1930 edition |
His first flaw is a nearly fatal blind spot in his choice
of friends. The second is his unshaken belief in his superiority to all other
men. His becomes a soul-purging lesson in humility and brotherly love.
Plot. Forget the
plot of the movie. At nearest, Destry Rides Again (1939) is a sequel
to Brand’s novel, with James Stewart as a lawman who has given up the use of a
gun. The idea may have been sparked by the final sentence of the novel:
But, as Ding Slater said, the whole county should
have been present, because it meant the end of the old days and the beginning
of a new regime in Wham, for Harrison Destry had put away his Colt.
There’s no evidence that the screenwriters had read any of
the preceding pages.
2009 edition |
Character. Max
Brand’s Destry is a man that other men live in fear of. He is tougher and
stronger and faster with a gun, and he knows it. When a train is robbed of
$72,000, the crime is wrongly pinned on him, and a jury of his peers, tired of
his bullying, happily finds him guilty.
Released after serving six years of a ten-year sentence,
Destry determines to take vengeance on each of the 12 men who put him away. Two he kills in self-defense, and the rest live in terror or flee for their lives.
Meanwhile, he is unaware that the true villain is a man he believes to be his
best friend, Chet Bent.
By the end of the novel, only four jurymen are left, but
Destry has learned the error of trusting the murderous Bent. A boy, Willie
Thornton, has been witness to Bent’s skullduggery and gets word of it to
Destry, who then confronts the villain. The final chapters are a revelation of
self-knowledge that throws Destry into an identity crisis. At the end, marriage
to a long-time sweetheart marks the start of a whole new life.
1959 edition |
The pleasure in a well-told western is in the gifts of the
storyteller. Brand is just so good at what he does. Writers who attempt to
imitate him have picked a master of the genre to learn from. But matching him
requires a mix of intelligence, inventiveness, sentiment, risking-taking, and a
sense of humor that even a competent writer can fall short of achieving. A
Brand novel is not just about plot.
To pick just one of many examples, I was struck by this
riff on the death of a man who had attempted to bushwhack Destry:
Only the living blood remained to tell of him,
dripping down into the silence of the old shack, drop by drop, softly
spattering, like footsteps wonderfully light and wonderfully clear. Hank
Cleeves was ended, and his long fingers and his hairy hands would never again
do wonders with hammer and chisel, with saw, and wrench. The boys would no
longer stand around and admire the mechanic. They would no longer yearn to grow
up to such a man. The chips would no longer fly, or the nails sink home for
Hank Cleeves, nor the rafters ring under his hammer.
1974 edition |
The novel is also about hero worship. In the character of the
boy Willie Thornton, it presents an exaggerated version of readers who revere
their western heroes as superhuman and without fault. Boys, of course, need
role models, but what Billie admires in Destry—his invincibility—is open to
question.
Brand’s experiments thinking out of the box don’t always
work. But there’s hardly a false note in this novel. He gets you suspending
disbelief in ways you don’t expect. His stock characters are often pushing
themselves into three dimensions. In the case of Destry himself, we get a
basically decent and nonviolent man who does not realize he has also bullied
others all his life.
1943 edition |
Destry Rides Again has been frequently reprinted and must be one of Brand’s most popular titles. Amazon lists a printing history covering 55 editions and formats, and it remains in print today. It is currently available in paper, audio, and ebook formats at amazon, Barnes&Noble, Powell’s Books, and AbeBooks. For more of Friday’s Forgotten Books, click on over to Patti Abbot’s blog.
Further reading:
BITS reviews of other Max Brand novels:
Coming up: Glossary of frontier fiction
I have almost all of the Max Brand issues of WESTERN STORY and I see that I read this novel a long time ago. It originally appeared in 1930 as a serial under the title, TWELVE PEERS.
ReplyDeleteI've seen all three of the film adaptations and enjoyed them all:
1932--Tom Mix
1939--James Stewart
1954--Audie Murphy
I've had a love/hate affair going on now for 50 years with Max Brand. I guess it shouldn't surprise me that I find his work either good, mediocre, or poor, since he wrote his novels at an incredible speed. Just when I'm ready to give up on him, I read one of his novels that I think was well done.
I used to know over a dozen old time Max Brand collectors who would bind the pulps and rave about the hardcovers, etc. Now they are almost all dead except for a couple pals feebly still gathering old issues of WESTERN STORY and ARGOSY.
I enjoy finding the good ones and don't give too much thought to the rest. I'd like to see the Tom Mix version of the story.
DeleteThank you for this discerning review of a fine novel. Frederick Faust, Max Brand, died of a shrapnel wound in Italy in 1944. He was a war correspondent, following the troops, even deep into middle age.
ReplyDeleteI believe he had been living in Europe and would have had good reason to take the war personally. I would be interested in reading his dispatches from the front.
DeleteTom Mix Died for my Sins and I know it. Always knew it because I start the morning with Hot Ralston. The breakfast cereal that can't be beat.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Ron, for this review. I read the book long ago and forgot about it. I'll look it up again and read it.
ReplyDeleteFar from spoiling my desire to read the book, your review has caused me to want to read it. It sounds like a much better novel than I remembered.
Thanks for dropping by, Carol. There was a time when I may not have liked this novel as much, but one learns to appreciate the magic that some writers manage to create with the conventions.
DeleteRon, I've not noticed spoilers in your reviews. There are so many diverse elements in a western novel that one cannot really cover it all in the space of a few paragraphs. I find it a challenge to review a western, or even write about it. The "twists and turns," as you note, are many. I have not read a Max Brand novel in a long time and I feel like like reading some now. I have a few of his used paperbacks. It's interesting how fairly common the words "Rides Again" and even "Rides Alone" are in western titles.
ReplyDeleteStory elements in western fiction are often so similar. It's the way the story is told that makes it enjoyable. And titles are funny. They rarely reflect the content of a western novel, though in this case, it's actually a good fit.
DeleteNicely put. Thanks. A Brand story often has several surprises. Breaking with convention is one way of doing that.
ReplyDelete