Elmer Kelton"The Time It Never Rained" Curriculum Guide

• Introduction
• Summary
• Themes
• Characters
• Key Quotations
• Essay Topics
• Bibliography
• Resources

The Time It Never Rained by Elmer Kelton Curriculum Guide

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Introduction

Although some have succeeded, likely no one has ever really tried to write a bad novel. Elmer Kelton did twice, but the third time he wrote The Time It Never Rained, he got it right. So right, in fact, that in 1982 Jon Tuska, writing in The American West in Fiction, called Kelton's novel "one of the dozen or so best novels written by an American in this century." There followed many other accolades, including the Spur Award as best Western novel of the year from Western Writers of America (one of his six Spur Awards).

Any simple retelling of the plot in The Time It Never Rained misses the strong impact of this novel and is no more than a starting point. You don't read this story; you watch it unfold, you experience it, you feel it. It has momentum that engages you through its 20 fascinating chapters. It's not merely escapist. It does what fiction is supposed to do -- interpret character and personality. Kelton's work is noticeably more representative of reality than most popular Western writing.

Kelton uses the West as a vehicle for studying man (Alter, p. 140). His study is not the land or culture of the West, but man, his strengths, weaknesses, actions and reactions. When the Western setting is used as an end in itself, the result is genre fiction. But when Kelton uses the setting as a vehicle for studying man, the result is literature.

The Time It Never Rained and Kelton's other novels are well-researched. He writes about what he knows best -- West Texas. He brings his fictional characters to life by inserting them into true stories he's gathered during his 74 years, including 42 years as an agricultural journalist. For example, his grandparents' homestead 20 miles north of Midland is the setting for one of his novels "so I would always have a clear mental picture of the setting." The Time It Never Rained takes place in Rio Seco, which Kelton patterned after Eldorado, a town near the West Texas city of San Angelo, where Kelton has lived since his college graduation in 1948. Kelton is widely respected by cattlemen as a reliable expert on everything in the cattle industry, from market prices to screwworms. His novels gain their strength from his deep understanding and appreciation for the land where he lives and writes, the land where his characters also act out their lives.

John Graves says never tell a fiction writer a story you want to use yourself because he will pre-empt it, give it a few twists and make it his own. "I have always tried to be honest in most ways," Kelton says, "but when it comes to good stories, I am as shameless a thief as you'll meet." In 1988 in a speech to the Texas Folklore Society in Lubbock, he said, "Someone has said that fiction by definition is a lie. By extension, this means that fiction writers are professional liars. In that context, I'll admit to it and go a step further. I will say that fiction writers are professional thieves. We steal stories wherever we find them, disguise them, paint them up like car thieves in a chop shop, then present them as our own. We watch people and steal their characteristics, give them to our fictional characters and call ourselves creative."

Kelton does lament the fact that the book's greatest readership is west of the Mississippi River. He says he finds himself "preaching to the choir." Indeed, in one review Don Graham writes, "There isn't much there that would appeal to an audience that makes Jackie Collins a millionaire."