Dorothy M. Johnson [1905-1984]

Yes I know, we aren't on Thursday, but I just discovered this "meme", is it the real word? and I opened it with that great lady in the French blog...so I couldn't do less than welcoming Dorothy in this page...You must think I'm very familiar with that lady but I'm sure she was not a fussy woman...

In the title of this post, there's a link with the page the Missoulians dedicated to her...That's nice to see how writers are considered in that part of the world...

I'm ashamed of saying I read "The hanging tree" only yesterday...

I love Montana writers, I'm trying to read everything about them...and the people working in the public library of my town managed to find me three books from Dorothy Johnson, in another public library...They're such cute ones...

It was a big shock...like when I read Annie Proulx for the first time...these women writers are just incredible...In France now Annie Proulx isn't read much...and anyway most readers only know "The secret of Brokeback mountains", not even the full book of Wyoming short stories...

but Dorothy Johnson...

Michel Le Bris who wrote the preface of "When you and I were young, Whitefish" said : "she never uses a single useless word"...it's so true...so strong, so direct, so modest...I wonder if that word is the right one...oh dear me, I wish my English was perfect!!!

These characters are so deep inside, so sensitive inside though so rough outside...Like men working in Breton lighthouses, trappers in the north of Scandinavia, or people living high in the mountains...

Frail who looked so terrifying but who only had in mind:"are you the one who will hang me?

"Lost woman" rushing to save the man she loved without a word...

Dorothy was also a great woman, she worked hard, had a difficult life...her mother used to say: "never leave a job before finding another one"...When she managed to sell her first short story to the Saturday Evening post, she got 400 dollars...she used to earn 100 a month with her job. She wrote: "I thought that was it, I was famous...But then it took me a eleven years to sell the next story. I never forgot this lesson..."

READ her, don't watch the films..."John Ford was a tough old bastard, wouldn't give a kopeck..."

I'm actually reading:

-The hanging tree

-When you and I were young, Whitefish, and

-Indian country

and I'm really having a great time...

"The solace of open spaces." Gretel Ehrlich 1984

I really do love this type of book...you get to know a woman, a country, a life and so many details making life liveable for the writer and the reader...I read to learn...I eat the books, feed myself with any bit of life in it...I'm so greedy of new countries, new ways of life...and here I get everything I wish:
The Wyoming: "the name comes from an Indian word meaning"at the great plains" but the plains are really valleys, great arid valleys, sixteen hundred square miles, with the horizon bending up on all sides into mountain ranges. This gives the vastness a sheltering look"
it seems so "exotic" when you live in a tiny bit of france...
Then you get to know a woman, just recovering from the death of the man she loved...She then decided to stay in the country she was filming and to work there...Working on ranches day time, writing at night...working so hard...meeting such strong and extraordinary people hermits, cowboys, women...and discovering the wind, the winter, the changing seasons, the cattle....
"Walking is also an ambulation of mind" walking , working was also a way of healing...
I really recommend this book. It's great...
listen: "It's May and I'm just awakened from a nap, curled against sagebrush the way my dog taught me to sleep-sheltered from wind...."