I Didn't Write This Book So Is It Okay --?...

I had a heart attack last Wednesday and recovering in the hospital Thursday was a depressing bore until a friend of mine arrived with TWO (count 'em TWO) new books, one a bio of Lee Marvin, an "underrated" actor of the olden days and a fave of mine, and the other an interesting "concept" I thought, namely "The Searchers: The Making of an American Legend" by a Wash Post journalist named Glenn Frankel, which is NOT merely "the making of" the iconic 1956 John Ford-John Wayne western but a scholarly research of its antecedents, i. e., the actual event in 1836 in Texas that inspired the Alan LeMay novel which in turn is the basis of the movie.

Frankel explains a great deal of European settler versus Comanche and various other tribes (but the Comanches were the dominant, the most ruthless and most "dangerous") especially re "captivity narratives" oft by actual captives of Indians and then by those that knew them. Of course the most "compelling" of these stories are of and by women captives who are brutalized and most often (but not always) raped and yet some find an identity and way of life among their captors.

The psycho-sexual aspect of the film "The Searchers" is plain to those who've seen it as per the "lesser" (MUCH lesser according to critics) 1961 John Ford return to the "theme" in "Two Rode Together" which features German actor Henry Brandon (who was the notorious and fearsome fictional "Scar" in "The Searchers") as "Quanah Parker," a real person this time, son of a Comanche father and the very inspiration for "The Searchers," one Cynthia Ann Parker.

If one is attracted to American westerniana, "westerns" themselves and in particular to historical themes that make well "truth stranger than fiction" as the adage goes, then I suggest this book is for "you" as well as for me.

I guess that's what's called "a good review" or even a "rave"?...

I'm confused about the real story. Was the Scar character played by Brandon, played 'again' by Brandon only the 'real' Scar?

I hope you are feeling better.

Of course, it's not a violation of TOS, as far as I know, to give a rave review of a book you didn't write. But this is Pro and Con, which is usually about political discussion.

There is a great deal of the political in the Western, and in particular in issues involving Indians.

Leave out the parts about the heart attack, the gift, and Lee Marvin. Start with:

"'The Searchers: The Making of an American Legend' by a Washington Post journalist named Glenn Frankel is NOT merely the making of the iconic 1956 John Ford-John Wayne western. It is a scholarly research of the movie's antecedents, i. e., the actual event in 1836 in Texas that inspired the Alan LeMay novel which in turn is the basis of the movie.

"Frankel explains a great deal of European settler versus Comanche and various other tribes (but the Comanches were the dominant, the most ruthless and most "dangerous") especially re "captivity narratives" oft by actual captives of Indians and then by those that knew them. Of course the most "compelling" of these stories are of and by women captives who are brutalized and most often (but not always) raped and yet some find an identity and way of life among their captors.

"The psycho-sexual aspect of the film "The Searchers" is plain to those who've seen it as per the "lesser" (MUCH lesser according to critics) 1961 John Ford return to the "theme" in "Two Rode Together" which features German actor Henry Brandon (who was the notorious and fearsome fictional "Scar" in "The Searchers") as "Quanah Parker," a real person this time, son of a Comanche father and the very inspiration for "The Searchers," one Cynthia Ann Parker.

"If one is attracted to American westerniana, "westerns" themselves and in particular to historical themes that make well "truth stranger than fiction" as the adage goes, then I suggest this book is for "you" as well as for me."

Try it that way, it's a good, positive review. You ought to publish it as such. Poof! You're a born critic. 8-)

>4 RickHarsch:. Well, if you put it that way, there is a 'great deal of the political' in just about everything. I don't mean to be insensitive to your friend, who is recovering from a heart attack, but this is Librarything, after all, where there are dozens of groups where a book review would be completely appropriate.

The heart attack has nothing to do with it. The group is open to all kinds of styles, approaches, etcetera, and find it petty to discourage a non-offensive, and to some interesting, post. We should be glad he's posting here.
There is probably even a group for petty post arbiters, but no one is asking you to go find it.

Off-topic posts aren't exactly like spam, so whatever.

Actually, I'm reminded of the book The Comanche Empire which basically posits that with the introduction of things like horses, the plains indians, and the Comanche in particular, were able to adopt a niche not at all dissimilar to the role that was played by the Eurasian steppe nomads and that as such their historical significance has been largely overlooked.

> 8 Do you remember the rough time period?

"The heart attack has nothing to do with it" is almost exactly my point. The heart attack, the gift, and Lee Marvin don't bear on the subject of his essay about 'The Searchers.'

I was trying to be helpful and lend the lad some encouragement. But I guess you'll see what you want to see regardless.

An interesting discussion...just about all aspects of Indian history have political overtones, imho! And when they're touched upon in quite old Westerns, well many of us who watched those things had no idea that there was any truth to them.

Okay I was riffing off the topic re the "must read!" which was apparently written by the author of such as cheap advertisement; the topic was "flagged" and the uh "author" chastised.

The heart attack and Lee Marvin are simply "tangential" items that "personalize" my "story" you could say, an entre to talking about the book. I wasn't attempting some sort of "formal" review but hoping the subjects raised (Comanche-white relations, the psycho sexual prevalence in such, "the conquest of the American west," the novels and movies inspired by) might get some response and interest here. And of course it's a "political" as well as sociological psychological historical "whatever" eh "subject."

As per "Scar" in the Alan LeMay novel and Ford film (portrayed memorably by Henry Brandon) he is fictional but based on a real Comanche of some "heft" in frontier Texas (the time frame of the entire book is basically the 1820s on to the 1950s) named Peta Nocona who was the father ("white" captive Cynthia Ann Parker, see above, being the mother) of Quanah Parker, a member of a small band of "lesser" warriors who connected themselves with the Quahadi band of Comanche on the Llano Estacada or "Staked Plains" of the Texas panhandle and eastern New Mexico.

The last of the "free" Comanche bands (including the one in which Quanah was a member) were finally subjugated around 1875 and Parker "emerged" as a figure of interest as he was both white and Indian and his mother was "known" in the many stories of captivity and recapture. Quanah was something of a "go between" re the "races" eh and acquired his own "myth" which presented him as an important warrior and "chief" which was not so although QP did certainly fight the US cavalry and raid the uh little house(s) on the prairie.

In Ford's second film (in a way THIRD if one counts the 1960 "Sergeant Rutledge" which focuses more on the black "buffalo" soldier but involves women molested by Apaches as well as a supposed rape and murder by the black lead character) on the captivity theme, the far less well received "Two Rode Together" (1961), Brandon is you'd say a "logical" choice to play Quanah Parker as the character is so similar to "Scar." The role isn't nearly as "major" as in "The Searchers" but Brandon as a menacing figure of "The Other" is ALWAYS impressive.

Personally I like "Two Rode Together" better than maybe anybody ever has(!), including John Ford himself who spoke of it as "crap" yet I think it also confronts the captivity theme and those psycho identity and sexual aspects even more frankly than in "The Searchers" albeit not as "artistically" pleasing.

James Stewart for example as the cynical corrupt gun runner-cum-town marshall speaks as brutally to Shirley Jones as a young woman seeking her "lost" brother of the transformation of a "cute little seven year old boy" into a Comanche of seventeen as "permitted" in a 1961 general release.

(I saw it first at the Paramount theater in downtown Phoenix that year and of course have it in video. I've watched it MANY times and have not yet learned to "hate" it as substandard Ford but then hey I'm only an amateur "critic"...)

> 10 I think you have to earn the right to condescend, but that in that process you learn the ugliness of it.

I read about Two Rode Together, and it seems worth it for Stewart along. My question is the role played by the Comanche in the struggle to wrest Texas from Mexico. Any ideas?

As mentioned above by another commenter there was, recent historians contend, a "Comanche empire" stretching from the plains of Kansas to the gulf of Mexico and from central Texas to the Rio Grande in New Mexico which was a far vaster area of control than any other tribe effected.

There were of course NUMEROUS Indian tribes in Texas ("Caddos an' Kiowas -- old Mose knows!" as Hank Worden chants in the movie "The Searchers") but the head honchos (as Steve McQueen would put it -- "Who's the head honcho around here?") were the Comanche who were known for their skill in horsemanship especially, which made the men such fearsome warriors, their ruthlessness and pitiless depredations.

Apparently as some captivity narratives note the Comanche TRIBE on the individual level was close knit and generous -- if ANYONE was "starving" in a Comanche camp then EVERYONE was because everything was shared in emergencies -- as well as in their treatment of children, demanding in the social sense of course (get with the Comanche "program"!) but no Comanche struck his child as common "discipline" -- rather the kids "ran wild" as they say.

The "war" (and it was) between Comanche, their Kiowa brethern (see John Huston's 1960 "The Unforgiven," which is NOT to be confused PLEASE with the much later Eastwood picture and NOT a "remake, which was also based upon a novel by Alan LeMay with a similar theme) and the "Americanos" or Texans was longstanding and vicious on both sides. It continued almost unabated from the arrival of the first settlers in the 1820s to the mid 1870s and involved the notorious semi militia Texas rangers (Ward Bond as "the Reverend Captain Samuel Johnson Clayton" in "The Searchers") as well as the equally "notorious" William Tecumseh Sherman and the eccentric cavalry commander Ranald S. Mackenzie. It was what they call "a war to the knife" and the "settlement" of Texas -- east to west -- depended on "pacifying" or destroying the Comanche.

(When the Kiowa chief Satanta was told he should no longer raid into Texas -- the Comanche-Kiowa "homeland" was western Kansas-western Oklahoma -- he replied that then the Americans should "move" Texas away from Comanche borders.)

Re Mexico one of the reasons the Spanish and then the Mexican government wanted Americans in Texas was to specifically create a counterforce to the Comanche as nobody wanted to settle "northern Mexico" because of the Comanche reputation.

By the way yet ANOTHER movie on the "theme" is "The Comancheros," a 1961 pic directed by Michael Curtiz ("Casablanca") and John Wayne (uncredited) with John Wayne as a Texas ranger and Lee Marvin as a "gunrunner" to the Comanche chief Iron Shirt, a real figure who wore a conquistador's armor on his chest...

> 13 -- RickHarsch -- Condescend? I don't see any condescension in my post. There was certainly none intended. But like I said: you'll see what you want to see regardless.

Condescension: is that what they call it when you take someone else's beef without asking their permission and then defend it as if YOU were the injured party? I ask because you need to clarify here, if you're speaking for yourself or in defense of Michael_Welch. Did he ask you to speak for him or did you just assume he can't take care of himself? Is that condescension?

> 1 -- Michael_Welch -- In No. 1 you concluded with "I guess that's what's called "a good review" or even a "rave"?..."

I took that to mean that you were asking if you'd written a good review and maybe wanted to make it a better one. So I made those alterations to help you see what to do with it. Please notice that the only changes I made to your text were one period and one word. Everything else is just as you wrote it. I'm not a heavy-handed editor, and I believe that the process of editing should be a learning experience for the people on both sides of the desk.

I meant no insult. Some folks just assumed that I did. Thanks for not making that assumption yourself.

10> I see the use of terms like "the lad" as too patronising to be encouraging.

How old is he? I assumed 40 plus from his posts.

#9: Roughly spanning the 18th and 19th centuries.

> 18 I'm surprised--I would have thought earlier as well. But I don't know anything about the introduction of the horse and forgotten all I ever knew about Native American history.

> The lad is in his 60s

> 14 Thanks, lad. It's quite helpful for reasons I will email you about.

> 19 -- RichHarsch -- "The lad is in his 60s."

Well, I'm in my 60s, too. Is there something wrong with that? Are you prejudiced against seniors along with being presumptuous? Why do you want to have a fight over something that doesn't concern you?

19> nods I am not surprised 40's was a minimum.

I am prejudiced against seniors, yes.

I'd rather talk about the Comanche, the Indian-settler confict, white captivity etc., and the depiction of such in American movies than quarrel about a misunderstanding.

But I admit I was somewhat taken aback by the assumption that I "trying out" for a job as a book critic and I had obviously assumed too much re the topic (see just below) titled "MUST READ!!!" and its ensuing controversy -- I thought everyone would know what I referred to.

Rick perhaps does leap to my "defense" at times because he actually has a fine sense of "fairness" and knows I'm not at a computer often to speak for myself. He also irritates because he's been one who doesn't "suffer fools" -- unless he's drinking I think and then he "suffers" all kinds of such.

I thought above the most interesting response was # 11, from "SaintSunniva," who noted that he/she had watched western films over the years and never knew there was actual "history" in them! But it's true; there is!

Not that one can say that ANY movie is really "historically accurate" in every way (not Spielberg's recent "Lincoln" or the pic "Hyde Park on Hudson" with Bill Murray of all people as "FDR") because that ISN'T true but there are depicted truthful aspects of that "history" in many of the better of the genre of "westerns" or "historical" movies.

In the 1940 King Vidor directed version of the massive Kenneth Roberts novel "Northwest Passage" about the 18th century American "ranger" Robert Rogers (Spencer Tracy playing the part) there's a grueling and candid depiction of the attack on the Abenaki Indian village at St Francis in Lower Canada and at the end of it the "white captive" (again the figure appears eh) Jennie Coit (played extremely well by the usually underrated Isabel Jewell) rails against Tracy-Rogers as the "White Devil" and threatens that he's "doomed" while other older women captives note that this younger is "worse than the Indians," i. e., has found an "identity" as an Abenaki.

Now "NWP" was of course marketed as an "action adventure" movie based on a popular "best seller" (people apparently read much longer books in those days, e. g. "Gone With The Wind" as well) and NOT as something to "improve your mind" -- heavens forfend!!!!! (Louie B Mayer call your office -- and fire that adman's arse!)

But there's Jennie Coit nevertheless and the accuracy of the ruthless raid -- burning the camp as the Indians slept so some are burned alive (recall the scene in Kurosawa's "Seven Samurai"? it's in "Northwest Passage fourteen years earlier) and when they pile out of their burning "wigwams" and such, "shooting them down like dogs" -- it's in the movie, it's accurate historically, it has a racist aspect yes but it is made absolutely clear that the Abenaki fight just as viciously.

In the 1972 western "Ulzana's Raid," Robert Aldrich's "answer" to Arthur Penn's 1970 "Little Big Man," a romantic, affectionate, sympathetic and cynical and greatly entertaining "revisionist" western, Apache raiders abuse the corpse of a soldier and later soldiers do the same with the body of an Apache boy. The young West Point lieutenant well played by Bruce Davison is alarmed and incensed and berates the troopers.

The "old scout" (the cliche is always useful), Burt Lancaster (who better?), reminds the lieu that the indignation and horror he has expressed re Apache depredations are "confused" by "white Christians" capable of the same sort of acts. The cruelty of the "Indian wars" is also reflected in the way that John Ford in his film "The Searchers" begins to "obscure" the difference between "Chief Scar" and John Wayne's "Ethan Edwards," the relentless and hard minded "searcher" looking for his kidnapped niece "the little Debree."

There's "a lot there" I think...

Have you read Warlock, Mr. Harsch?

No, but from the reviewer that liked it, I'd say it's worth looking into.

Only slightly tangential to the OP -- Star Wars is being dubbed into Navajo, the first Native American language to be so treated.

>26 RidgewayGirl: I wonder what Chewbacca sounds like in Navajo? Or R2D2? ;-)

Like John Ford's Indians no doubt -- the "Comanche" in Ford's pics speak Navajo as most of them are!...

Like in Cheyenne Autumn, where the actors are Navajo and are telling dirty jokes.

Are they? Of course I don't know Navajo so as per the rest of the audience I remain "ignorant." You know Navajo or you learned this somewhere?

"Cheyenne Autumn" of course was Ford's last western and second to last film and was his own attempt to mitigate his previous pics re Indians as "villains" albeit as per most American movies the Indian is sympathized with (often) yet remains the primary "villain" eh...

I briefly dated a guy who was Navajo. He and his friends had some good stories. I can't vouch for the truth in all of them, but I later encountered this same story elsewhere (an interview with Tony Hillerman?) but I don't remember where.

It's probably true -- Ford wouldn't have known what they were really saying either and nobody who did would have told him.

The Navajo by the way gave him the name "Natani Nez" which I understand means "Tall Soldier" but it could have meant "Son of a Bitch" 'cuz "Pappy" sure could be...

>5 dekesolomon: Leave out the parts about the heart attack, the gift, and Lee Marvin. Start with...

No, start with this:

BLAM! A freak explosion in a nuclear reactor sends Lefty McDermott reeling back through time, to the Dickensian England of Queen Victoria’s reign. (If Dickens didn’t write during Victoria’s reign, don’t tell me.) After narrowly avoiding preventing his own great-grandfather’s conception in a series of wacky mishaps, he is bitten by an ant, and the ant’s bite combining with the radioactive substances coursing through his bloodstream give him strange new powers. But can he control those powers? Or is the price he must pay... too high?!

He battles a powerful coven of witches, and their enchantment sends him into a dreamless sleep until he awakens in Los Angeles in the year 1984, and must fight a time-traveling killer cyborg for the future of humanity. And who is the mysterious woman with two different-colored eyes who stole the Crown Jewels from Lefty just when he had gotten them safely from the fell Doctor TopHat’s laboratory???? And does she really know the secret behind his extraordinary birthmark?

The foregoing may seem a bit - just a bit, mind you - over the top, but check this out. I typed "steampunk, ya" into Google and got this official description at Goodreads.

The Girl in the Steel Corset (Steampunk Chronicles, #1)
by Kady Cross
3.86 of 5 stars avg. rating
description
In 1897 England, sixteen-year-old Finley Jayne has no one...except the "thing" inside her.When a young lord tries to take advantage of Finley, she fights back. And wins. But no "normal" Victorian girl has a darker side that makes her capable of knocking out a full-grown man with one punch.... Only Griffin King sees the magical darkness inside her that says she's special, says she's one of "them." The orphaned duke takes her in from the gaslit streets against the wishes of his band of misfits: Emily, who has her own special abilities and an unrequited love for Sam, who is part robot; and Jasper, an American cowboy with a shadowy secret. Griffin's investigating a criminal called The Machinist, the mastermind behind several recent crimes by automatons. Finley thinks she can help--and finally be a part of something, finally fit in. But The Machinist wants to tear Griff's little company of strays apart, and it isn't long before trust is tested on all sides. At least Finley knows whose side she's on--even if it seems no one believes her.

Eat your heart out, Tarantino.

> 34 -- I predict Finley will not fit in because some of her parts are missing and (in any event) the Machinist has the wrong sized wrench.

SPOILER ALERT!

The story ends when they all get kidnapped by Chinese people and carried off to the jungles of Peru, where some of them are eaten by a cannibal tribe. The rest get strung out on weird, violent, psychedelic potions and are never heard from again.