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Jeffrey Keeten

August 08 2014

”A man has to learn to forgive himself,” Amos said, his voice unnaturally gentle….”Or he can’t stand to live. It so happens we be Texans. We took a reachin’ holt, way far out, past where any man has right or reason to hold on. Or it we didn’t, our folks did, so we can’t leave off, without giving up that they were fools, wasting their lives, and washed in the way they died.” <a href="http://s1183.photobucket.com/user/jkeeten/media/19aa7423-60c3-4de5-9e3e-1525d7ecfcf7_zps2d794f9f.jpg.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener"> <img src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/hostedimages/1407948699i/10786676.jpg" alt=" photo 19aa7423-60c3-4de5-9e3e-1525d7ecfcf7_zps2d794f9f.jpg" class="gr-hostedUserImg" loading="lazy"> </a> The moment of realization. Amos Edwards and Marty Pauley are helping to retrieve some cattle that have been stolen from a neighboring homestead when they discover that it was a feint by the Comanches to pull as many guns away from the settlements as possible. They are too far away to do much but watch helplessly as plumes of smoke ascend into the sky confirming their worst fears. When Amos comes to the homestead he is calling for his sister-in-law Martha not his brother Henry. His secret, that isn’t so secret, is that he carried a torch for Martha and she carried a torch for him so elegantly portrayed in the movie with a scene showing her brushing his coat lovingly with her hand. I know a lot more people have seen the truly magnificent movie made of The Searchers than have read the book, for the movie they changed the name of Amos to Ethan. The scene continues with Ethan/Amos about to kiss Martha. You can see that he wants to kiss her lips and she would let him, but with willpower he kisses her forehead instead. The sexual tension crackles. With what happens, I’m sure he wished he’d folded her in his arms and locked onto her lips for all he was worth. <a href="http://s1183.photobucket.com/user/jkeeten/media/Searchers-Coat_zpsaf9ba5f5.jpg.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener"> <img src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/hostedimages/1407948905i/10786690.jpg" alt=" photo Searchers-Coat_zpsaf9ba5f5.jpg" class="gr-hostedUserImg" loading="lazy"> </a> Martha, played by Dorothy Jordan, with Ethan's coat. In the movie John Wayne comes up on the homestead on fire. He finds Martha’s dress in tatters outside. He goes inside to look for her. He comes back out a shattered man. He refuses to let Marty go into the burning building. In fact he slugs him to keep him out because he doesn’t want to go back in there either. I remember the chills that went up my spine when I first saw the movie and thinking to myself if John Wayne couldn’t handle it I don’t want to see it. All the brutality is brilliantly kept off screen throughout the whole movie leaving our own active imaginations to conjure the scenes for ourselves. This begins an epic search for Debbie Edwards, the young girl taken by the Comanches. It spans many years and many miles as Amos and his not so welcome companion, Marty, track down every band of Comanches hoping to find her so they can work out a trade or if need be take her back by force. Well, that is Marty’s plan. Once she’s been with “bucks” Edwards believes the only decent thing to do is kill her. Marty knows he might have to stand between Amos and Debbie when the time comes. Marty is an orphan that the Edwards raised after his parents were killed. He thinks of himself as part of the family, but Amos sets him straight. ”Debbie’s my brother’s young’n,” Amos said. “She’s my flesh and blood--not yours. Better you leave these things to the people concerned with ‘em, boy. Debbie’s no kin to you at all.” “I--I always felt like she was my kin.” “Well, she ain’t.” “Our--I mean, her --her folks took me in off the ground. I’d be dead but for them. They even--” “That don’t make ‘em any kin.” “All right. I ain’t got no kin. Never said I had. I’m going to keep on looking, that’s all.” <a href="http://s1183.photobucket.com/user/jkeeten/media/e24736b8-b5c5-4580-98b1-306b1f845fc0_zpsaa5d05a9.jpg.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener"> <img src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/hostedimages/1407948699i/10786677.jpg" alt=" photo e24736b8-b5c5-4580-98b1-306b1f845fc0_zpsaa5d05a9.jpg" class="gr-hostedUserImg" loading="lazy"> </a> Personally, I don’t want anyone looking at me that way. *shiver* Amos is a hard son-of-a-bitch. Just like with the movie you move from one moment to wanting to kick his rear end up into his neck to the next moment wanting to give him a hug. The conflict between Amos and Marty continues for the entire book between divergent personal philosophies and even who has the right to be on this crusade. ”Like most prairie men, they had great belief in their abilities, but a total faith in their bad luck.” What really comes across in the book is the legitimacy of the writer. The dialogue, the descriptions of the way of life, and the depictions of the scenery are magnificently portrayed. ”Now came the first of the snow, a thin lacing of ice needles, heard and felt before they could be seen. The ice particles were traveling horizontally, parallel to the ground, with an enormous velocity. They made a sharp whispering against the leather, drove deep into cloth, and filled the air with hissing. This thin bombardment swiftly increased, coming in puffs and clouds, then in a rushing stream. And at the same time the wind increased…It tore at them, snatching their breaths from their mouths, and its gusts buffeted their backs as solidly as thrown sacks of grain…” <a href="http://s1183.photobucket.com/user/jkeeten/media/233ea77c-053a-44f0-bd63-559acec93d7e_zpsd1952abf.png.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener"> <img src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/hostedimages/1407948699i/10786678.png" alt=" photo 233ea77c-053a-44f0-bd63-559acec93d7e_zpsd1952abf.png" class="gr-hostedUserImg" loading="lazy"> </a> John Ford, using VistaVision, captured some of the most stunning scenes of Monument Valley I’ve ever seen. In fact the scenes are the most amazing shots I’ve ever seen of the epic scope of nature in any movie. A lot of the dialogue in the movie is lifted from the book. There is, of course, more in the book. The search is described in more detail than what Ford had time for on film. For those purists out there you will either not be unhappy with the book or the movie because they do part ways, in particular with the endings. Truly, you have to treat them as two separate entities. Both contribute, adding additional layers, to the overall story. <a href="http://s1183.photobucket.com/user/jkeeten/media/JohnWayne_zpscf820da9.jpg.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener"> <img src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/hostedimages/1407948699i/10786679.jpg" alt=" photo JohnWayne_zpscf820da9.jpg" class="gr-hostedUserImg" loading="lazy"> </a> Wonderful framing of John Wayne in the doorway at the end of the movie. He is putting his hand on his elbow as a tribute to Harry Carey Sr. who always held his arm that way. John Wayne’s performance in The Searchers is truly a work of art. For those that think the man can’t act watch this movie. His face betrays loathing, simmering anger, and determination like I’ve never seen him do before. He should have won an Oscar for this role, certainly at least a nomination, but the film was entirely ignored by the Academy receiving zero nominations. It resides high on every serious list of greatest movies ever made. I would have to agree. The book that inspired the movie was well worth my time. It added to my enjoyment of rewatching the movie. <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1004295460?book_show_action=false" rel="nofollow noopener">You might also like my review of the new biography of John Wayne by Scott Eyman</a>

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Matt

May 04 2013

I was a huge John Wayne fan growing up. Like, embarrassingly huge. I had a framed picture in my bedroom. I had a thick celebratory magazine that provided descriptions of every single one of his movies (some 200 or more, including bit parts). I had a John Wayne paper doll collection! Whenever a cable station had a “John Wayne Weekend,” I’d buy a stack of VHS tapes and record for hours on end. I loved his drawl, his catchphrases, his swagger, and his big right hook. Eventually, I grew up, and my childhood icon changed. Or rather, I changed, because the Duke was already dead nearly a year when I was born. By the time I graduated college, Wayne was no longer the paragon of American virtues – the stolid Sergeant Stryker of The Sands of Iwo Jima, the noble Army lifer Captain Nathan Brittles in She Wore A Yellow Ribbon. Instead, Wayne turned (or rather my view of him turned him) into a bit of a gaseous hypocrite. I came to see him as the man who’d discovered some old “football injuries” to keep him out of World War II, made a fortune playacting as a soldier, and then filmed an unabashedly jingoistic pro-Vietnam film advocating for a cause that killed thousands of young American men who didn't have the benefit of “football injuries” or college deferments. (As an aside: The Green Berets is so, so bad, the only way it can be viewed is as a parody). These days, my feelings for Wayne are on a more even keel. I don’t love him or hate him but mostly view him through the tinge of nostalgia (like most people, I suppose). I’ve come to accept his complexities – and he was complex, not an all-American patriot but not a right-wing nut either. Through these shifting sands, there is one John Wayne movie I have always loved, from youth to political awakening to today. And that is Wayne’s collaboration with John Ford in The Searchers. It is accessible – for a kid – because it is a western, because it involves horses and six-shooters, and because it ends with a bugle charge. For an adult, it is a complex psycho-sexual drama, a layered cinematic masterpiece that distracts you with magnificent vistas while darkness simmers below the surface. Back when I was young, and it was still hard to find out-of-print books, my mom managed to get me a copy of Alan Lemay’s The Searchers, the book upon which the movie was based. I started reading it, but quit shortly after starting, mostly because I was young and stupid and angry that the book and movie weren’t exactly alike. I picked it up recently in anticipation of Glenn Frankel’s book on the making of The Searchers (the movie) and discovered something a bit amazing: it’s quite good. Frankly, I was expecting pulp. It was published in 1954, after all, and the back pages advertise other western “adventures” with names like Death Valley Slim, Apache Rampage, and Montana Rides Again. Now, I don’t mean to oversell it, but The Searchers has more in common – tonally and ambition-wise – with Cormac McCarthy. Like the movie, the novel is built upon the kidnapping of a young white girl – little Debbie Edwards – who is taken by the Comanche after her family is murdered. Two men set out to find her. One of them is her uncle, Amos Edwards, a mysterious, taciturn man who has lived his life on the borderland between civilization and savagery. The other is Martin Pauley, an orphan who was taken in by the Edwards family after his own family was massacred by Indians. The search consumes many years and witnesses fading tracks, dead leads, brutal encounters with both whites and Indians, fierce weather, and dimming hope. The movie version of The Searchers features John Wayne in the Amos role (named Ethan in the film). The essential drama comes not from Wayne’s search itself, but from his motive. Why does he want to find Debbie after all these years? You are never certain whether he means to kill her – to save her from “the fate worse than death” – or actually bring her home. The novel’s Amos contains some of that ambiguity. Certainly, he is an Indian hater to the extreme. But the main focus is actually on Martin Pauley. His search for Debbie is subsumed in his larger search for his place in the world. (The typical orphan literary arc). If that seems a bit pat, the conceit is rescued by Alan Le May’s execution. He is no sympathizer of the Comanche, but at least he has taken the time to learn their culture and customs, research that is nicely interwoven throughout the narrative. The Comanche in the novel are people; just people that Le May and his characters don’t like. (The depth of Amos’s hatred is wonderfully demonstrated by his thoroughgoing knowledge of his enemy). Le May’s grasp of the material extends beyond Indian lore, to include frontier architecture, the finer arts of tracking, and a lot about horses. The dialogue sometimes falls victim to being overly cowboy-ish, the kind of thing you’d hear on the silver screen in the 30s, 40s, or 50s. But just as often it is punchy, evocative, and frontier-elegant: <blockquote> “Sometimes it seems to me,” Amos said, “them Comanches fly with their elbows, carrying the pony along between their knees. You can nurse a horse along till he falls and dies, and you walk on carrying your saddle. Then a Comanche comes along, and gets that horse up, and rides it twenty miles more. Then eats it…Yes…we got a chance…And I’ll tell you what it be. An Indian will chase a thing until he thinks he’s chased it enough. Then he quits. So the same when he runs. After awhile he figures we must have quit, and he starts to loaf. Seemingly he never learns there’s such a thing as a critter that might just keep coming on.”</blockquote> Le May’s description of the wild frontier is first rate. One of the best parts of the novel is, of all things, a set-piece description of a sudden blizzard: <blockquote>Now came the first of the snow, a thin lacing of ice needles, heard and felt before they could be seen. The ice particles were traveling horizontally, parallel to the ground, with an enormous velocity. They made a sharp whispering against the leather, drove deep into cloth, and filled the air with hissing. This thin bombardment swiftly increased, coming in puffs and clouds, then in a rushing stream. And at the same time the wind increased…It tore at them, snatching their breaths from their mouths, and its gusts buffeted their backs as solidly as thrown sacks of grain…</blockquote> The Searchers is just over 300 pages long, but manages to evoke an epic scope. To be sure, a novel like this necessarily has repetitive aspects. You follow a lot of trails, meet a lot of characters, but always you know that Debbie won’t be there, at least until there are fewer pages left. Still, the journey is worth the effort: for Le May’s beautiful images; his psychological insights; and for an ending that you won’t see coming, even if you happen to have watched the movie.

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Charlie Parker

March 27 2023

Centauros del desierto Novela publicada en 1954 por Alan Le May, ambientada en la década de 1870 en Texas. Época de la frontera en la que convivían colonos pioneros y los indios norteamericanos. Esta convivencia no era pacífica y ante la presión de los colonos, los indios se rebelaban arrasando pequeños asentamientos matando a los habitantes del lugar, pero llevándose a las niñas pequeñas y jóvenes. <img src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/hostedimages/1679926469i/34080719._SX540_.jpg" class="gr-hostedUserImg" loading="lazy"> Este es el caso de esta historia, dos hombres van a tomar la misión de buscar a dos niñas raptadas por una tribu comanche. Este suceso está basado en un echo real ocurrido en la década de los años 1830. La chica se llamaba Cynthia Anne Parker. Amos, tío de las niñas, es un hombre solitario, atormentado, racista, odia a los indios y a todo el mundo, su obsesión de vagar sin rumbo fijo es lo que le da fuerzas para buscar sin descanso. Amos dice que el indio: “no concibe que exista una criatura que persista en una persecución hasta el final”. Este personaje también está basado en una persona real, se llamaba James Parker que recorrió 8000 km, la mayoría en solitario, en busca de su sobrina. Martin, es hermanastro de las niñas, medio indio, fue rescatado cuando era niño y criado por la familia. Amos no lo considera uno de ellos, no es de la misma sangre. La figura de Martin es el contrapunto a la de Amos, durante la historia irá afianzando su posición haciéndole frente. Juntos van a embarcarse en la búsqueda vagando de un sitio a otro como centauros en el desierto. <img src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/hostedimages/1679926623i/34080729._SX540_.jpg" class="gr-hostedUserImg" loading="lazy"> El personaje de Amos es el que marca el libro. Un hombre sin hogar, desarraigado, obsesionado con la búsqueda al mismo tiempo que trata de encontrarse a sí mismo. Persigue a los comanches más allá de toda lógica con más ansia de venganza que el motivo principal. <img src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/hostedimages/1679927171i/34080769._SX540_.jpg" class="gr-hostedUserImg" loading="lazy"> Es difícil separar esta novela de la película de John Ford y John Wayne con el mismo título, considerada como la cumbre del western y una de las mejores de siempre. Es la película de la que más hablan los directores de cine en cuanto a influencias en su carrera. El libro es más serio, extenso y duro que la película. En él se describe la masacre india de la familia mientras que en la película no se muestra nada, se intuye. Hay ligeras diferencias entre ambas con un final diferente. Y es que John Ford crea una película a su estilo, planos geniales al comienzo y final, desde el interior de la casa con el marco en negro y viendo el horizonte del desierto, además de monumentales escenas en exterior durante todo el film. Alan Le May cuando describió a su personaje parecía que lo tenía preparado para Wayne: “Amos Edwards tenía cuarenta años, dos años más que su hermano Henry, y lucía una figura corpulenta y voluminosa sobre una montura fuerte pero lenta." En la película se llama Ethan. <img src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/hostedimages/1679926968i/34080762._SX540_.png" class="gr-hostedUserImg" loading="lazy"> Tanto libro como película tienen el titulo original “The Searches”, Los Buscadores, sería la traducción literal en español y, en realidad, es cierto, los dos protagonistas buscan a las chicas y no hay más que hablar. Pero, en aquel tiempo, los títulos de las películas sufrían enormemente al traducirse a otros idiomas intentando adecuarse a la cultura de cada país. Mientras que en Hispanoamérica le pusieron el titulo de “Más corazón que odio” en Francia y Bélgica optaron por “La prisonnière du désert” o en Portugal por “A Desaparecida”. Todos estos títulos palidecen ante el glorioso español de “Centauros del desierto” un título místico que hace honor a su grandeza. Para la publicación del libro en español por la editorial Valdemar en su colección Frontera, en 2013, en el título se ha mantenido esta simetría entre libro y película. No puedo terminar sin recomendar tanto el libro como la película, una detrás de la otra. Aunque da igual, son eternas, siempre estarán ahí para cuando se necesiten. <img src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/hostedimages/1679927230i/34080771._SX540_.jpg" class="gr-hostedUserImg" loading="lazy"> Letra de la canción “The searches” con la que comienza y termina la película. Define muy bien al personaje de Amos/Ethan. Qué lleva a un hombre a andar errante Qué lleva a un hombre a vagar sin rumbo A abandonar cama y mesa Y dar la espalda a su propio hogar Cabalga sin destino Cabalga sin destino Un hombre explorará Su corazón y su alma Buscará una salida en el camino Su paz interior Sabe que la hallará Pero dónde, oh señor Señor, dónde Cabalga sin destino Cabalga sin destino Música de <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgVCXUR8QuQ" rel="nofollow noopener">Max Steiner</a> <img src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/hostedimages/1679927405i/34080773._SX540_.jpg" class="gr-hostedUserImg" loading="lazy">

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Jim

August 04 2018

I've seen the movie so many times that I couldn't put a number to it; I thought I would finally get around to reading the source material. I'm gonna say it, and I can only remember saying this once before, "The movie was better!" Not that the book wasn't good, but the movie was a masterpiece...some critics have argued that it was the best movie ever filmed. Odd about reading the book after seeing the movie...had I read the book first I would never have pictured Monument Valley as the type of landscape that the events occurred in. John Ford's favourite filming spot is spectacular, but it ain't cattle country. So I had that difficulty, picturing Monument Valley when the author was actually describing different terrain. I think people will be familiar enough with the story that I needn't say too much about it here. Suffice it to say that the screenwriters took a really good story and made it better. Fans of the movie needn't avoid the book because they feel they know the story already; the screenwriters have altered the tale enough as to put the outcome in some doubt. Le May knows his stuff, for the most part, and his dialogue is really well done...so much so that much of it was excerpted almost word for word by Ford. He plays it safe with a lot of the data, referring to a pistol or revolver without specification of type. On one of the rare occasions that he gets specific, he gets himself into trouble: on Page 17, Le May writes that the shutters on the Edwards home were "heavy enough to stop a 30-30". Now the events in the book are taking place four years after the Civil War, so I make that out to be about 1869. The .30-30 was first introduced in the 1894 Winchester, so Lemay anticipated the introduction of that cartridge by a good quarter century. If the reader has never seen the movie, they will really enjoy the book. And if the reader has already seen the movie, they will probably still enjoy the book but they will be shaking the noggin saying "Nuh-uh! That's not the way it happened!"

A

Algernon (Darth Anyan)

July 22 2022

“Too bad there wasn’t more of ‘em,” Colonel Hammond said. “That’s the only disappointing thing.” History is written by the conquerors, and not by the defeated people. The remarks I have picked to open my review come from the commander of a night raid against a Comanche camp, in which the soldiers killed indiscriminately men, women and children and then searched through the debris for proof that these Indians were criminals and guilty of past attacks on settlers. The only prior reason for the attack was that they were inherently dangerous, and needed to be taught a lesson. That lesson being that ‘the only good Indian is a dead Indian’. My blood still boils over in anger over the portrayal of Native Americans in this celebrated epic novel, but a valid argument could be made that the author has written an accurate account of the prevalent opinion about Indians at the time these events took place. This is exactly how the settlers and the Army looked at the conquest of the West. But they had come out here that long ago, drawn by these miles and miles of good grass, free to anyone who dared expose himself to the Kiowas and the Comanches. It hadn’t looked so dangerous when they first came, for the Texas Rangers had just punished the Wild Tribes back out of the way. That the ‘free’ land belonged to the Wild Tribes is never mentioned, just as another country in modern times pretends the occupied lands in Palestine were empty and unused and the settlers are better equipped to take care of the land than the natives. Repeatedly, throughout the novel, Comanches and the other tribes are never referred to as human beings. They are ‘bucks’ or ‘varmints’ or ‘filth’ no better than wild animals than need to be put down in order for civilization to prosper. Blacks are not even once mentioned, despite events taking place immediately after the Civil War, and Mexicans are subject to the same rabid racism directed at the Tribes: Mart had always heard the Comancheros described as a vicious, slinking, cowardly breed, living like varmints in unbelievable filth. War against such despicable animals is justified and described euphemistically as an ‘armed disagreement with Mexico’ . Peace with the Tribes is ‘the fatheaded wishfulness that had disarmed more American troops than any other enemy’. while genocide becomes a cleaning out campaign, justified by false equivalents and projections of one’s own prejudice. “I see something now,” Mart said, “I never used to understand. I see now why the Comanches murder our women when they raid – brain our babies even – what ones they don’t pick to steal. It’s so we won’t breed. They want us off the earth. I understand that, because that’s what I want for them. I want them dead. All of them. I want them cleaned off the face of the world.” Even the righteous search for the missing girl is tainted by the expressed view that she is ‘damaged goods’ and better off dead because One sleep with Indians – you’re a mare – a sow – they take what they want of you. >>><<<>>><<< Having vented my modern indignation over the sensitive issue of racial profiling, I must admit that Alan Le May is a hell of a good writer. Allegedly he has done extensive background studies for the period, and it shows in the way he describes the settlers in West Texas, the Army forts and the few details of Native American culture. “Sometimes it seems to me”, Amos said, “them Comanches fly with their elbows, carrying the pony along between their knees. You can nurse a horse along till he falls and dies, and you walk on carrying your saddle. Then a Comanche comes along, and gets that horse up, and rides it twenty miles more. Then eats it.” The best passages are his descriptions of the vastness of the land, the killing weather and the perseverance of the men who refuse to accept defeat. No matter what my personal opinions are about the way the Tribes were systematically eradicated, the novel remains a milestone in the genre for the strength of Le May characters and for his evocative prose. It never occurred to them that their search was stretching out into a great extraordinary feat of endurance; an epic of hope without faith, of fortitude without reward, of stubborness past all limits of reason. They simply kept on, doing the next thing, because they always had one more place to go, following out one more forlorn-hope try. Maybe it was a good thing that a man and his plodding horse could not see that country from the sky, as the vultures saw it. If a man could have seen the vastness in which he was a speck, the heart would have gone out of him; >>><<<>>><<< After finishing the book I decided to re-watch the John Ford movie version, of which I remembered practically nothing from my youth. Evidently, John Ford couldn’t include everything in his adaptation and some of the best scenes were shortened or absent, in particular the battle episodes and most of the exhausting, years-long search. They were replaced by picture-postcard landscapes from Monument Valley, by some inappropriate touches of humour and by a Hollywood style romance with happy ending. In John Ford’s defence, the movie came out in 1956, and John Wayne did the best he could with the material he was given. Personally, I think this is not the best movie in the list of both artists, but I understand how it became so popular.

C

Charles van Buren

November 27 2021

Not just one of the great western novels, but a great American novel. Of course it has been popularized by the John Ford movie staring John Wayne and other fine actors. The film follows the first part of the book closely enough that people who have watched the movie are in familiar territory. There is enough divergence that reading the novel is worth while. Alan LeMay was a prolific and successful author including script writing. He even tried his hand at directing. Usually his two greatest novels are considered to be THE SEARCHERS and UNFORGIVEN.

S

Susan Stuber

September 05 2014

If you are interested in the last years of the native Americans in Texas, and you want a highly nuanced, well-written and enthralling story to go with it, this is your book. I found it ever so much better than Lonesome Dove and The Son. LeMay does not try to make any of his characters into heros or villains, he simply tells the story (beautifully, without pathos) and lets the reader make his/her own opinions of who was morally right and wrong. There is no pat plot here, no foreseeable outcome, up to the very last line of the book. And though LeMay does not endeavour to make us feel one way or another about the characters, you feel very touched by all their plights, and you have a new understanding, in the end, of what life was like on the Texas frontier back in those days.

B

Bob Brinkmeyer

May 01 2020

Mention The Searchers and most people will think of John Ford’s film, generally regarded as one of the finest Westerns ever made. The novel from which the film was adapted, Alan LeMay’s The Searchers, while not up to the artistry of the film, is nonetheless a fine novel, particularly for lovers of Westerns. What is particularly impressive is LeMay’s deep knowledge of the land (Texas and New Mexico) and its history, including most notably Native American history and culture. You’ll learn a lot—or at least, I did—while being swept along by the adventure tale. The story is well known by this point: after the family of Henry Edwards is killed by a raiding party of Commanches, two men, Amos Edwards and Martin Pauley, begin an epic quest to find the family’s youngest daughter, Debbie, who has been kidnapped by the Indians. Amos is the brother of Henry, and Martin is the adopted son of the Edwards, his family itself killed years before in an Indian raid. Besides the ongoing search for Debbie, stretching out for over 6 years, the novel’s focus is the developing relationship between Amos and Martin. Amos is a skilled cowboy and former soldier (a Confederate veteran), while Martin is a young man of 20 or so, awash with energy but with much to learn about life and survival on the trail. Their journey together is filled with dangerous encounters and missed opportunities, with a good bit of comedy thrown in, as Amos rarely misses an opportunity to let Martin know when he’s done something particularly silly or foolish. But Martin grows up quickly and before long the two stand almost as equals, facing the challenges of the trail and the assortment of nefarious people they run into along the way. The novel was published in 1954, a time when the Civil Rights Movement was gearing up, and the issue of race circulates throughout the novel. Westerns and other forms of popular culture frequently explore timely social issues, often obliquely. Here the prevalent national fear of black men raping white women is rewritten into the captivity of Debbie and her possible rape by her Indian captors (Debbie’s elder sister, it should be noted, was apparently raped and killed by the raiding party). The disagreement between Amos and Martin regarding Debbie’s fate becomes the means to interrogate the issue. Amos, the former Confederate, is adamant that Debbie is basically dead to the world if she has been violated by or has married an Indian, going so far as to suggest that he will shoot her (an honor killing, it seems) if she is thus found. Having grown up with Debbie and thus being closer to her than Amos is, Martin is aghast at Amos’s thoughts and intentions. Indeed, as he makes clear, Martin continues on the search as much to save Debbie from Amos as from the Indians. (In the film, Ford develops the racial themes even more than LeMay—and changes the ending in a dramatic commentary on the issue). For lovers of Westerns and more generally popular culture, The Searchers is a must read. Readers who appreciate only high art will be disappointed but general readers will find it engaging if not always thoroughly compelling.

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robin friedman

July 13 2020

Reading The Searchers Alan Le May's 1954 novel "The Searchers" is a victim of its own success. John Ford adapted the novel into the glorious 1956 film of the same name starring John Wayne while Le May's novel went out of print and was almost forgotten. Fortunately, Le May's novel is accessible on Kindle and is about to become even more so with the Library of America's impending publication of its new anthology, "The Western: Four Classic Novels of the 1940's & 50's". The LOA volume will help preserve and encourage the reading of novels in this sometimes slighted genre. Le May (1899 -- 1964) led a varied life as a journalist, novelist , screenwriter and rancher. His "The Searchers" is worth knowing in its own right. The story is sometimes compared to "The Odyssey" in its epic story of a life of wandering in search of home and of a woman. The book reminded me of Melville's novel of searching "Moby-Dick" in, among other things, the intensity and monomania of the seekers. The story reminds me as well of the William Butler Yeats poem, "The Song of Wandering Aegnus" in the mystical intensity of the search and the seekers. Le May's novel is set in Texas and New Mexico in the 1870s during the presidency of U.S. Grant. A Comanche raiding party destroys the home of a struggling family of pioneers. The family is killed with the exception of two daughters, Lucy, 17, and Debbie, 10. With the destruction of the home, a group of homesteaders head out in pursuit. The pursuit soon reduces to two individuals, Amos, 40, the older brother of the homesteader who had lived a wandering life and had been secretly in love with his brother's wife, and Martin, who had been raised by the family since childhood after his own family and home had fallen victim to a Comanche raid. Those in pursuit of the raiders soon learn of the tragic death of Lucy. Amos and Martin search out by themselves in pursuit of young Debbie. The pursuit expands in time and space and ultimately continues for six years. This novel has an epic sweep in its portrayal of the vast prairies during the six year search through Winters of cold and blizzards and Summers of blistering heat. With the majesty and unending breadth of the land, the book develops characters and situations of ambiguity and complexity. The novel celebrates the fortitude of the homesteaders and pioneers in the face of danger, poverty and isolation. Le May early describes them as "lonely, self-sufficient people, who saw each other only a few times a year." Le May also has a strong sense of human mortality and of the mystery of life as his characters search resolutely through the prairie. He writes in describing the early days of the search: "All men grew old unless violence overtook them first; the plains offered no third way out of the predicament a man found himself in, simply by the fact of his existence on the face of the earth." But there is another side to the book's admiration of the settlers and of their fortitude. As the book proceeds, the reader learns more of the Comanche and other Indian tribes. They are portrayed with substantial understanding as fighting for their home and way of life in the face of encroachment by the irresistible force of the United States Army. The characters and motivations of the settlers, particularly the two searchers, also receive close examination. The six year search consumes Amos and Martin and destroys the possibility of a meaningful, settled life. The two seekers return three times in the course of the search to the one remaining homestead in their region where young Martin is reminded repeatedly of the offered love he is throwing away. The homestead scenes in this book remind me of the scenes in "Moby-Dick" when the "Pequod" is approached by other whaling ships to be reminded of the nature of domesticity and of home life. As the search proceeds, it becomes clear to Martin and to the reader that Amos is little interested in recovering and bringing home the stolen young girl. He passionately hates the Comanches, probably due largely to the war party's killing of his brother's wife in the raid. For six years, Amos pursues with blood and hatred in his heart the goal of killing Indians. He is also obsessed with what he sees as the likelihood of sexual relations between Debbie and Comanche men. The six year search in its madness and glory together with the story of the wars with the Comanche is captured poignantly in this novel. If it lacks something of the poetry and visual sweep of John Ford's film adaptation, it has a grit and understanding of its own. I was glad to get to know this too little known classic of Western and American literature. Robin Friedman

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Chrisl

September 06 2012

Never saw the movie. Haven't been able to connect well with his other books. The Comanche kept me interested. Quote from Alan LeMay, The Searchers : “The Comanches were supposed to be the most literal-minded of all the tribes. There are Indians who live in a poetic world, half of the spirit, but the Comanches were a tough-minded, practical people, who laughed at the religious ceremonies of other tribes as crazy-Indian foolishness. They had no official medicine men, no pantheon of named gods, no ordered theology. Yet they lived very close to the objects of the earth around them, and sensed in rocks, and winds, and rivers, spirits as living as their own. They saw themselves as of one piece with a world in which nothing was without a spirit.” “ … Perhaps it was that, and knowing where he was, that accounted for what happened next. Or maybe scars, almost as old as he was, were still in existence down at the bottom of his mind, long buried under everything that had happened in between. …”

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