Is there a market for humorous Westerns?

[AnneMarble]

Recently, I bought a book in one of those unending series written by a deceased author (whose initials are William W. Johnstone). (In my defense, I was curious and needed some Western fluff, and because it had decent type ;) .) This one seemed to stand apart from the rest because it included a humorous subplot about a cowardly Easterner. The book drew a harsh review from a reader who thought this sort of plot was better left to people who liked movies like Paleface. But I thought it looked like it could be fun. (And I wish I knew enough to know who the ghostwriter was because if I like it, I won't be able to write a fan letter. :cry:)

So I wondered... Is there room for humorous Westerns? Are there a lot of outright humorous Westerns, like Cat Ballou (Hey, I forgot that was a book first. :D) or for that matter, Blazing Saddles? Or is humor better left as a side dish in Westerns today? (For example, witty dialogue or banter in the middle of a serious plot?) Then again, while most of the Westerns I've bought lately have been really really really serious :), wasn't humor an important part of the culture of the Old West (folklore, tall tales, etc.)? After all, humor can be a great way of coping with a harsh, dangerous life.

P.S. It's all the fault of TV. The first Western I really liked was a funny TV movie called Evil Roy Slade. :D

[JeanneTGC]

I sure hope so, Cool Thread Starter Girl, because I have a parody/satire just begging me to get to it soon.

I think there's a place for ANYthing if it's written/executed well enough. But that's me, Ms. Optimism 2008. ;)

[AnneMarble]

I sure hope so, Cool Thread Starter Girl, because I have a parody/satire just begging me to get to it soon.
Cool. Maybe you can create that market for me. :D Because if I were to write a Western, it would probably end up being a totally batty book. Even if I tried to write something serious, I'd end up with outhouse jokes and runaway pigs.

I think there's a place for ANYthing if it's written/executed well enough. But that's me, Ms. Optimism 2008. ;)
Yeah, the well enough part is the killer, ain't it? ;)

[alleycat]

It's funny you should ask today (or actually, yesterday). I just happened to be looking through a book of short stories by Jack Schaeffer (Shane, Monte Walsh) this afternoon and picked a story at random. It was a humorous piece.

[MaryMumsy]

If you write outhouse jokes and runaway pigs, I'll buy it. That is exactly my kind of sense of humor. Well, that and the very dry British understated type.

MM

[alleycat]

If you write outhouse jokes and runaway pigs, I'll buy it. That is exactly my kind of sense of humor. Well, that and the very dry British understated type.

MM
Sounds like you might like some of the books by Patrick McManus, such as Real Ponies Don't Go Oink. I've read a couple of his and there are some pretty funny parts.

[Unique]

Wagons East, anyone?

'Phil's cows' is a family joke we've seen that movie so many times.

Peter Bowen (http://www.peter-bowen.com/works.htm)makes me laugh out loud quite a bit. (Sent fan mail, too but w/o a reply) :( Of course it's Western in modern times but still funny as hell.

ANd two that I haven't read yet. Yippee! My lucky day.

[Denton]

Restringing this thread, are there any magazines that print short stories in the Western Parody genre?


Denton,
who also enjoys combining outhouse jokes with runaway pigs. :D

[Kerr]

Don't forget the movie Lust In The Dust. If you've missed that one, go rent it.

[Jerry B. Flory]

Westerns are such a Hollywood standard that they're used in every genre. From horror to comedy to romance to action/drama. There's Back to the Future III and another old lost TV show called Dusty's Trail That put Bob Denver in a Gilligan kind of role in a lost wagon train. That lasted, I think, a whole season.
The western can always be revived. It's a time period people like to dream about in this day of surveillance maintained society. A wide open lawless land can seem preferable to the somewhat smothered society we have now.

[Jerry B. Flory]

Some more news on this is that Johnny Depp will be assuming the role of Tonto in an upcoming Lone Ranger flick. I don't know who's playing the Lone Ranger and I don't really care. As long as it isn't Ben Stiller. Depp's enough for me.

[ELMontague]

There is a market for everything. Write what you want to write. The markets will sort themselves out.

[ComicBent]

Charles Portis's True Grit is humorous, despite the underlying violence and drama.

[PortableHal]

The people that say that there's a market for everything? Don't listen to 'em.

If the publisher doesn't think there's an existing market for a humorous Western, he won't be buying your's.

Sad but true.

[AnneMarble]

The people that say that there's a market for everything? Don't listen to 'em.

If the publisher doesn't think there's an existing market for a humorous Western, he won't be buying your's.

Sad but true.
But even in today's very tight Western market, I've seen some recent Westerns with a humorous tone. In two of the cases, they were action-oriented first , but they definitely had a humorous tone as well. Sometimes gallows (heh) humor. I'm sure there were others out there like that, where the humor forms part of the whole.

Also, writers are often told to chase trends -- but it's easy to forget that what we see on the shelves today doesn't reflect what publishers want now. If you don't see a particular type of book, that doesn't mean publishers don't want them now. What they don't want is the same ol' thing, unless you make it interesting again.

Edited to Add:
OTOH sometimes I think it can be harder for established authors. We've all heard of established authors who wanted to write the book of their heart but didn't dare write "on spec" or who couldn't get something published because it wasn't their usual type of book. Even best-selling authors have a hard time bucking trends. I recently read that NYT best-selling author Jayne Ann Krentz said that her career was nearly derailed when she published futuristic romances under her own name. I thought the books were cool, but a lot of fans were disappointed and couldn't "get" the subgenre. (Later, when she broke out of her usual style, she used pen names to keep the different types of books separate.) Now, futuristic and paranormal romances are much more common, and there are many big name authors branching out, sometimes under their own names. But someone had to buck the trends first, and someone had to help make those types of books acceptable.

[PortableHal]

Look, I love almost everything written by P.G. Wodehouse, Donald E. Westlake, Carl Hiaasen and Jay Cronley. I get humor. I love novels that are humorous. I wish there was a market for humorous Westerns. I just don't think there is. (And, to my mind, a Western with humor does not reflect something like BLAZING SADDLES. BLAZING SADDLES was a comedy with a Western kind wrapped around it.)

It's been years but I once read an interview with a famous author of thrillers -- I think it was Robert Ludlum -- and he said that he'd started out as a closet writer that wanted to write funny stuff. The problem was, his funny thrillers were rejected time and again. Finally, wanting to be published, he wrote a mainstream, unfunny, serious thriller and became a best-selling author.

Later, after he was well-established as a big dollar writer, he did publish a pair of comedic thrillers. The first one, under a pen name, sold poorly. The second one, under his own name, sold well but not as well as his straight stuff.

This has led me to believe that there isn't a big market for humor in some genres, including Westerns and thrillers. And that an established writer -- like Jayne Ann Krentz or Robert Ludlum -- can get something into the marketplace that a neophyte had best leave on the shelf until s/he is an established writer.

I wish you well, AnneMarble, and if you manage to sell a humorous Western, I'll buy a copy.

[Puma]

Throwing a thought in here - with the current economic situation, I suspect humor may be of more interest. When things get tough, people need an excuse to laugh. So maybe this is a good time to try something in the humor line. Puma

[ElisabethF]

What about humorous Western short stories? There's plenty of excellent precedent here from the 'olden days' when there were Westerns in every magazine - O. Henry wrote some terrific and hilarious Western stories, and some of Max Brand's were downright funny. But what about today - given that it's hard enough to find magazines that publish Westerns of any kind?

Perhaps more to the point would be - what humorous publications might accept a funny Western-themed story? Not a parody, you understand, just a funny story set in the old West.

[Frank Kelso]

Hey Ms Marble:
I do a lot of road travel and listen to audio books. There is a western series (3 books) about 2 brothers who tired of poking cows and decided they wanted to be a "deducifier" like Sherlock Holmes they had read about in magazine serials.
The audio reader was very good and the brothers adventures were humorous.
Drawing a blank on the author's name and had no luck with a search on-line, but will visit the library tomorrow and give you titles and author later.
Point is -- one author and publisher have published 3 books on 1880's western humor in the last 5 years.

[Frank Kelso]

If anyone is interested, the author's name in Post 19 is Steve Hockensmith.
The 5th book in his series came out Jan 2011. So at least on publisher thinks there's a market for humorous westerns. They are a fun read.
Hockensmith has a great sense of humor and shows it in his last sppof of Jane Austen's Pride and Predjudice(sp?) -- a series of 3 books with Zombies vs Austen ???