Musings from Brian J. Noggle

Of course, I’ve seen the film with Alan Ladd as the titular Shane, and I own the The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking album which samples from the same, so when I saw the book, I bought it. It is the short novel (120 pages) upon which the film was based. Like True Grit, the book is told in the first person narrator through the eyes of a child. In this case, it’s the son of the farmers with whom Shane comes to becomes friends.

The book differs from the film in that Shane’s relationship with the husband is more brotherly, and the husband knows that his wife is attracted to Shane. At one point, he gives her a very Hank Reardon sort of “I understand because he’s so much better than I am” speech. I guess they couldn’t develop that sort of relationship in a short movie. Also, I don’t remember the film taking place over the course of a year, but I might be mistaken. Also, the boy does not chase after Shane when he rides off.

Still, an enjoyable read. A lot of people must agree, since the 1983 printing I have is the 65th.

Let’s face it, looking at the cover of this book, a cheap black binding with only the words “Private Edition” underlined in pink cursive, one gets the sense that this might be a certain type of book. When one reads the first line of the first story, “As I fastened my dress–the soft, pretty one of pongee that I made especially for Dad’s arrival…”, one might think, Holy pongee, it is that kind of book!.

But one might then remember that this is a Macfadden Publishing collection from its old True Confessions style magazines. Instead of hardboiled morality plays featuring violence and stoic codes, we get gushy melodramas about how to deal with moral failings of the heart and lovelife. Unfortunately, many of them deal with contrived and rather silly “failings.” In the first, a woman’s hopes of a good marriage to a loving man are almost lost when it’s discovered that his first wife, presumed dead, is alive, so the protagonist is not really his wife. She shuns the husband then, fearing a scandal. Or another woman calls off a marriage and enters a life of charitable service–because her mother was a shoplifter!

The book isn’t a very good read, and it is most interesting as a historical document possibly offering insight into the mind of a young woman in the years after the war. These were her concerns, these were the parables to show her how not to get into trouble and how to find redemption if she got into trouble. Or at least these were the concerns peddled to her by Macfadden Publishing. Given that it made Macfadden himself rich, he must have touched someone and convinced them to buy these stories.

This is a shorter 87th Precinct novel from the 1970s, before hardback bloat demanded every book be 300 pages. A blind man is murdered, and then his blind wife is murdered and the apartment tossed. Is someone murdering blind people, or were they targeted specifically? That’s the question for Carella and the gang.

Funny, the book deals with veterans back from the War (Vietnam) and shenanigans in the military, but in 1977, McBain didn’t feel the need to foam about LBJ, Nixon, or Carter. Was George W. Bush just that evil that McBain couldn’t refrain in later books? It’s fortunate he did, otherwise he would not have sold so well nor built a legacy which makes his later political rhapsody tolerable.

I might count this as a historical novel. Well, a pulp novel from history. The cover says Tarzan is perhaps the most famous character this extraordinary writer ever created, but I know Burroughs mostly for John Carter, the Warlord of Mars. Tarzan has gotten quite the screen time, though, hasn’t he? I remember the television program that KPLR ran on Saturday mornings before its movie triple feature. Remember when independent stations ran those?

At any rate, this book follows the plight of Tarzan’s parents, the Lord and Lady Greystoke, marooned on the African coast, the raising of Tarzan, his growth and eventual ascendance among the apes, and the arrival of other maroonees at the same spot. There, Tarzan saves Jane, and the hearty French (!) rescue Jane and her family. Tarzan then, in the final bit of the book, goes to civilization and ultimately Wisconsin (!) to save Jane again, but ultimately lets her wed his cousin who has assumed the title Lord Greystoke.

The end bit runs very quickly (quicker since it’s missing 6 pages of the climax). Taking Tarzan out of the jungle ultimately doesn’t work, but I bet others in the series will return him to the wild. I bought a number of them at a recent book fair and left some of them unpacked, so I imagine I’ll read it in the next month.

All the cool kids, and by that I mean Kim du Toit (PBUH), love the Flashman novels. So when I lit upon one for a couple bits at a book fair, I bit. You know if you’ve been reading here any length of time (and don’t skip the book reports) that I’ve been reading historical novels, particularly the Sharpe series, so I have to draw a quick contrast between the two. Unfortunately, this book and probably series might fall short.

In this book, a ne’er-do-well aristocratic prodigal son gets thrown out of school (apparently, the books take off of a bully and boor from another British series of schoolboy books), gets his colors, and ends up getting sent to India and Afghanistan as an officer. He gets reknown and reputation for surviving massacres simply because he runs away, lies, and does disreputable things. I kept hoping for some sort of redemptive moment, but at the ending of the book, he finds his wife has been cheating on him while he was away and accepts it because her family has become his family’s meal ticket.

I guess the books were written at different times, which might explain the differences. Fraser’s book came at a time when it was radical to puncture the sense of pride Britain had in its empire; Sharpe’s books, where Sharpe starts out sort of a Flashman sort but with comraderie, kinship, and some patriotism, actually prop up the traditional notions instead of knock them down. Hence, I enjoy the Sharpe books better for the thematic treatment.

I didn’t enjoy this book, ultimately, and I’m not going looking for another in the series. To say I won’t read one, though, might be going a bit far. Perhaps I’m optimistic enough to hope for some redemption somewhere.