Zane Grey

He Was Born in Zanesville

Zane Grey is a good writer. His immense popularity should not dim that fact. His descriptive passages sometimes glow with beauty and imagination. He is one of the few novelists who appeals consistently to the Average American. His characters are heroic, they are unreal, they catch and hold the imagination. It is probably this last fact, and the fact that he writes so much, that keeps him from being a "critic's" writer. But there are few living authors who know the out-of-doors so well, and who can write of it so vividly.

He is short, wiry, nervous, eager, tremendously serious. I have talked with him only once, but it is impossible to forget this dark, vivid little man. No man who was not serious could be so successful, or could take the pains he does in collecting material for his stories. His new novel, to be called Wild Horse Mesa, is about a great mesa which rises above the canyon country of southern Utah. Mr. Grey has made three attempts to climb this piece of land, in order to provide the climax for his novel--each time he has failed. The climax of his novel will be, therefore, this very insurmountability of the mesa.

Zane Grey has a faint trace of Indian blood in his veins. He was born in Zanesville, Ohio. His father was a hunter, a farmer, a backwoodsman, who later became a doctor. Mr. Grey was educated at high school in his home town and at the University of Pennsylvania. For a time he was a professional baseball player. He gave it up for fishing, traveling, hunting. He began writing articles concerning his experiences, then turned to fiction with huge success.

Zane Grey is really an explorer and hunter with a remarkable sense of storytelling. Instead of writing imaginative travel books based on fact, he creates romances with a background of his own experiences in which god-like heroes, heroines and villains move simply and struggle with the problems of life in the large. He paints his scenes with a delicate brush and his people with broad, crude strokes.

If you don't already like Zane Grey's books, see Wanderer from the Wasteland as it has been filmed. It will be released shortly. Here is a superb picturization of a mood and a story. It is beautiful, dramatic, thrilling. So are Zane Grey's books, if you read them in the proper spirit.

J. F.