SOURCE: "Andy Adams and the Real West," in Western American Literature, Vol. VII, No. 3, Fall 1972, pp. 211-19.

[In the following essay, Quissel comments on Adams's treatment of the American West in Log of a Cowboy.]

Andy Adams' The Log of a Cowboy ranks as an established classic of Western American literature because it is a chronicle of the cattle drive days. Indeed Adams' fictional realism is more often praised for its authenticity than its plausibility. The adjectives of praise for the Log emphasize its historical recording of events: the book is "genuine," "truthful," "accurate," "authentic." This is the usual assessment of Adams' writing from 1903 when the Log was published. Emerson Hough, who read the novel in manuscript, stated that "Andy Adams is the real thing, and the first time the real thing has appeared in print."

Forty years later in Guide to the Life and Literature of the...