From: firstinitiallastname@texas.net   
      
   HooDoo U. wrote:   
      
   > I would not like to be an author who has spent   
   > years researching my subject only to learn that   
   > several other authors beat me to the punch with   
   > their publications on the same subject. It must   
   > be really deflating. It doesn't seem to happen   
   > as often in fiction because it is fiction. But   
   > when writing about historical subjects, there is   
   > usually just so much material available to   
   > everyone writing on the subject. It must be hard   
   > to be the cream on top when it comes to writing   
   > about specific people/topics.   
      
      
      
   It happens in fiction, too. Trends and fashions are driven by such   
   diverse forces that it can sometimes be hard to tell what they are, but   
   much similar fiction spontaneously appears. The USSR collapses. There   
   goes the staple nemesis of fictional espions. What to do? What to do?   
   Authors begin thinking, and they naturally come up with some common new   
   themes.   
      
   It's probably not quite so bad in popular historical writing. Serious   
   students don't expect to learn much new from this stuff, and the authors   
   aren't bound to quite so rigorous citation. That gives them room to   
   fictionalize, along the lines of Dobie's treatments that did not pretend   
   to literal provable fact and sought to capture the spirit of the times   
   and the characters are representative of themselves without being   
   literally themselves.   
      
   If you're good, you can bring more readable life to a historical   
   character than the competition. But McMurtry's approach is not quite   
   that. In fact, (strictly from reading reviews) it seems that Bridger   
   continues the embroidery of his musical show of the same theme, while   
   McMurtry deflates the hyped image and attempts analysis of the   
   phenomenon. (There have been other attempts to draw parallels between   
   olden celebrities and modern tabloid fodder. Most don't come off all   
   that well.) Neither author has consistently positive reviews for the   
   Buffalo Bill works, but they sound different enough not to stand in   
   place of each other. And Simon and Schuster knows a bunch of McMurtry   
   fans will buy his and never read Bridger's.   
      
   --   
                          Gerald Clough   
       "Nothing has any value, unless you know you can give it up."   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)