Ask any youngster who is interested in the outdoors today whether he or she is familiar with Edmund Ware Smith. How about William Faulkner? Arthur Macdougall, Jr? I could go on and on listing the names of once-famous outdoor writers whose era is over. The truth is, the era of American Sporting Fiction has been over for decades. The books and short stories of writers who were once giants in their day have long been collecting dust in old attics or sitting idle on library shelves.
My introduction to the genre was an old, dilapidated copy of Edmund Ware Smith’s A Treasury of the Maine Woods that I found tucked away on a small bookshelf provided by one of our teachers in my sixth grade classroom. Prior to turning its pages, I had no knowledge that such literature existed. The stories amazed me. A Treasury contained essays and other nonfiction Smith works, but I would later discover that this incredible writer that brought my Maine Woods to life, was in fact one of the celebrated outdoor fiction writers of his time.
Three years later, I discovered the Dud Dean books, written by Arthur Macdougall, Jr., about the famous, fictional Maine Guide of the Kennebec River. MacDougall was also a prominent part of the outdoor literature in his day. My friends and I began reading these stories from books found in our high school library with heightened enthusiasm, and quickly exhausted the local library supply. A decade later, I now turn to Ebay, Amazon, and other online sites to find these old books and continue my quest to uncover all of the available works of these and other writers of outdoor fiction of the past.
Why don’t such wonderful outdoor stories exist today? If my small group of outdoors-loving friends and I were any indication, there must be some demand for outdoor fiction in today’s society. But over the past 5-6 decades, hardly a trace of popular outdoor sporting fiction can be found. So what happened? And more importantly, what can we do to bring outdoor sporting fiction back?
To answer these questions, we first need to understand how we got to where we are today. Classics of American Sporting Fiction, published in 1984, is a collection of past outdoor fiction works put together by Michael McIntosh. It’s a celebration of the days when such literature abounded. More importantly, though, in the book’s introduction, McIntosh explains the demise of the genre, how it happened, and perhaps, though he isn’t hopeful, may provide hints as to whether it will ever come back. Read carefully.
The Golden Age of American sporting fiction is past. It ended quietly, neither with bang nor whimper, a generation ago. Some good writers still turn out short stories and even the occasional novel in the sporting genre, but their numbers have dwindled to only a few. The old days, when a short story or two appeared in virtually every issue of every sporting magazine, are gone, and they are not likely to come again.
Sporting fiction in American flourished in the 1930s and ’40s. Magazines such as Sports Afield, Outdoor Life, Field & Stream – and its predecessor, Forest & Stream – The Field, True, Argosy and others provided a ready market for short fiction as did a number of book publishers, notably the Derrydale Press. Almost every outdoor writer of the time wrote fiction as well as non-fiction. Some wrote fiction almost exclusively, and others, less closely associated with the outdoor field, produced occasional stories on hunting or fishing themes.
The demise of The Golden Age was brought about by a combination of cultural and economic influences. After World War II, America set a course toward consumerism that has remained to this day. The ranks of hunters and fishermen swelled prodigiously, and, supported by burgeoning technology, their interests shifted from the more philosophical aspects of sport toward a concern with obtaining bag limits and trophies. By the mid-1950s, the new American sportsman seemed, by-and-large, more interested in how than why. In the magazines, more and more editorial space each month was devoted to techniques for increasing the kill and the catch.
At the same time, television was making vast inroads into what had once been a sizeable reading public. More and more people seemed inclined to read for information and to seek entertainment – to say nothing of enlightenment – elsewhere. The writers whose livelihoods depended upon the magazine-publishing industry were left with little choice but to write what the magazines wanted to buy, and the magazines bought what the majority of the public wanted to read. There still was a market for good writing, but the personal essay and the how-to-do-it article largely supplanted the short story. Now, thirty years later, a piece of fiction in any magazine is a rare treat. But for Gray’s Sporting Journal and a very few other magazines that still publish them, sporting short stories would truly be a thing of the past.
But still, the legacy of The Golden Age remains, as bright and readable, as entertaining and profound as ever.
McIntosh goes on to describe the demise of The Golden Age in more detail and introduce the collection of fictional sporting stories included in the book.
So we’ve learned that American sporting fiction has been essentially dead for some time now. A great change in our society that persists even today, has provided a market for the how-to article and the personal narrative, but has left the fictional short story in the dust. The market dried up, and sporting fiction, along with its writers, essentially faded into the background. With modern technology, including satellite television, the internet, and mobile devices, demand for outdoor sporting fiction may be even lower than it was in the 1980’s when McIntosh assembled the stories for his book. With all of the television shows to watch, video games to play, text messages, Facebook, Twitter, and other distractions, would a youngster today have the time, let alone the interest, to even open a book by the likes of Edmund Ware Smith?
Perhaps McIntosh was right. Perhaps outdoor sporting fiction is dead for good, and isn’t coming back. I, however, tend to be a bit optimistic. As part of a younger generation, I feel that many of my peers would take the time to read such wonderful works of outdoor fiction. I think the main hindrance to the popularity of the genre is that it is old enough to make its products difficult to find. Most young people aren’t even aware that these books and short stories exist! This is where new technology, which was part of the cause for the demise of sporting fiction, can help us bring it back. If we can use the tools we have in today’s information age, perhaps we can revive the old material that enriched the lives of so many outdoorsmen of the early and mid 20th century. Furthermore, a popular resurgence of outdoor sporting fiction could, in itself, create a market for new writers to enter the genre and create new outdoor short stories that are relevant to today’s outdoorsperson.
Our society is changing. So much more information is available to anybody with the simple click of a mouse. Perhaps all of the how-to stories and tips and tricks in today’s outdoor magazines, most of which can be found elsewhere on the web, are becoming less popular. Maybe today’s outdoorsperson is looking for something that is more meaningful, looking to reflect more on the outdoor experience and return to the state where we emphasize the why of hunting and fishing just as much as the how.
At OutdoorSportingLibrary.com, I am dedicated to the effort to bring the outdoor fiction and short stories of The Golden Age back to life. I will do my best to describe, review and catalog the works of these classic outdoor writers and provide sources where you can access their books and short stories.
Perhaps there is some hope for a revival of American Sporting Fiction. If there is, you can bet that I, for one, want to be a part of it.
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