Jack Schaefer (1907–1991)

Wow. I see why this is a classic - there's a lot of story in this little book. The device of showing events through the boy's POV is clever - we see _what_ happens, and hear the adults talking about things, but Bob doesn't really understand what's going on which allows for elegant vagueness. The funny thing is that it reminded me of a King Arthur story, but with a better ending - at least, it ends badly for the protagonists (all three, or four, of them), but at least they don't destroy their show more world on the way down. They build it up instead - make things stronger, and better, for the price paid. show less

There's nothing like a Western, and this one was my favorite fiction read of 2014. It isn't a quick read by any means; Schaefer loves his wide open West and takes every opportunity to describe it as well as the various towns, buildings, and minor characters who populate it and give it its soul. A faster pace would rob the epic. The larger-than-life writing style fits the story well.

I love reading about this rugged time when cattle rustling was a capital offense and men lived and died for show more land and loyalty. But this isn't only a story of the West. It is also the carefully detailed portrait of one man: tough, stubborn, loyal, mischievous, independent, a good friend and a good man with a horse. show less

Westerns perhaps the central myth in U.S. culture, my acquaintance with the genre primarily from film (and to a lesser extent, television). I'm curious chiefly about what elements the written tale brings to the genre, how it compares to genre cousins crime and adventure tales.

SHANE - Jack Schaefer | read 2022-06

Shane as hero is both recognisably (post-war) idealist, and also seems to nod to the hardboiled noir cynicism of the loner shamus. It's as though Hammett's Continental Op had an show more epiphany and rejected his prior life on the streets, and rode out of town. Into town, then, rides Shane. Halfway through the story, it's implied he did horrible things in the past and isn't proud. But also, he isn't the drifter of Sergio Leone's Man With No Name, he's "purer" than that, even as he is shunned by some of the people he meets.

And those people who shun him are key: they are not the leading lights of society, they are the frontier equivalent of Chandler's or Hammett's mean street hoodlums.

The plot here is much more direct than the typical crime novel, the confrontation less strategic and telegraphed for both reader and characters, and distilled to physical skills: strength, speed, facility with a pistol. Shane's choices appear very limited: avoid confrontation, or confront openly. There is some attempt to skirt the final showdown, pressuring the gang individually, but even Shane doesn't seem to have confidence this will work. The shamus of crime novels undertakes a good deal more manoeuvering before any confrontation, and sets his adversaries against one another.

Marian's emasculation of her husband, Joe (with his ready consent and agreement!), seems a bit over the top, even for Schaefer's doe-eyed heroine. It works symbolically, but turns her and Joe into caricature. [287, 309]

Prompted a dip into several essays in The Western Reader.

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to read:
OX-BOW INCIDENT - Walter Van Tilburg Clark
SEARCHERS - Alan Le May
WARLOCK - Oakley Hall show less

This review is only for "Shane" by Jack Schaeffer:

For a lot of legitimate reasons western novels get as little respect as romance novels, and, in fact, I’ve several times seen westerns characterized disparagingly as “romance novels for men.” But for a lot of equally legitimate reasons, westerns and romance novels, when they are approached in a serious manner by their authors, deserve the same respect granted to their supposedly more sophisticated cousins. Jack Schaefer’s 1949 novel show more Shane is most definitely a western that stands tall for good reason.

Shane certainly has its share of fistfights, and even includes a memorable gunfight between two of the fastest gunslingers passing through the state of Wyoming. But it also features a young couple trying to teach their son Bob (the novel’s narrator) right from wrong to provide him with a proper moral code he can live by for the rest of his life. It features a man so conflicted by his past that he struggles to keep himself under control even when violence is the only way to protect himself and those he loves. And it even explores one of the sweetest love-triangles I’ve ever encountered in a novel. Shane may not be the perfect western novel, but it comes as close as any to meeting that standard.

“He rode easily, relaxed in the saddle, leaning his weight lazily into the stirrups. Yet even in this easiness was a suggestion of tension. It was the easiness of a coiled spring, of a trap set.”

That’s the impression that Shane gave Bob when the two first set eyes on each other as Shane rides up to the Starrett farm. From that first moment, the boy senses something different about Shane, something very dangerous to anyone who might dare cross him for the wrong reason. Shane arrives just about the time that half-a-dozen small farmers are being coerced by a rich cattleman to walk away from the homesteads upon which they depend for a living. The man wants to drive large herds of cattle through the territory, but he cannot do that if he has to bypass all the fenced-off farms adjoining his own property. And after receiving a big government contract to supply as much beef as he can come up with, he will do whatever it takes to destroy the farms in his way.

Shane has to choose a side or ride away. He doesn’t ride away.

Soon enough, Shane becomes a symbol of resistance to both sides of the fence dispute, something that he both regrets and accepts:

“In some strange fashion the feeling was abroad that Shane was a marked man. Attention was on him as a sort of symbol. By taking him on father had accepted in a way a challenge from the big ranch across the river. What had happened to Morley had been a warning and father had deliberately answered it. The long unpleasantness was sharpened now after the summer lull. The issue in our valley was plain and would in time have to be pushed to a showdown. If Shane could be driven out, there would be a break in the homestead rank, a defeat going beyond the loss of a man into the realm of prestige and morale. It could be the crack in the dam that weakens the whole structure and finally less through the flood.”

Neither Shane, nor the Starretts, are willing to let that happen.

Bottom Line: Shane is filled with memorable characters, heroes and villains, alike. One of the most memorable is Marian Starrett, a woman strong enough to support her husband in his fight to save their livelihood from the man who wants to steal it from them. The complicated relationship between Joe Starrett, his wife Marian, and Shane is one that Schaefer handles perfectly in this, his debut novel. Shane is so good that I can only imagine the pressure that Schaefer must have felt for the rest of his life to match it. show less