 | |
| Author | Jonathan Twingley |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Illustrated novel |
| Publisher | Scribners |
Publication date | 2009 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover) |
| ISBN | 978-1-4165-8706-4 |
The Badlands Saloon is a novel by Jonathan Twingley, an American artist and illustrator. Published by Scribner in 2009, the 224-page hardcover tells the story of Oliver Clay, and his life-changing summer in a small North Dakota town.
The town is Marysville − once a booming oil town, now a tourist spot − a "Wild West fishbowl" with a state-of-the-art amphitheater, an Old West Shooting Gallery, bumper cars, and a glad-handing mayor with his own daily radio show. Like much of America, "the town had become a strange version of itself...a generic vision of what towns once looked like when there were Cowboys and Indians and wagon wheels and campfires. But there was an authenticity to it all, too." [1]
The town resembles Medora, North Dakota. At the south entrance to the Theodore Roosevelt National Park, Medora provides a touristy western experience with wooden planked sidewalks, old fashion ice cream parlors, and buggy rides. Just like the Marysville in Twingley's novel, Medora offers several museums, the Cowboy Hall of Fame, the Badlands Shooting Gallery, Medora Mini Golf, and the Burning Hills Amphitheater with nightly productions of the Medora Musical. [2] Both Medora and Marysville were named after a French aristocrat. Also resembling Marysville, the entire economy of the real-life Medora (with its 112 residents and 0.37 square miles) is subsidized by a foundation - the Theodore Roosevelt Medora Foundation. [3]
The novel is uniquely constructed. It is not a graphic novel with comic book panels, but an illustrated novel with 38 full-color illustrations covering 76 pages. It has the straightforward simplicity of Aesop's Fables yet is highly literary, with references to Søren Kierkegaard, Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, Allen Ginsberg, Lanford Wilson, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jack Kerouac, and others.
It is also a personal memoir, yet explosively populated with characters reminiscent of The Iceman Cometh , the Coen Brothers' Fargo , and a Fellini circus. This profound originality prompted Howard Frank Mosher to declare "The Badlands Saloon is that best of all novels: one that has never been written before." [4]
The novel evoked the lyricism of Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County and Garrison Keillor's Lake Wobegon.[ according to whom? ]
The New York Times Book Review stated "The Badlands Saloon is filled with hallucinatory incidents and flamboyant barflies...Before the summer’s out, young Ollie will learn the usual life lessons, amid much faux wisdom that crumbles under the glare of the trailer park lights. The book’s chief attraction is Twingley’s sketchbook of illustrations, whose broad outsider-art strokes work in concert with Ollie’s naive ruminations.” [5]
Booklist signalled Twingley as "an up-and-coming artist" and praised his "uniquely stylized characters...a gallery of portraits rendered in prose, punctuated by visuals, and delivered with unsentimental but heartfelt honesty." [6]
According to Library Journal Review, The Badlands Saloon "feels like catching up with an old friend over beers. A wonderful read; highly recommended for lovers of the American landscape and fiction readers of all kinds." [6]
Wibaux is a town in and the county seat of Wibaux County, Montana, United States. The population was 589 at the 2010 census.
Medora is a city in Billings County, North Dakota, United States. The only incorporated place in Billings County, it is also the county seat. Much of the surrounding area is part of either Little Missouri National Grassland or Theodore Roosevelt National Park. The population was 112 at the 2010 census. It is part of the Dickinson Micropolitan Statistical Area.
Badlands are a type of dry terrain where softer sedimentary rocks and clay-rich soils have been extensively eroded by wind and water. They are characterized by steep slopes, minimal vegetation, lack of a substantial regolith, and high drainage density. They can resemble malpaís, a terrain of volcanic rock. Canyons, ravines, gullies, buttes, mesas, hoodoos and other such geologic forms are common in badlands. They are often difficult to navigate by foot. Badlands often have a spectacular color display that alternates from dark black/blue coal stria to bright clays to red scoria.
Theodore Roosevelt National Park is an American national park comprising three geographically separated areas of badlands in western North Dakota. The park was named for U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt. The park covers 70,446 acres of land in three sections: the North Unit, the South Unit, and the Elkhorn Ranch Unit.
Antoine-Amédée-Marie-Vincent Manca Amat de Vallombrosa, Marquis de Morès et de Montemaggiore, commonly known as the Marquis de Morès, was a French duelist, frontier ranchman in the Badlands of Dakota Territory during the final years of the American Old West era, a railroad pioneer in Vietnam, and a politician in his native France.
The Nokota horse is a feral and semi-feral horse breed located in the badlands of southwestern North Dakota in the United States. The breed developed in the 19th century from foundation bloodstock consisting of ranch-bred horses produced from the horses of local Native Americans mixed with Spanish horses, Thoroughbreds, harness horses and related breeds. The Nokota was almost wiped out during the early 20th century when ranchers, in cooperation with state and federal agencies, worked together to reduce competition for livestock grazing. However, when Theodore Roosevelt National Park was created in the 1940s, a few bands were inadvertently trapped inside, and thus were preserved.
The Medora Musical is a musical revue that produced each summer at the open-air Burning Hills Amphitheater near Medora, North Dakota. The musical is a look back at the "Wild West" days of the region and includes references to Theodore Roosevelt, who spent time in western North Dakota, including in the nearby Theodore Roosevelt National Park.
Harold Schafer was a North Dakota businessman, entrepreneur and philanthropist who founded the Gold Seal Company, the original maker of Mr. Bubble. He also was a major benefactor in the tourist town of Medora, North Dakota and the Medora Musical.
The winter of 1886–1887, also known as the Big Die-Up, was extremely harsh for much of continental North America, especially the United States. Although it affected other regions in the country, it is most known for its effects on the Western United States and its cattle industry. This winter marked the end of the open range era and led to the entire reorganization of ranching.
Interstate 94 (I-94) runs east–west through the central portion of the US state of North Dakota.
The Chateau de Mores in Medora, North Dakota, United States, is a historic home built by the Marquis de Mores in 1883 as a hunting lodge and summer home for his family and guests. The home is now part of the 128-acre (0.52 km2) Chateau de Mores State Historic Site, which also includes Chimney Park and de Mores Memorial Park.
The Maltese Cross Cabin is a cabin used by Theodore Roosevelt, before he was President. The cabin is currently located at the visitor center at Theodore Roosevelt National Park, just outside the town of Medora, North Dakota.
The Elkhorn Ranch was established by Theodore Roosevelt on the banks of the Little Missouri River 35 miles north of Medora, North Dakota in the summer of 1884. Roosevelt hired Bill Sewall and Wilmot Dow, two Maine woodsmen, to run the ranch. Sewall and Dow built the ranch house, "a long, low house of logs," in the winter of 1884–1885.
Jonathan Twingley is an American artist, illustrator and author. His work is regularly exhibited in galleries and museums throughout the United States. His paintings and illustrations also appear in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic, Mother Jones, and The Progressive.
Peaceful Valley Ranch is about 3 miles (4.8 km) from the town of Medora, North Dakota in the South Unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park, in western North Dakota. The ranch dates from 1885, when Benjamin Lamb bought the land and built its first buildings. After operating as a ranch, primarily raising horses, the ranch was developed by the Olsen family as a dude ranch before it was acquired by the National Park Service, and incorporated into the Roosevelt Recreation Demonstration Area, which eventually became the present national park. The ranch forms the core of the national park's South Unit. It overlooks the Little Missouri River, in the Little Missouri badlands.
Cattle towns were midwestern frontier settlements that catered to the cattle industry. The economies of these communities were heavily dependent on the seasonal cattle drives from Texas, which brought the cowboys and the cattle that these towns relied upon. Cattle towns were found at the junctions of railroads and livestock trails. These towns were the destination of the cattle drives, the place where the cattle would be bought and shipped off to urban meatpackers, midwestern cattle feeders, or to ranchers on the central or northern plains. Cattle towns were made famous by popular accounts of rowdy cowboys and outlaws who were kept under control by local lawmen, but those depictions were mostly exaggeration and myth.
Since his death in 1919, his family and admirers have from time to time, attempted to establish a Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum. All have failed. The first attempt became a national historic site in New York City and the papers themselves were donated to Harvard University. There was another attempt in the 1990s near where Roosevelt had his home in Sagamore Hill, NY. The latest attempt is in North Dakota, where Roosevelt lived for a few years in the 1880s.
Mount Theodore Roosevelt Monument, also known as the Roosevelt Friendship Monument or Friendship Tower, located in the Black Hills National Forest on the outskirts of Deadwood, Lawrence County, South Dakota, is a 31-foot stone tower, including the six-foot-high platform, honoring Theodore Roosevelt. It was the first tribute to the president's memory and was dedicated July 4, 1919.
This Theodore Roosevelt bibliography lists the works written by Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt was a diligent and skilled writer. When he lost his fortune in the Dakota Territory in 1886 and needed to make a living to support his family, he did so for the rest of his life by writing. Roosevelt wrote on a wide range of topics and genres, including history, autobiography, biography, commentary and editorials, memoirs, nature, and guide books. In addition, by one estimate Roosevelt wrote more than 150,000 letters. In his style, Roosevelt could be strong, introspective, exuberant, or angry—the subject dictated the style.
The Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library will be a museum and facility for the records of Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th president of the United States. It is to be constructed at a site to the west of Medora, North Dakota, near Theodore Roosevelt National Park, which preserves sites associated with Roosevelt's sojourn in North Dakota between 1883 and 1887. The project is in planning stages. A site in the Badlands of Medora was selected in 2020, as well as the lead design architect: Snøhetta.