The Green Roosevelt: Theodore Roosevelt in Appreciation of Wilder ...

observation. But whatever I did see I saw truly, and I was fairly apt to understand what it meant. In other words, I saw what was sufficiently obvious, and in such case did not usually misinterpret what I had seen.” Roosevelt's comments are unduly modest; in fact, his reputation as an “accurate and discriminating observer” earns his African Game Trails, at least in the eyes of Sir H. H. Johnston, consideration among the classics of the genre.⁵⁷

Whether Roosevelt's works may be considered true classics in their respective fields remains a matter of disciplinary debate. Territorial, hidebound interests have influenced critical reception of his naturalist's work. According to Schullery, for example, Roosevelt's “colorful prose may seem a little overdone or self-serving.”⁵⁸ But what is clear is that Roosevelt took the craft of writing seriously while impressing his nature-minded peers as a “literary craftsman.”⁵⁹ And though critics have faulted Roosevelt for his overreliance on the heavy-handed turn of phrase, for the occasional redundancy of his utterances, and for his often didactic tone, Maurice Garland Fulton argues for an integral relationship between Roosevelt the man and Roosevelt the stylist. The writing, like the man, proved “clear rather than elegant” and was “characterized by force and emphatic power rather than by polish and rhetorical refinement.”⁶⁰ In his appreciative essay “The Naturalist and Book-lover; An Appreciation,” William Beebe lauds the “subtlety of his [Roosevelt's] imagination, the delicacy of his thought, the wealth of simile and quotation, his perfect sense of humor.”⁶¹ But even these formulations prove inadequate. For while Roosevelt composed using the “oral method”—often dictating his words while pacing the room—as an editor for Outlook magazine as well as of his own writing he worked painstakingly, revising and resolving multiple drafts before settling on a final.⁶² Here again, in writing as well as in public life, Roosevelt managed to yoke vigorous spontaneity with energetic studiousness.

Roosevelt, too, held definite opinions about what constituted good writing, views expressed in his essay “Books for Holidays in the Open,” and elsewhere in his literary tracts. TR, as the nature faker controversy makes clear, abhorred inaccurate or sensationalist writing about the natural