Rogues Scholar Rides Old West : Books: Bruce (Paydirt) Thorstad of Fountain Valley rounds up gallery of lovable ruffians by researching history books and old newspapers, distilling dusty facts into humorous, mainstream adventures, more like ‘Butch Cassidy’ than traditional Westerns.

When he was studying under novelist John Irving at the renowned University of Iowa Creative Writers’ Workshop in the mid-’70s, Bruce Thorstad dreamed of one day writing the great American novel.

But “since there were so few openings for the next Faulkner,” Thorstad instead spent 14 years as a magazine editor--first for Off Duty Europe, a general interest magazine for American servicemen, in Frankfurt, Germany; and then in the ‘80s for Off-Duty’s Costa Mesa-based U.S. edition.

Today, Thorstad is the critically acclaimed author of novels in a genre he never dreamed of writing back in his Iowa days: Westerns.

His 1991 first novel, “Deadwood Dick and the Code of the West,” is a spoof of sorts about a dime novel hero-worshiping runaway boy from Philadelphia who joins up with a crusty former black Army cavalryman panning for gold in the Black Hills of Dakota.

Praised by the Dallas Times Herald as “one of the most completely satisfying Westerns since (Larry) McMurtry’s ‘Lonesome Dove,’ ” the novel was nominated for a best first novel award by the Western Writers of America.

“Deadwood Dick” was followed by a novel about two newspapermen brothers in frontier Kansas, “The Times of Wichita,” and now Thorstad’s latest Wild West offering: “The Gents” (Pocket Books; $3.99), the first in a series of paperback novels about two down-on-their-luck misfits--the easy-going Riley Stokes from Kentucky and Cass McCasland, a blowhard dandy from Texas.

After a run-in with a lethally dangerous card shark named Terrible John Parrott, Stokes and McCasland sign up for a job guarding an Army pay wagon. Halfway to Ft. Dodge, however, they abandon their job. A young Chinese woman who was abducted by Kiowa Indians as a teen-ager needs help rescuing her Kiowa “sister” and mother-in-law from a band of whiskey runners who massacred members of her adoptive Indian family.

Thorstad calls his lovable rogues “Old West opportunists.”

“They’re willing to go after what comes their way,” he said. “They might be riding for the law in one book and riding from it in the next one--and you find that in a lot of historical figures too. It’s fairly clear, for instance, that Wild Bill Hickok’s first gunfight was pretty much (a case of) murder. And Wyatt Earp had a pretty shady background as a pimp and horse thief.”

“So my guys,” he added with a laugh, “are no more exemplary than the real thing.”

Thorstad, 47, acknowledges that he never imagined he’d one day be writing novels set in places such as Buffalo City or Commanche country in the Texas Panhandle (the setting for his next Stokes-McCasland outing, “Palo Duro”).

“It’s too bad I didn’t think of it,” he said. “Writing workshop students tend to turn out the same kind of story. For one thing, you’re students; you’re in your 20s and you have not seen a lot of the world yet. Everything is sort of me, me, me.”

Even now, Thorstad said, “I haven’t read many Westerns.

“What I do is read nonfiction--history and journalism of the time--and boil that down and spew it back through fictional characters. My inspiration has been more Western movies than books.”

Thorstad said that because Western movies aim for a broad audience, they often have a sense of humor to them--everything from the tongue-in-cheek nature of “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” to the humor and comic elements of “Lonesome Dove.”

Humor--an ingredient with which Thorstad seasons his books--is something lacking in most Western genre novels.

“When you get to Western novels, especially the Western novels that are marketed on the Western shelves, the thinking of marketing people is that these books are going to a hard-core reader: They’re more serious about their Western fantasy. They don’t care to have it poked fun at.”

The readership he’s aiming for is “that broad audience who are not necessarily Western fans, but who can enjoy a good Western. I’m not very comfortable in the Western category.”

It’s too bad, Thorstad says, that “different kinds of people don’t check out the Western shelves once in a while, because they may be surprised.”

Until Kevin Costner’s movie came out, for instance, Michael Blake’s “Dances with Wolves” was marketed as a category Western, Thorstad said, and “had it remained on the Western shelves, millions of people would never have experienced that story, which touched a lot of people. The way that book was originally marketed, there was nothing to distinguish it from hundreds of other Western-category books.”

Thorstad--whose wife, Ruth, teaches second grade in Santa Ana--said a combination of midlife career crisis and inspiration spurred him to quit his magazine job in 1988 and get back to fiction writing.

The catalyst was his becoming involved with Old West action shooting, a sport in which participants compete with Old West-style firearms and dress in vintage garb.

“It’s a big step into Old West lore, and it really has a sense of humor,” Thorstad said. “For instance, you compete as some character, whether fictional or historical, but you don’t use your real name. Probably 200 people know me as ‘Paydirt.’ ”

At the same time he was getting involved in the sport, Thorstad began reading nonfiction books about the Old West, and it wasn’t long before he began thinking of writing a novel.

“Actually, a novel started writing in my head,” he recalled. “I said, ‘If I don’t quit my job, this is never going to get written.’ I just started seeing scenes, and that book was ‘Deadwood Dick and the Code of the West.’ ”

Thorstad said the appeal of writing novels set in the Old West “is that I see Westerns as being about people moving into new territory, and in this case it’s physical territory. But the jump from there to sort of metaphorical territory is such a short one that you can just see in the Western all kinds of allegories for people venturing into places they haven’t been before.”

In fact, the novel he’s now working on--and the one that’s his “bid to jump onto mainstream shelves”--is about a real-life female outlaw named Pearl Hart, who was convicted in 1899 for what is considered the last stage coach robbery in the United States.

“Being female, she’s venturing into new territory in terms of profession,” said Thorstad, adding that Hart, a one-time teen-age runaway, has “a really comical history. She and her accomplice, a guy named Joe Boot--that’s his real name--held up the stage in Globe, Ariz., and they were nice enough not to shoot anybody. I think their take was $431, which is pretty modest by any standard.”

Thorstad said Boot received a 35-year sentence for the crime, but because Hart was 28 and looked 19, the jury sentenced her to only two years in Yuma Territorial Prison.

“The press went wild over her,” said Thorstad, adding that reporters, “amused by her feistiness,” described her in print as a “spitfire” and headlines declared her “Pearl Hart, the Arizona Bad Girl.”

Hart was released from prison in less than two years and, Thorstad said, she went on to do a national lecture tour, speaking on “What My Life of Crime Has Taught Me.”

“She just sounded so modern,” said Thorstad, who is reading Rolling Stone magazine interviews with female rock stars as research for his novel. “I figured what she was really after was fame. She wanted to make a name, to burst on the scene somehow. She just seemed to be so fierce about leaving her mark in some way.”

Not much else is known about Hart, Thorstad said.

“The facts that are known about her are perfect for fictional treatment, and what makes it even better is that so little is known.”