Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Russell Annabel

Picked up a book last weekend titled, "Alaskan Adventures The Early Years" It's a collection from Sports Afield articles...I had never heard of this guy but a gun store owner in Atlanta recommended it..

I would highly recommend it if anybody hasn't read the articles...Some of you fellows may remember the originals<img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

Mike

Russell Annabel, a neighbor when I lived in Alaska, was a facile, skillful writer of "pure" fiction. His "adventures" were creations of a fertile imagination fed by others' experiences.

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Ken, I was going to say the same. He was the Peter Capstick of Alaska.

His writing tempo had a way of riviting you to the edge of your chair when reading his stuff. When I start reading anything he wrote, I can't put it down till I finished reading it. He was an excellent writer, with a unique way of enrolling you into his story.
Don

I remember his writing from when I was about 13 years old- which would make him about 120 by now. He got off on a series of articles about the "onza" - a special crypto-breed of wompus kitty supposedly coming over from mexico. People wrote letters in about the illusive Onza and how it's coloration differed from a puma and how it was much more man-eating.
Annabel was just having fun with old felix onca- the common puma and everybody who ever taut dey tah a puddy tat.

Sorry to hear about the fictional nature of Annabel's writings. I've always liked 'em.


mec:

The Puma/Mountain Lion/Cougar is Felis concolor.

The Jaguar is Panthera onca.

RSY

Rusty was an incredible writer. Fiction or truth, he could portray Alaska and the adventures Alaska can provide better than any writer before or since. All of his books have been reprinted time and again, and I believe all are currently offered by Safari Press. http://www.safaripress.com/northamericanbiggame.html

The guys who do Wile E Coyote and the roadrunner, like those who do Star Wars, are skillful, too � but they make no bones about their stuff being mere fantasy. He who presents his fantasies as fact, however skillfully he weaves 'em, is a contemptible liar, not to be respected or admired for his skill at deceiving those who trust him. Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway, Margaret Mitchell, Louis Lamour, Tom Clancy, and their ilk deserve credit for their skill. So too would Russell Annabel and Peter Capstick deserve the same credit for their skill if they'd presented their stories as the created fantasies that they are.

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Well said, Ken - although too many armchair hunters dreaming of Africa don't believe this.
RD

PS: One day I found C.'s "Death in the Long Grass" in the toilet of a Zim hunting lodge.

"What a place for a nice book like this," I said.

Very polite our Zim PH partner answered: "Yes, the right place for nice books like this!"

I remember reading Annabel's stuff when I was a kid, too. I remember one story he wrote about this vicious jaguarundi that lived in Mexico. When I grew older, moved to the Rio Grande Valley area of Texas, and saw a real jaguarundi (which is the size of a housecat!) I began to question the man's veracity.

Good storyteller, though.

Reminds me of a "Guts & Gore" type of men's cheap pulp magazine back in the 1950s that had a swarm of pangolins on the cover, with their fangs sloshing blood as they ripped at a bleeding muscle man who was protecting a barely clad shapely woman.

Fangs?

Blood?

Pangolins are scale-covered African or Asian critters with sticky tongues � they eat ants � but no teeth, let alone fangs, as far as I know. Didn't buy the magazine. Maybe I missed another good Russell Annabel yarn. I don't think that he limited the scope of his blood-curdling fantasies to Alaska.

At that time, Peter Capstick was probably hiding such magazines inside his geography book so Teacher wouldn't see what he was reading.

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Roe_deer , Death in the Long Drop. Sounds like another good Capstick title.

I agree :-)

RD

458Win,

I haven't read Annabel, but comparing him to Peter Capstick says plenty. I'm glad that I read most of Capstick's books before I learned of his "inspirations". I don't read much fiction on purpose, but I did truly enjoy "Death In The Long Grass", "Death in Far Away Places", etc... A friend of mine was friends with Mr. Capstick and affectionately called him Peter "Crapstick". He said that Mr. Capstick was rather candid about borrowing stories and embellishing them, if not flat out making them up. My friend who hunted Africa quite a bit, years ago; said that many African guides and outfitters appreciated the hunting business that Peter Capstick generated through his stories. Maybe Mr. Annabel helped create a larger customer base for Alaskan guides through his stories of adventure. Just a thought <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smirk.gif" alt="" />
[bleep]

I hate to hear about his fictional foundation, however I enjoy the stories very much and it is great reading..

I like his style of writing as well, reads pretty easily and very descriptive..

Mike

"The Puma/Mountain Lion/Cougar is Felis concolor.

The Jaguar is Panthera onca"

Well, Suffferrin' Suucccotash!. Anyway, I think we could kind of tell R.Annabel was writing fiction even then. I don't recall if we took it as transparent fiction or a pack of great big fibs but a lot of those old magazine articles were written for effect. There was one guy, might have been Ed Wallach or something similar that wrote an article about Pistol shooting. Said that it was as easy as pointing your finger and he would prove it by shooting a match against one of the other writers. He would use a .38 snub and beat the guy with a target pistol.

Letters started hitting the magazine ( It was either Argosy or one of the big hook and bullet 'zines like Outdoor Life or Field and Stream.) about what an idiot the guy was and how the letter writer hated him.

Dean Grennell might have been inspired by Anabell when he wrote about the " Illusive Nauga," ''The Veiled Illusion", and "The Crashing Boar."

I really enjoyed Annabel's stuff myself, its very disappointing to hear that he was never an acquaintance of the truth.

I'd better not ask about Richard Starnes, I may be devastated.

He could spin a good tale and I've always found it easy to sink into his stories for a bit. Not sure what more you could ask of a writer.

What's the difference if they were true or not? Capstick's yarns either, for that matter.

Some of us don't condone lying, admire liars or phonies, or like being lied to.

Otherwise, no difference.

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Geez, Dr. Howell. With all due respect--

There's truth and there's lies, of course. But there's also mythology. No mythology worth its perusal ever came with a "Disclaimer Notice."

I love Annabel's stuff and did when I read it in Sports Afield as a kid. It was obvious to me, as a 7 year old, that Annabel would have had to be about 120 years old to have had all those adventures over all that space and time. And I didn't care.

As Winston Churchill is supposed to have said about the Arthurian Legends, "If they're not true, then they ought to be, and more besides."

I could write my own true hunting experiences, with emphasis on sleeplessness, bug bites, nettle burns, the constant itching of the three-day shadow, and seeing the game just out of range and going further. Absolute truth, but who'd read it or be inspired?

Been lurking around here for a long time and find these conversations by you and the other writers fascinating. I especially liked your Writing class notes, and appreciate the effort. I subscribed to the Rifle and Handloader in the glory days and your expert touch is very evident.

Jack O'Connor mentioned in his Last Book that Annabel hugely overused the "Epic Beginning" in his stories and got most of them by diligent note-taking in the bars in Anchorage. I for one am glad he did. In one of his stories, he has his client say, "I don't want this to be a normal hunting trip; you know, 'There he is.' Bang. 'You got him.'" None of Annabel's stories were "normal" hunting stories, and good for him.