"Spud Johnson and Laughing Horse" is a portrait of the soul of a generation of artists and writers, the story of the men and women who made New Mexico a center of regional American literature, criticism and visual arts in the 1920s and 30s. Sharyn Udall's lively account of the quirky editor, poet, journalist, diarist and printer Walter Willard "Spud" Johnson focuses especially on brilliant and diverse artists- D. H. Lawrence, Mary Austin, Mabel Dodge Luhan, Witter Bynner, Georgia O'Keeffe and John Marin among them, whom he befriended and published. Together they helped to create a new voice for the Southwest, fusing high art and low, repudiating the derivative cultural tradition of their predecessors, and bringing the Native American and Hispanic cultural heritage to the attention of the American mainstream.
