J.W. Burleson photo / Boquillas del Carmen, Coah.

PHB

My photo
Brooklin, Maine, United States
We own a 1975 GMC Sierra Grande 15 in Maine and a 1986 Chevrolet Custom Deluxe 10 in West Texas. Also a pair of 1997 Volvo 850 wagons. Average age in the fleet is 28 years--we're recycling. I've published 3 novels: THE LAW OF DREAMS (2006), THE O'BRIENS (2012), and CARRY ME (2016). Also 2 short story collections: NIGHT DRIVING(1987) and TRAVELLING LIGHT (2013). More of my literary life is at www.peterbehrens.org I was a Fellow at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study for 2012-13. I'm an adjunct professor at Colorado College and in the MFA program at Queens University of Charlotte. In 2015-16 I was a Fellow at Harvard University's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. The Autoliterate office is in Car Talk Plaza in Harvard Square, 2 floors above Dewey Cheatem & Howe. SUBSCRIBE TO THE AUTOLITERATE DAILY EMAIL by hitting the button to the right.

Tuesday, August 6, 2013

Llano Estacado, Karl May, Comancheria, and Weimar Germany


I'm heading to West Texas (Panhandle) and Eastern New Mexico next month. I need to spend some time on the llano estacado, for the novel I'm writing. Need to get a sense of the air, the ground, the light. The novel is set mostly in Weimar-era Germany, where and when my father, HHB,  grew up. He was an Anglo-Irish guy transplanted (deported, actually) to Frankfurt in 1919, age 9, who came of age in that complicated crazy period of German history 1919-33, and taught himself the language of Goethe by reading and re-reading Karl May's Winnetou novels, which are set on the llano estacado. Hence HHB's lifelong fascination with the Wild West, passed on to me. Sounds like a novel, right? So any insider information on the that huge, dry country much appreciated. Right now I'm reading Pekka Hamalainen's wonderful Comanche Empire and learning how the llano estaduco--and 1000's of sq. miles of shortgrass plains east of the Rio Grande Valley and Spanish New Mexico--was dominated from the mid-18th to mid-19th century by the Comanche, a powerful empire of their own once they got horses and iron and good guns.
One of best books about that part of the West (after the mid-19th) is Hampton Sides' Blood & Thunder: The Epic Story of Kit Carson.

1 comment:

  1. Peter, I'm looking forward to reading this, and I love that 1960 Impala, probably my favorite Chevrolet of all those years.
    - Chip

    ReplyDelete

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.