Fiddleback Lore of the Line Camp

By Owen Ulph

Book Overview

This collection of essays, first published in 1981, has become a classic of cowboy lore, filled with unforgettable characters, acid wit, and cosmic good humor.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0960440259
• ISBN13: 9780960440252
• Release Date: January 1981
• Publisher: Dream Garden Press
• Length: 237 Pages
• Weight: 2.07 lbs.

Customer Reviews

A favorite of mine

I can agree that this book would not be for everyone. If you have grown up romanticizing horses and cowboys and you thought this might transport you further along that path, you might not find this book enjoyable. However, if you actually grew up on a ranch and were horseback from the age of 6, you will love the biting wit Mr. Ulph uses to describe the equine experience. He doesn't forget about the bovines either. He gives them equal amounts of center stage. I loved this book and have given several copies away as gifts to both my cowboy friends and the ones that "wannabe".

Not for fakers . . .

If you're a wannabe, go elsewhere. If you think cows are "icky," then likewise. If your appreciation of horses is wholly based on English riding lessons you got in your teens, buy Anne McCaffrey novels (some of which I like, too), and don't bother with this. It's a book by someone who thought, while he was in the saddle, and it shows. But if you're interested -- and that's your business -- in reading about buckaroo life in the 1950s on a huge ranch in really really really remote Nevada (Zoolander reference deliberate), then read Owen Ulph's book. The salty language, though authentic, makes this not for those under the age of 13 (that should handle most of the reviewers whose comments I've read so far). Test your brain (and vocabulary; Owen was a professor at Reed College for thirty years), and test your empathy. This is classic literature, in the spirit of Tom Watkins (who wrote the introduction), and in the spirit of Owen, himself, who died in late 2003. Just 'cause he's dead doesn't make this any better a book -- but it was great to begin with.

A cowboy's take on cowboy life.

The professional reviewers of this work are correct in their high opinions. In this work, Dr. Ulph, a Professor of History at Reed College, shares observations of the life of a cowpoke. Although the book is based on historical lore, Dr. Ulph infuses the text with his personal knowledge based on owning an eastern Oregon ranch on which he poked cows for many years. His sometimes cynical observations on the realities of this difficult life are quite appropriate, even if they may offend some readers who want romance rather than reality in their depiction of the old west.

brilliant, hilarious, moving

This book is one of a kind: cantankerously intelligent, uproariously funny, utterly irreverent, a delightful unfolding of one remarkable story after another. Ulph, an academic who abandoned academe to become a cowboy, paints an unforgettable portrait of life on a cow ranch, the way it really happened, not the way Hollywood portrays it. Beneath the sardonic humor and the grizzly reality of the cowhands' daily grind, Ulph brings to life a group of amazing individuals, whose stories and personalities remain etched in one's memory. In the same way that "Huck Finn" was high literature, this too is literature of the highest order: eloquent, understated, dramatic, finely crafted. The only bummer is that it's short, and comes to an end all too soon! A masterpiece of gritty, humorous writing!