More than 100 “Zaniacs” have descended on Durango from all over the globe to attend the 32nd Zane Grey’s West Annual Convention.
The four-day affair promises “world-class presentations” about Zane Grey, excursions on the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad in tribute to Grey and an auction of Grey memorabilia.
“Who is Zane Grey?” you ask:
In short, the biggest-selling author you’ve never heard of.
At the time of Grey’s death in 1939, obituaries claimed he was “the greatest selling author of all time,” with only The Bible and The Boy Scout Handbook surpassing sales of Grey’s cowboy blockbusters, such as Riders of the Purple Sage, The Light of the Western Stars and Code of the West.
Grey’s canon teems with virgins, villains and varmints, fabling the triumphs and tribulations of rugged masculinity, interracial romance and Manifest Destiny.
Grey’s influence on the zeitgeist was undiminished Monday at the Strater Hotel. The lobby throbbed with Zaniacs eager to discuss the soaring cost of a Grey first edition and parse Grey’s rather hostile portrayals of Mormons.
Indeed, in the women’s bathroom on the hotel’s first floor, two Zaniacs swapped awed stories about Grey’s sexual prowess while waiting for a stall.
(Scholar Thomas H. Pauly recently suggested that Grey – whose literary career spanned 57 novels, 10 nonfiction books, 300 short stories and 130 movies – was even more staggeringly prolific in that department, despite his marriage of 34 years.)
Joe Wheeler, a career academic and renowned author in his own right, understands Grey’s posthumous magnetism too well.
“As a PhD student at Vanderbilt, I made the mistake of writing my doctoral thesis on Zane Grey and lost control of my life,” he said.
That was more than 30 years ago. Since then, Wheeler has become president of Zane Grey’s West Society (at one point corresponding with fellow “Zanie” Louis L’Amour). He also took over the Zane Grey Review, which bankrupted its first publisher.
“(The original publisher) was a Pentecostal minister. But his real obsession in life was not his ministry, but Zane Grey,” Wheeler said.
Grey’s lure also is clear to David Leeson, who first read Grey’s novels as a boy in Britain, where Grey’s work dominated the best-seller list.
He learned about the Zane Grey society online and decided to join in 2004.
“That was 10 years ago. Now I’m a director,” Leeson said. “I just love the stories’ romance and the descriptions of scenery.”
In fact, it was Grey’s vivid descriptions of the Four Corners’ landscape that spurred him to visit the area a few years back when he read an urgent appeal for help in the Zane Grey Review: Without more docents, Zane Grey’s Cabin would have to close.
“That would have been a disaster,” he said.
In a gallant act Grey would have approved of, Leeson traveled from his Yorkshire home to Payson, Arizona, to volunteer as a tour guide.
Why does he still make the trans-Atlantic trip in honor of a dead writer?
“I’ve met so many nice people through the Zane Grey society,” Leeson said. “I love every minute of it.”
cmcallister@durangoherald.com
