old Boys

Rating:
Summary: This Californian loves "The Good Old Boys"
Review: Elmer Kelton is in top form with "The Good Old Boys," a book I'll always remember for its remarkable characters and unusual story. Hewey Calloway struggles with the arrival of automobiles and technology... not unlike the struggle some of us have today with computers and a changed world.

Rating:
Summary: This Californian loves "The Good Old Boys"
Review: Elmer Kelton is in top form with "The Good Old Boys," a book I'll always remember for its remarkable characters and unusual story. Hewey Calloway struggles with the arrival of automobiles and technology... not unlike the struggle some of us have today with computers and a changed world.

Rating:
Summary: A wonderful experience - if you don't place yourself above i
Review: The Good Old Boys takes the reader into the world of the early century cowboys that lived and worked on their horses. The men who were top in their field only to see their field melting away. I totally enjoyed every page, and when I saw the snobbish review of an elitist reviewer who said "Aficionados of the oat-burner genre will likely find it a notch above the general fare. More literary tastes will find it wanting. It is not nearly as elevated a book either thematically or stylistically as the afterword by Don Graham would suggest." I simply thought that poor person just doesn't understand! This work by Elmer Kelton depicts a time, a place, and a voice that many may not understand, and will not appreciate. I think that poor soul should not be reviewing "oat-burning genre" but those who live near the land will either remember or learn about another time. Seldom do you find such an original and wonderful story as "The Good Old Boys".

Rating:
Summary: A wonderful experience - if you don't place yourself above i
Review: The Good Old Boys takes the reader into the world of the early century cowboys that lived and worked on their horses. The men who were top in their field only to see their field melting away. I totally enjoyed every page, and when I saw the snobbish review of an elitist reviewer who said "Aficionados of the oat-burner genre will likely find it a notch above the general fare. More literary tastes will find it wanting. It is not nearly as elevated a book either thematically or stylistically as the afterword by Don Graham would suggest." I simply thought that poor person just doesn't understand! This work by Elmer Kelton depicts a time, a place, and a voice that many may not understand, and will not appreciate. I think that poor soul should not be reviewing "oat-burning genre" but those who live near the land will either remember or learn about another time. Seldom do you find such an original and wonderful story as "The Good Old Boys".

Rating:
Summary: Good by Kelton's standards
Review: The perceived merits of this book will depend a great deal on the critical standards the reader brings to it. Aficionados of the oat-burner genre will likely find it a notch above the general fare. More literary tastes will find it wanting. It is not nearly as elevated a book either thematically or stylistically as the afterword by Don Graham would suggest. That said, this is a book of some notable achievement in character definition and to a lesser extend action. Nonetheless, much of the plot is telegraphed and overdeveloped. Relationships between characters, especially the romantic relationships, are shallow and predictable. The book seems to be written for a formula audience taking a step upward. Literature is yet a step beyond.
Kelton clearly loves his theme of the Old West (and by extension all frontiers) disappearing around the ones who love it best as the modern world edges in. He also loves his old stalwarts of the vanishing world, Hewey Calloway, Snort Yarnell, and Boy Rasmussen. The other characters largely do not get the loving treatment or snippets of telling detail that make them as knowable and well-developed as the good old boys. Kelton does not lack for descriptive ability, but comes nowhere near someone like Cormac McCarthy in his novels with a western setting, or even a Larry McMurtry. Kelton clocks in somewhere around a good episode of "Gunsmoke."