Typescript draft of The Studhorse Man, page 2

Title

Typescript draft of The Studhorse Man, page 2

Description

Typescript from the third draft of Robert Kroetsch's 1969 novel The Studhorse Man.

Source

Archives and Special Collections

Publisher

Calgary: University of Calgary

Date

Contributor

Robertson, James
Smith, Amanda

Relation

Kroetsch, Robert. The Studhorse Man.

Language

English

Type

Text

Identifier

MsC. 27.10.3

Text

[Typescript]
2.

I commenced to write that a simple biography would be more appropriate: scholars in the future will want every wisp of detail concerning the man who reared that famous foundation sire, the Lepage stallion.

The mere truth will suffice, I discovered, and discovering this, I, ever so humbly, elected to become his Plutarch and his Boswell. Granted, I spent hardly two dozen afternoons with Hazard Lepage: but I got the story from others as well. I was curious; I went out of my way to hear of incidents, to examine evidence and motives. Martha, after all, is my cousin; and she and Hazard were engaged for thirteen years. I sat in country beer parlors listening to the chitchat and gossip of idle men. I walked, when free to do so, the routes that were Hazard's routes. I plundered various newspaper files. Understand then, I entreat you, that this is not my story.

Hazard had to get hold of a mare. He was desperate. In an area centered on a string of seven towns he was the only remaining studhorse man, yet in the previous season he had traveled the hundreds of miles of dirt roads in a two-wheeled cart, pulled by his old gelding, leading his beautiful blue beast of a virgin stallion--and he found not one farmer with a mare that wanted covering.
[Holographic annotations]

/// [marks indicate the beginning of the published novel]

^had

Original Format

Typescript draft with holographic annotations