No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy

McCarthy does Elmore Leonard

Few American authors garnered as much critical acclaim over the last half century as Cormac McCarthy (1933–2023). He published his first novel in 1965, but it wasn’t until about 30 years later that he achieved any commercial success. I rarely quote Wikipedia, but this was too good to pass up: “As of 1991, none of McCarthy’s novels had sold more than 5,000 hardcover copies, and for most of his career, he did not even have an agent.” He hit it big in 1992 with All the Pretty Horses and has since become a household name. Not only the appeal, but the style of his work seemed to get more commercial in his latter years. He started out as the new William Faulkner, but by the time he died, it seems he had discovered an affinity for pulp fiction. McCarthy’s novel No Country for Old Men was published in 1992. The film version, made 15 years later, won the Oscar for Best Picture. This book is a crime novel, similar in style and subject matter to Elmore Leonard’s work, but as he did before with Blood Meridian, McCarthy instills this gritty, violent story with the deep thoughts of highbrow literature.

In the borderlands of Southern Texas, Llewelyn Moss is out hunting antelope when he spots a group of trucks parked out in the middle of nowhere. Upon closer inspection, he finds the site littered with dead bodies. In an apparent drug deal gone bad, it seems that both sides have massacred each other. As is often the case in such scenes, there’s a briefcase full of money on site. Moss absconds with what he estimates to be 2.4 million dollars. The drug cartel naturally wants its money back, so it sends men after Moss. Among those hunting him down is a mystery man named Anton Chigurh, a cold-blooded assassin who uses an unusual weapon to make his kills, though he’s pretty good with a shotgun as well. One way to get to Moss is through his wife, so she has to go on the run as well. Ed Tom Bell, the local sheriff, considers it is duty to serve and protect the citizens of his county, including Mr. and Mrs. Moss. He sets out investigating the case, hoping to catch up with Moss before the killers find him.

Much of the plot takes place in motel rooms and highway diners on Texas desert roads, where gunfights frequently ensue. There are two aspects of the book that elevate this novel from a genre thriller to a great work of American literature. First is the character of Chigurh, a force of nature when it comes to dealing death, but also a philosopher when it comes to dealing dialogue. Second are the monologues of Ed Tom Bell that are interspersed in italics throughout the primary third-person narrative. These monologues alone could constitute a book worthy of a Pulitzer. Bell contemplates his mortality, old age, marriage, his regrets as a law enforcement officer, a former soldier, and a man, and how the world has changed for the worse on his watch.

Similar to Leonard’s writing, No Country for Old Men is written in curt, choppy prose—sometimes so curt and choppy that it’s a little tough to figure out what’s going on. It reads like an exercise in using as few words as possible. There are no visual or biographical descriptions of the characters, you just have to figure out who they are by what they say. The dialogue is brilliantly written, again calling to mind Leonard, but without so much overt humor. The manner of speech employed by the characters, intelligently rendered in authentically down-home diction, is also reminiscent of Charles Portis’s great Western novel True Grit.

Most literary critics don’t consider No Country for Old Men to be McCarthy at his best because it doesn’t have the Faulknerian profundity of his earlier novels. For that same reason, it may be his most accessible book to an audience of general readers raised on crime films and Westerns. This is definitely not a conventional thriller, but I was riveted to every page. I’ve liked McCarthy’s books in the past, and I like Leonard, so to me this novel was the best of both worlds.

Forty Lashes Less One by Elmore Leonard

Smart and suspenseful Western prison thriller

Forty Lashes Less One, published in 1972, is a novel by American author Elmore Leonard. Nowadays he’s best known for his crime fiction, which has spawned many recent film adaptations, but in the early days of his career, Westerns were Leonard’s bread and butter. Forty Lashes Less One is included in the Library of America’s volume Elmore Leonard: Westerns, but it’s really only a Western because it takes place in Arizona. Yeah, it’s got some horses, but it’s got some motor cars too. This novel is really a prison drama—a thriller with comedic elements, more Cool Hand Luke than Butch & Sundance. The title Forty Lashes Less One is taken from a Bible quote and is in no way a literal indication of happenings in the story.

The novel is set in 1909 at Yuma Territorial Prison, a penitentiary on the verge of closing. A new prison is being built in Florence, Arizona, and when it’s completed, the prisoners will be moved to the new facility. While the old prison is still functioning, however, a Mr. Manly has been appointed acting warden at Yuma. Manley has no prior experience in the penal system; his background is in Christian ministry. Contrary to the fictional stereotype of prison wardens as sadistic dictators, Manly is depicted as lenient, benevolent, and naive. He sometimes calls to mind Father Mulcahy from M*A*S*H.

As the novel opens, prisoner Harold Jackson arrives at the Yuma prison, having been transferred from Ft. Leavenworth. Jackson is the only Black prisoner at Yuma, and he is singled out for abuse by some of the meaner guards and prisoners, led by Yuma’s resident alpha convict Frank Shelby. Raymond San Carlos, an Apache-Mexican prisoner, is sent by Shelby to pick a fight with Jackson, and the two prisoners of color soon develop an animosity for one another. Warden Manly, however, takes a special interest in these two prisoners and singles them out for his own private motivational ministry. As Jackson and San Carlos are repeatedly thrust together into work assignments and solitary confinement, they develop a friendship and begin to realize that they don’t have to play by Shelby’s rules, nor Manly’s.

I have expressed admiration for Leonard’s Westerns before, and Forty Lashes Less One is every bit as good as Hombre, Valdez Is Coming, and Last Stand at Sabre River. I’m not even a habitual fan of the Western genre, but what a run of novels! Leonard’s prose is about as perfect as it gets. Not a word is wasted. Every sentence develops the characters or propels the story forward. Every line of dialogue is sharp, smart, and often quite funny. There are some ridiculous elements to this story, but Leonard manages to make them come across as realistic, yet without denying their ridiculousness. This ain’t your everyday prison Western. It’s quirky but not silly, and it’s an entertaining and exciting ride.

Quentin Tarantino purchased the rights to Forty Lashes Less One back in the 1990s, but he never made a movie from it, and he probably never will. That’s a shame, because a film adapted from this novel surely would have been better than The Hateful Eight. The well-drawn characters and engrossing plot of this novel are ripe for a cinematic adaptation and would yield some great roles for its cast of actors. Regardless of whether that will ever come to fruition, this book is a great read, whether you’re a fan of Westerns or not.

Hombre by Elmore Leonard

A riveting classic Western

Elmore Leonard is famous for his crime novels, many of which have been adapted into popular films in recent decades, but back in the 1960s and early ‘70s Leonard was known for his Westerns. Leonard’s fifth novel Hombre, published in 1961, is likely his best-known Western, due largely to the 1967 film adaptation starring Paul Newman, one of the best American-made Western movies of the 1960s—a decade that was full of great Westerns. The film Hombre changes some of the characters’ names and relationships, but the overall story is very faithful to the novel. Just as the movie is one of the all-time classics in the genre of Western film, Leonard’s novel is an outstanding work that holds a similar position in the Western genre of literature. Hombre the novel is riveting from start to finish.

For various reasons too complicated to explain here, a half dozen folks are riding in a stagecoach headed South towards Bisbee, Arizona. Among them is John Russell, whom some call by the nickname of Hombre. Russell is three-quarters White, one-quarter Mexican. As a child, he was abducted by Apaches and lived with them for several years, becoming accustomed to their way of life. As a young man, he reentered White society, but many of the townspeople still consider him an “Indian,” which, among most Whites in those days, was not a compliment.

When the passengers in the stagecoach find out about Russell’s Apache background, they decide they don’t want him riding in their presence anymore, so he is asked to sit outside with the driver. When the stagecoach encounters trouble, however (as stagecoaches often do in Western stories), and lives are in danger, to whom do they turn to save their bacon and guide them to safety? Russell, of course; he being the most capable man in the party. Russell hasn’t forgotten, however, the insult and ill treatment from his fellow passengers, and it’s unclear how much he’s willing to help them. As for the trouble encountered by the stagecoach, that’s better left unspoiled. The danger is multiplied, however, by the fact that this party is in the middle of the Arizona desert, and water is scarce.

Hombre is a revisionist Western, in that it takes a nontraditional approach to heroism and a more honest look at the status of Native Americans and Mexicans in American society than you’re likely to find in an old John Wayne movie of the 1940s or ‘50s. Although there is still a touch of Wild West romanticism to this story, for the most part Leonard’s novel is very realistic. There are no white-hatted saints among this cast of characters, and no one performs any heroic feats of gunplay that are outside the realm of reason. Unlike many Westerns of the 1960s, Leonard chooses not to ramp up the violence. In fact, the objective of the characters in this book seems to be to fire as few shots as possible and make them count. The plot is a cat-and-mouse game between Russell and his adversaries. Everyone’s actions and reactions are realistic and ring true to the natures of the individual characters. My eyes were glued to the page as I couldn’t wait to see what would happen next. As is often the case in Leonard’s books, the dialogue is pitch-perfect—clever and sharp without being ostentatiously so, and with a slight touch of humor that doesn’t belie the peril of the situation.

I’m not a habitual reader of Westerns, but I love Leonard’s work in this genre. Hombre is one of the best Westerns I’ve ever read, up there with Charles Portis’s True Grit. Leonard’s novels Valdez is Coming and Last Stand at Saber River are also top-notch entries in this genre.

Last Stand at Saber River by Elmore Leonard

Another riveting Western in the classic Leonard style

Nobody writes a Western like Elmore Leonard! Though better known nowadays for his crime novels and their movie and TV adaptations (Get Shorty, Out of Sight, Justified), Leonard started his career as a writer of Westerns and in my opinion is one of the best that ever worked in the genre. Western novels often venture into corny territory, but not so with Leonard’s books. Last Stand at Saber River was originally published in 1956, but it reads like a Western movie of the 1970s that might have starred Clint Eastwood or Lee Marvin. It was not adapted into film, however, until 1997, when it was released as a made-for-TV production starring Tom Selleck.

After years of fighting for the Confederacy on Civil War battlegrounds out East, Rancher Paul Cable returns to his home in Arizona with his wife and three small children. Upon reaching their small community in the Saber River Valley, Cable’s first stop is the local general store. There he finds his old friend the storekeeper has since passed away, to be replaced by a surly one-armed character named Janroe. This mysterious new neighbor informs the Cables that their homestead is presently occupied by the Kidston brothers, former acquaintances from before the war. Undaunted, Cable ventures out to the old homestead to inform the Kidstons that its rightful owners have returned home. The Kidstons, however, refuse to leave, asserting that Cable lost any rights to the land when he went off to fight for the Confederacy. (By this time, Arizona was controlled by the Union.) Though Saber River may be a long way from the Civil War battlefronts, heated animosity still exists between Union and Confederate sympathizers. With no law to aid him in reclaiming and defending his home, Cable takes matters into his own hands, but not without violent resistance.

What is great about Leonard’s Westerns is his no-nonsense realism. While he doesn’t turn his back entirely on the mythic aspects of Wild West lore, the characters in Leonard’s stories act like real people. There are no cut-and-dried saints and sinners here. Everyone has shades of gray in their moral code and believable motivations behind their behavior. The action scenes are riveting because they are logically constructed within the bounds of possibility. Leonard moves his gunslingers around like pieces on a chessboard, allowing the reader to imagine himself caught in the perilous situation described. The victor of these conflicts is not a superhero capable of remarkable feats with a gun but rather the one who manages to logically outsmart his opponent. Because these are not black-and-white, good-versus-evil shootouts, the danger feels real. Leonard avoids typical Western clichés to deliver a plot that is unpredictable and immensely compelling.

When Leonard originally started publishing short stories in Western pulp magazines, his early entries were more in the traditional realm of folkloric cowboy tales, as seen in The Complete Western Stories of Elmore Leonard. His storytelling evolved over time, as did literature and film as a whole, to become darker, grittier, and more daring. Last Stand at Saber River is an example of Leonard’s mature, idiosyncratic style, yet it still falls a little short of the hard-boiled intensity of 1970’s Valdez Is Coming. Nevertheless, if you are looking for a great Western read, it’s a safe bet that any of Leonard’s Western novels from 1953 to 1972 will fill the bill.

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre by B. Traven

Riveting and realistic adventure novel

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is the second novel by B. Traven, a German author who lived for years in Mexico, where most of his fiction is set. The novel was first published in German in 1927, then published in English translation in 1935. This is by far Traven’s most famous book, due largely to the 1949 film adaptation, which won three Academy Awards. The movie is quite faithful to Traven’s novel, so if you’ve already seen that film, don’t expect any plot surprises here. Nevertheless, the book is every bit as riveting as the movie, thanks to Traven’s skillful and suspenseful writing. Even though the novel was published over two decades before the film adaptation, Traven’s dialogue remarkably reads as if it were written for Humphrey Bogart and Walter Huston. If you haven’t seen the movie, how lucky you are that you get to experience this story for the first time in its original form.

The story opens in Tampico on the Gulf Coast. Traven introduces us to the white underbelly of this Mexican city—an assortment of unemployed gringo drifters who wander from town to town, looking for work with oil companies, mining companies, and other resource extraction industries (almost all of which, in the 1920s, would have been owned by American and European corporations). Two such drifters, Dobbs and Curtin, meet while looking for work. When spending the night in a fleabag flophouse, they meet an old prospector named Howard who regales them with stories of a lost gold mine. Sick of the grind of dead-end short term jobs of back-breaking labor for low pay, Dobbs and Curtin decide they want to try their hand at gold-hunting, and they invite Howard to be their partner and mentor. The three venture into the mountains of the Sierra Madre where they have some luck finding a promising dig site. As Howard points out, however, finding the gold is easier than getting it out of the ground and carrying it somewhere safe.

Adventure novels were ubiquitous in the early 20th century, but The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is one of the few that rises to the level of great literature. The story is very realistic and deliberately unromanticized. Only in three flashback stories-within-the-story does the narrative venture into something approaching folklore and legend. Traven’s depiction of Mexico bears the mark of someone who has been there and lived this drifter’s life. This is no tourist’s outsider vision of the romantic tropics. The Mexicans in the book are illustrated with the same perspicacity as the leading trio of American characters. Going back to Jack London and beyond, so many thousands of stories have been written about what gold does to a man’s mind and morals that the premise has become cliché. None of those stories, however, are as psychologically authentic as what Traven presents here. His characters think and behave like real flawed human beings, not storybook heroes and villains. With his intelligent insights into human nature and his realistic depiction of life-and-death drama, Traven’s novel reads as if it could have been written by one of the great naturalist novelists like Frank Norris or Emile Zola.

Traven often expresses socialistic, anarchistic, and atheistic views in his writings. Here such ideas are toned down a bit from the more overt statements and satire in his debut novel The Cotton-Pickers. Nevertheless, Traven still manages to work some anti-capitalist, anti-church, and anti-imperialist sentiments into The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. You won’t find much of that expressed in the Bogart film, which is another good reason to read Traven’s original text. Judging by what I’ve read in this novel and in The Cotton-Pickers, Traven is a writer who was way ahead of his time, both in terms of the blunt frothrightness of his realism and the fearlessness with which he deviates from the conservative mainstream literature of his time. Both of Traven’s first two novels are excellent, and I look forward to following his literary career further.
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True Grit by Charles Portis

A Western masterpiece, even for those who don’t like Westerns

Charles Portis’s novel True Grit was first published in 1968. The famous film adaptation starring John Wayne was released the following year. While the film may have made Portis’s novel a household name, it may also have discouraged potential readers who might think of the book as merely “that John Wayne movie.” In fact, the True Grit novel has less in common with the John Wayne film than it does with the Coen Brothers’ adaptation of 2010. That later film really captures some of Portis’s delightful sense of humor, which permeates this entire novel. True Grit may be a Western, but one doesn’t have to be a habitual reader of the Western genre to enjoy it. If there is one Western novel that transcends the genre to appeal to a wider literary audience, it’s this one.

True Grit is narrated by Mattie Ross, an elderly woman looking back on an adventure from her youth. At the age of 14, Mattie’s father is murdered by a no-good drunk named Tom Chaney. From her Arkansas farm she ventures to the city of Fort Smith to claim her father’s body. While there, she decides to engage a marshal to help her track down Chaney and bring him to justice. She deliberately chooses the marshal with a reputation for violence and “grit”: Rooster Cogburn, an overweight, aged, one-eyed gunslinger. Meanwhile, another lawman named LaBoeuf also shows up in Fort Smith, likewise chasing Chaney on another charge. Hearing that Chaney has fallen in with the outlaw gang of Lucky Ned Pepper, Cogburn and LaBoeuf decide to team up and hunt Chaney together. What they didn’t bargain for, however, is that Mattie Ross insists on coming along on their manhunt, and won’t take no for an answer.

The strength of this novel rests on Mattie Ross’s voice, which Portis renders exquisitely. The narration reads as if it were penned in the 1870s but imbued with an underlying humor that’s still funny today. Through Mattie’s speech, Portis manages the impressive feat of capturing both the spunky teenage girl and the proud elderly spinster. The other characters in the book, from the major players of Cogburn, LaBoeuf, and Pepper, on down to the briefest bit parts, are portrayed equally well, with idiosyncratic quirks and subtle nuances of personality that give multiple dimensions to each role. The novel is probably about 90 percent dialogue, so the story unfolds through the conversations of these characters in their unique voices that combine period realism with contemporary savvy. The characters aren’t always intelligent, in fact many of them are not, but Portis’s writing always is. The dialogue is so natural, smoothly flowing, and downright interesting that once you get into it, you just don’t want to put the book down.

True Grit is more than just a great Western. It is a great work of American literature that deserves to be more widely read. It definitely does not deserve to be confined to a genre-ghetto of mass-market Western paperbacks. Given its portrayal of a strong and intelligent teenage girl, this book should be assigned reading in American high school English courses. True Grit not only provides a good role model for young readers, but it is an intelligent, adult narrative that, unlike many books in the English-class canon, students would actually enjoy reading. And even if you normally don’t like Westerns, so will you.
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The Country Beyond by James Oliver Curwood

A romance of the Northern forests, heavy on the sap

James Oliver Curwood is Michigan’s answer to Jack London. Both authors were famous for their wilderness adventures, which frequently take place in the colder regions of the North. Curwood’s novels are often set in the Canadian wilds north of Michigan, while London focused on Canada north of his native California. Both authors were also dog lovers and featured canine protagonists in their fiction. Curwood’s novel The Country Beyond, published in 1922, stars Peter, a pooch who’s half Airedale terrier, half Mackenzie hound. About half the book is narrated in the third person through the eyes of the dog, while the other half is related from the perspective of the human characters.

North of Lake Superior lies an idyllic patch of wilderness called Cragg’s Ridge. Life is not paradise for all who live there, however. There an orphaned 16-year-old girl named Nada lives with her two reluctant guardians who treat her as if she were an indentured servant. Jed Hawkins, her alcoholic foster dad, is particularly abusive and frequently strikes Nada and his wife. He has plans to soon sell Nada to a local laborer, presumably (it’s implied) as a sex slave. Nada has two bright lights in her life. One is her dog Peter. The other is her acquaintance with Jolly Roger McKay, a stranger who recently wandered into the vicinity of Cragg’s Ridge to occupy a neighboring cabin. Young Nada is in love with Jolly Roger, and the feeling seems to be mutual, though as yet unconfirmed. Hawkins injures Peter in a fit of rage, and Nada rushes the dog to Jolly Roger’s cabin. When Roger finds out how Nada’s been treated by Jed Hawkins, he vows to free her from her foster father’s clutches. Jolly Roger would love to make Nada his wife, but he is an outlaw, hiding from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Soon he will once again be on the run from the law, and the hard life of a fugitive is no life for a delicate young lady.

There’s a lot wrong with this book. Jolly Roger’s age is never specified, but he’s clearly a grown man romancing a teenager. He also seems to have the hots for an Indian maiden, but Curwood seems to imply that that’s OK because she’s an Indian and therefore no competition for the white bride. The plot hinges on a fair amount of Native American mysticism that just feels like a lot of unnecessary mumbo-jumbo. There are long stretches of the book where nothing much happens. A lot of words are wasted on Jolly Roger’s (and thus Curwood’s) thoughts on love and womanhood. Nada is depicted as so simple and innocent that she almost seems mentally ill, and her whole purpose in life and in the story is to just be totally submissive to Jolly Roger. There’s never any disagreement between the two lovers that might have made the story more interesting.

Even more annoying is the fact that there’s no good reason for these two lovers to be separated for most of the book other than sheer prudery. If the two went on the lam together, they’d have to sleep in close proximity to one another without a chaperone. God forbid. The whole book feels as if it is constricted by Victorian-era mores. Jack London would have simply disregarded such puritanical conventions, but Curwood’s writing is much more genteel. The reader can tell early on that law and order must prevail in Curwood’s world, which makes the ending a predictable foregone conclusion. A wilderness adventure should have an edge to it, a sense of danger, of which this novel has very little. The scariest scene in the book is the dog’s fight with an owl.

Having read a handful of Curwood’s books, I find his writing hit and miss. I preferred his novels The Alaskan and The Gold Hunters, but neither was great. For another Michiganian writer of wilderness adventures, check out the works of Stewart Edward White. The Blazed Trail is one of his better efforts.
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Buckets of Diamonds and Other Stories: The Complete Short Fiction of Clifford D. Simak, Volume Thirteen

Lucky Thirteen

After making us wait six years since Volume 12 was released, editor David W. Wixon and publisher Open Road Media have finally released volumes 13 and 14 of The Complete Short Fiction of Clifford D. Simak series. During that time, I got tired of waiting for Wixon, so I tracked down and read all of Simak’s remaining sci-fi stories, but it is nice to see the series finally finished, and I am happy to own the complete set of inexpensive ebooks. I read Volume 14 first because it was a Kindle Daily Deal, so I am now wrapping up the series with Volume 13.

Volume 13 collects ten stories by Simak, nine of them science fiction and one a Western. The Western, a novella-length work entitled “The Fighting Doc of Bushwhack Basin,” is one of the longest entries in this volume, but it’s a pretty good one. A town doctor gets tired of patching up gunshot wounds caused by trigger-happy hired guns, so he decides to go after the wealthy rancher who hired them. The dozen-or-so Western stories that Simak published in his career tend to repeat a lot of the same elements, but if you haven’t read one of his Westerns in a while then this is an enjoyably suspenseful adventure.

The main attraction here, however, is the science fiction, and this volume contains at least half a dozen good stories in that vein. Habitual Simak readers will recognize “The Trouble with Ants,” a story that eventually became the penultimate chapter of his novel City. Thousands of years in the future, after mankind has left the Earth, the planet belongs to robots, dogs, and other animals, who barely remember the existence of man. In this installment of the City saga, ants also become a major player in the planet’s future. Like the other stories that went into the making of that classic novel, this is some of Simak’s most visionary and original work.

Volume 13’s title selection, “Buckets of Diamonds,” is like a comedic Twilight Zone episode in which the narrator’s goofy uncle mysteriously comes into possession of great riches. “The Marathon Photograph” entwines elements of mystery, horror, and science fiction into an ingenious story full of intriguing ideas, while “Infiltration” delivers good old-fashioned monster-movie fun. Perhaps the best story in the volume is “. . . And the Truth Shall Make You Free.” In a future in which mankind is just one insignificant inhabitant of a diverse galaxy, an interplanetary team of explorers discovers archaeological evidence of the first humans who left Earth thousands of years earlier. A human member of the team hopes the find will shed light on the glory and purpose of mankind. This story is quintessential Simak, a philosophical reconciling of his interest in futuristic sci-fi and his love of a pastoral Midwestern lifestyle.

“Horrible Example,” “Clerical Error,” and “Shadow of Life” are less successful entries by Simak standards but still pretty good for the genre. It’s hard to find a short story collection where every entry hits the ball out of the park. After having now read all 14 volumes of The Complete Short Fiction of Clifford D. Simak series, however, I can honestly say there isn’t a bad book in the bunch. Volume 13 isn’t the best volume in the series, but if you’re a science fiction fan you really can’t go wrong with purchasing any of these books, especially since they turn up so often as Kindle Daily Deals.

Stories in this collection

Horrible Example

Lobby

The Trouble with Ants

Buckets of Diamonds

The Fighting Doc of Bushwhack Basin

. . . And the Truth Shall Make You Free

Clerical Error

Shadow of Life

Infiltration

The Marathon Photograph

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Epilog and Other Stories: The Complete Short Fiction of Clifford D. Simak, Volume Fourteen

Capstone to an essential series

At long last, Open Road Media has finally released the final two volumes of The Complete Short Fiction of Clifford D. Simak series. The series was designed to encompass fourteen volumes, but editor David W. Wixon has made us wait six years since Volume 12 was released. In the meantime, I got tired of waiting for Wixon, so I tracked down the rest of Simak’s science fiction stories (all the old pulp magazines have been scanned at the Internet Archive). It is nice, however, to finally see the series reach completion, and Wixon includes a western and a war story that I was unable to find. Because Volume 14 was offered as a Kindle daily deal, I read it before Volume 13.

Simak’s best-known novel, entitled City, was assembled from previously published short stories, and those stories have been distributed throughout the volumes of the Complete Short Fiction series. “Epilog” is an afterword to City that Simak wrote decades later and has since been added to subsequent editions of the novel. Taking place tens of thousands of years in the future, “Epilog” reveals the fate of Jenkins, the robot protagonist of City, and is one of the better stories in this collection.

“Rule 18,” a story about an interplanetary football game, won a retrospective Hugo Award 76 years after its original publication. I think it’s one of the less impressive stories in this volume, however, and it contains some unfortunate racial stereotypes. Among the best entries in Volume 14 is “Limiting Factor,” in which explorers discover the remnants of a technological civilization and attempt to reconstruct the details of the extinct alien culture. I generally wouldn’t consider overt comedy to be among Simak’s strengths, but Mr. Meek Plays Polo is a successful humorous effort in an interesting setting. The title character is a bookkeeper turned space tourist who stops for fuel at a Wild Western colony on the ring rocks of Saturn, where he is roped into participating in a “space polo” match. This volume also contains the novelette “The World That Couldn’t Be,” in which an Earthling homesteader on a far-off planet hunts down the alien beast who is eating his crops. The astrozoological aspects of the story allow Simak to propose an alternative theory of evolution that might exist on a distant world.

The western story in this volume, “Smoke Killer,” is fine but nothing special. Same with the World War II air combat tale, “A Bomb for No. 10 Downing,” which is built on an exciting premise but is too brief for much development. It is interesting to see these stories alongside Simak’s science fiction, but the latter genre is clearly where his talents lie.

To be honest, this isn’t one of the better volumes in this fourteen-volume series, but the series as a whole is so good overall that even a disappointing installment is better than most of the sci-fi anthologies out there. While Simak wrote a few excellent novels, the quality of his short stories on average surpasses that of his longer-form fiction. Thanks very much to Wixon and Open Road Media for publishing The Complete Short Fiction of Clifford D. Simak series. It stands as an impressive monument to this sci-fi grand master’s prodigious talent and boundless visionary imagination.

Stories in this collection

Lulu

Smoke Killer

Shadow Show

Epilog

A Bomb for No. 10 Downing

Limiting Factor

Masquerade

The Fence

Rule 18

Mr. Meek Plays Polo

The World That Couldn’t Be

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Valdez is Coming by Elmore Leonard

A near-perfect Western

I am not a frequent reader of Western genre fiction, but in Elmore Leonard’s case I can make an exception. Leonard is best known as a writer of sharp-witted crime fiction, but he got his start writing in the Western genre. His first published works were short stories in Western pulp fiction magazines, and his first novels were Westerns. Valdez is Coming, the eighth of Leonard’s 45 novels, was published in 1970. The following year it was made into a good Western film starring Burt Lancaster in the title role. Whether you’ve seen the film or not, Valdez is Coming is an excellent Western novel and an exciting read.

As the novel opens, a crowd of armed men are gathered before a shack where they have cornered a suspected army deserter and murderer. Powerful rancher Frank Tanner is the driving force behind this makeshift posse, which consists mostly of his hired gunmen. Town constable Roberto “Bob” Valdez arrives on the scene and suggests trying to talk to the suspect before resorting to violence. That plan goes south, however, and the accused man is killed before it is discovered that he wasn’t the killer after all. Present at the scene is the dead man’s wife, an Apache woman visibly pregnant. Valdez wonders what will become of her and her child now that her husband is gone. He feels everyone present is responsible for the wrongful killing of the man, and they should all chip in and pull together $500 to compensate the widow for her loss. Valdez thinks Tanner, the leader of the group, the one who made the accusation in the first place, and the wealthiest landowner around, should set an example by making the biggest contribution. When Valdez presents this idea to Tanner, however, the response is not only negative but brutally violent and demeaning. Valdez, a Mexican American, has never been taken seriously as a lawman by the powerful Whites of the town. Little do they know, however, of his military past as a tracker and hunter of hostile Apaches, a past that has provided him with a particular set of skills that enables him to take revenge upon Tanner and his henchmen, making them pay for their arrogance and brutality.

While revenge stories are a dime a dozen in the Western genre, rarely do they begin with such an original premise nor feature such a unique hero as Valdez. I often find Western novels boring, but once I picked up Valdez is Coming I didn’t want to put it down. The main attraction here is Leonard’s smart and snappy prose. This book is only 160 pages long, but it’s hard to recall a book in which so much is said in so few words. Each word is carefully chosen and appropriately placed in a terse and taut phrasing. There’s no fat to chew in this lean and sinewy narrative. And every line of dialogue is spot-on, with a wry sense of humor bubbling underneath. Leonard’s characters deliver speech that sounds like real conversation, not literary book-talk. The action sequences are nail-bitingly suspenseful and vividly drawn without getting bogged down in the logistics of who rode where and who shot who. Whether he knew a film adaptation was forthcoming or not, Leonard clearly had a cinematic vision when he wrote the novel, as evident from the screenplay quality of its scene staging and plot trajectory.

I had previously read The Complete Western Stories of Elmore Leonard, most of the contents of which were originally published in 1950s magazines. That’s a good collection, but nothing in it is quite in the same league as Valdez is Coming. Now I’d like to read more of Leonard’s early Western novels, like Hombre and Last Stand at Saber River. Judging by Valdez is Coming, if anyone can win me over to this genre of literature, Leonard can.
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The Trail of the Lonesome Pine by John Fox Jr.

Appalachian romance outdated in a bad way

The Trail of the Lonesome Pine bears a title that makes it sound like a Western, but the story takes place in the Appalachian world of coal miners, moonshiners, and hillbilly feuds. Originally published in 1908, the novel by John Fox Jr. is set in a mountainous region on the border between Kentucky and Virginia. John Hale, a college-educated entrepreneur, ventures into this country looking for undiscovered coal beds to exploit into a lucrative career. He discovers his hoped-for mother lode in a secluded hollow called Lonesome Cove. As an outsider, Hale is looked at with suspicion by the region’s inhabitants, but he manages to get involved in the lives of one family in particular. Two local clans, the Tollivers and the Falins, have been engaged in a long-running feud, the kind in which any traveling man might be shot and killed in the woods without warning. As Hale and other speculators begin to develop the mineral resources of the region, the next logical step is the establishment of a boomtown. To protect his investments, Hale founds a police force to maintain law and order in the region, which draws the ire of the locals who resent the “furriners” who have intruded upon their homeland and meddle in their lives.

Just as in any horse opera, West or East of the Mississippi, the dynamics of a feud and the ubiquity of guns offers the potential for some exciting drama and adventure, but Fox never truly realizes the potential for action that the premise allows. All throughout the narrative a showdown between the hero and his nemesis is foreshadowed, but the reader ends up feeling cheated when the confrontation never reaches fruition. It is also difficult to get excited about the commercial side of the story. Unless you’re a geologist or a coal miner, it is hard to understand the plot elements revolving around Hale’s mining enterprises.

Rather than feuding hillbillies or coal riches, however, the bulk of the novel revolves around a romance between Hale and a girl he meets in Lonesome Cove. In this case, “girl” is the appropriate word to use because June Tolliver is literally a schoolgirl when first encountered by Hale. Like some Kentucky backwoods Pygmalion, Hale supervises June’s upbringing, pays for her education, buys her a home, and initiates her education into big-city culture and fashions. All along he intends to marry her, but first he must transform her into a woman worthy of being his wife. In the time and place in which this novel takes place it probably was not unusual for girls to be married at a young age, perhaps even in their early teens. Nowadays, however, what Hale is doing with June would be called “grooming,” and it leaves a bad taste in the reader’s mouth. The hillbillies of Lonesome Cove may not have known any better, but Fox, a Harvard-educated New York journalist should have thought twice before penning what comes across as a pedophilic My Fair Lady sexual fantasy. If Hale and June were closer in age this would just be a dull and corny romance novel, but the repeated referrals to June as a “little girl” are a constant reminder that he is acting as her svengali. On the surface this is an innocent romance in an idyllic woodland setting, which probably explains why this book is regarded in come circles as a beloved classic, but it’s hard to understand how anyone could let this story premise slide in the 21st century.

The basic plot of the book, its local color, and Fox’s descriptions of the natural landscape call to mind a harmless and wistful Western by Zane Grey, but the grooming aspect of the lead couple’s relationship has lain a patina of creepiness over this outdated Appalachian yarn.
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The Open Boat and Other Tales of Adventure by Stephen Crane

One masterpiece in an otherwise mediocre collection

The Open Boat and Other Tales of Adventure, a collection of short stories by Stephen Crane, was published in 1898. The title selection, “The Open Boat,” is one of Crane’s most highly regarded writings and is considered a landmark work in the history of American literary naturalism. The story is based on an actual shipwreck that Crane lived through. Four survivors of a sunken ship are cast about in a small dinghy on stormy seas. The entire story takes place in the small boat as the castaways struggle to reach the beach without being killed by the crashing surf. This is not a glamorous tale of adventure but rather a harrowing disaster story told in deadpan realism with keen psychological authenticity. This excellent work of short fiction combines the bleak, fatalistic action of a Jack London adventure, the suspense of an Alfred Hitchcock thriller, and the linguistic mastery of a Joseph Conrad novel. Almost long enough to qualify as a novella, “The Open Boat” is the lengthiest piece in this collection and clearly the selection with the highest literary merit. It is a must-read for anyone who appreciates modern realist literature.

The seven remaining selections are a mixed bag. Crane, one of the most innovative and influential writers of American realism, took the literary world by storm in the late nineteenth century with his groundbreaking novels Maggie: A Girl of the Streets and The Red Badge of Courage. His fame and critical acclaim can be partly attributed to his status as the bad boy of American literature. He trampled formulaic conventions and genteel propriety in ways that previous American writers feared to tread. When reading the stories in The Open Boat and Other Tales of Adventure, one gets the feeling that Crane felt the need to continually scorn convention and defy expectations in order to maintain his status as an iconoclast. The latter half of the title seems intended to be ironic, since Crane mocks the adventure genre more than he embraces it. Though these tales take place in exotic locales (often in Mexico) and the protagonists are ostensibly manly heroes, Crane never allows himself to succumb to the conventions of the genre or gratify his audience with romance and heroic action. He relates these stories from cynical angles that reveal his heroes’ feet of clay and the absurdity and cowardice that often lingers beneath the deceptive illusion of romance. In a way, it’s kind of a shame. Another groundbreaking American realist, Frank Norris, could embrace the adventure genre without compromising his naturalistic principles, as evidenced by his books Moran of the Lady Letty and The Third Circle. In Crane’s collection, however, one feels the author was unwilling to fully commit to the adventure genre.

This is perfectly exemplified by two dismal stories, “The Wise Men” and “Five White Mice.” Both stories take place in Mexico City, though the reader learns nothing about the setting other than the names of a few streets. All of the characters in these stories are white, except for three Mexicans depicted as thugs in “Five White Mice.” Both stories star a pair of young American men known only as “the Kids” whose sole purpose in life is to drink, carouse, and gamble. In “The Wise Men,” the two ne’er-do-wells bet on a foot race between two of their favorite bartenders. The reader thinks the story might lead to a surprise ending, but no, the race ends as expected and the bets pay off as expected, resulting in a complete waste of time. “Five White Mice” leads up to a tense showdown that promises action but simply fizzles to nothing.

There are better selections in this collection, most notably “One Dash - Horses,” which features a thrilling chase scene. “Death and the Child” is a variation on The Red Badge of Courage set in modern Greece. For the most part, however, the Other Tales in The Open Boat and Other Tales are disappointing fare that doesn’t live up to this author’s stellar potential.

Stories in this collection

The Open Boat

A Man and Some Others

One Dash - Horses

Flanagan and His Short Filibustering Adventures

The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky

The Wise Men: A Detail of American Life in Mexico

Death and the Child

The Five White Mice

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