Spud Johnson & Laughing Horse

Description

Author: Udall, Sharyn R.

Publisher: University of New Mexico Press

Pub Date: 1994 (First edition)

Binding: Hardcover

Condition: Book: Fair.  Binding tight.  No tears, bends or folds.  Previous owner’s bookplate on ffep.  Very light edge and corner wear.  Dust Jacket: Fair.  NOT price clipped (no price indicated).  Several small chips at spine head and foot.  One approx. 1/4″ tear at upper rear flap corner.  Upper rear edge has an approx. 3″ wrinkle.  Wear to lower rear edge and lower rear flap.  Scuffing to edges.

Notes:  Walter Willard Johnson (1897-1968), nicknamed “Spud” by his family, was probably the quintessential Taoseño, though Santa Fe might also claim his as one of their own.  Laughing Horse was a Johnson periodical, originally published during his early college days, but suppressed by the university for what was at the time considered obscene.  Johnson became the secretary to the poet Witter Bynner in Santa Fe, later moved to Taos, and continued sporadically publishing Laughing Horse, though this time with his own printing press.  He fame rests in his friendships with people like D.H. and Fried Lawrence, Mabel Dodge Luhan, Mary Austin, all of whom he published in his magazine, and with the Santa Fe art crowd (Gustave Baumann, B.J.O. Nordfeldt, John Marin).  This is a combination biography of Johnson, interspersed with long excerpts from his journals, and pretty much an intellectual and artistic history of New Mexico in the first half of the twentieth century.  Lots of period photos.