The Searchers

After reading Glenn Frankel's book that explores the making of John Ford's classic movie The Searchers, and learning about the original novel that the movie was based on and about its author Alan LeMay, I was curious to read it myself. I had seen the movie many times, but I had never read the novel. It's good. It really holds up. Unlike the movie, the novel is told from Martin Pauley's point of view, and it is through his eyes that we view Amos Edwards (John Wayne's character Ethan in the movie). Martin is more complex in the novel, and he grows before our eyes as we turn the pages, developing a rich character that can stand up to Amos and his hatred. I was trying hard to decide if I liked the movie or the novel better, and while I show more think the movie has a slight edge, I liked the ending of the book much better. The writing rang true, and the dialogue spoke, which is why the most moving parts of the dialogue in the movie come directly from the novel, intact and unrefined. And the heartbreak - you can feel that, the toll it takes on both of them to search every day for years, following one dead end after another, always seeking and never finding more than just one more lead, and yet not being able to let it go, either.

"It was the heartbreaking distances that held them back from coming up with him for so long. You were never in the wrong place without being about a week and a half away from the right one. That country seemed to have some kind of weird spell upon it, so that you could travel in one spot all day long, and never gain a mile."

"'This is a rough country,' Amos was saying. 'It's a country knows how to scour a human man right off the face of itself.'" show less

I was delighted to find this book as I am a big fan of John Ford's masterpiece movie and John Wayne's magnificent performance - really! Any movie filmed in one of our favourite places, Monument valley, is also quite special.

This version of the book includes a bonus. There is a substantial chapter entitled "The Making of The Searchers" by one of the cast Harry Carey, Jr. (played Brad Jorgensen) which is superbly done covering the movie, John Wayne, and California of the 1950's - what a delightful place it must have been. He died only last year which is too bad as I would have liked to thank him for such a treat!

This is a book that left me thinking about it when I put it down, caught me with its imagination, made me feel is desolation. show more It's not a reach to say it reminded me of McCarthy's utterly magnificent Blood Meridian. Not quite as poetic, the paragraphs more economical, and nowhere near the gratuitous violence. In fact, to the latter point, there is little violence in the book and when it happens it's short and not at all gory or realistic. But the descriptions of the countryside are quite McCarthy like.

There are 3 main characters in the book - Amos and Mart, and the third being the country they searched in for those nigh on 6 years. The book is based upon a story of a white girl captured by the Indians in 1830's Texas. If the author was Greek and a few centuries older it would qualify as an epic and odyssey. The Texan prairies where they spent most of their peregrinations and New Mexico the remainder are vivid and loom throughout the story. On a side note it warmed this old heart to hear those delightful old distances - furlongs and rods - again! No PC in this book - the Texans hate the injuns and what they did to their core - and the feeling wholly reciprocated.

The ending is quite different than the movie. Also it doesn't end on a crescendo but an adagio. No Ethan (as Wayne's character Amos in the book disappearing into the wilderness. "A cowboy looking for a good death"?

This is a very well written epic, redolent with atmosphere, dialogue, and emotion. Clearly a book that I loved and will remember with the very best I've read.

I am a lucky man to have read it and watched The Searchers (a few times!). http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0049730/ show less

So ends my yearly Western read.

3 stars-- for initiating a really good discussion on perception brilliantly.* It felt like a lot of older books do though, like [b:Random Harvest|413618|Random Harvest|James Hilton|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1358758527s/413618.jpg|6860]. A good amount of the time nothing really happened. It was a lot of vignettes, strung together to make an experience. I wish it was shorter and easier to teach in schools.

Having grown up loving the film, through no one's fault but my own, I was naturally heart-broken at certain points of the story, and pleased with others. * I think, perhaps, that the film holds up better than the book.** But, again, I make that statement because I saw the film first and I show more projected it onto the text. But it was hard to escape the stark tension in the film.


*That belt buckle, though!?! And that final chapter!?!
** in everything but the racism. See previous *. show less

This is not a formula Western, though it has since spawned some imitations, I have listed it as Historical fiction and not just an oater, because it isn't. The characters are well developed, and the sense of place developed very well. I've read it three times, first as a Reader's Digest Condensed Book, and I was happy to find the full text later. It is one of the few films in which I can watch John Wayne perform. (I'm a Randolph Scot/Clint Eastwood kind of guy) It repays the reading.

The Searchers is an iconic novel of the American West written by Alan Le May in 1954. Many people are more familiar with the John Ford movie of the same name which followed 2 years later and is an acknowledged cinematic masterpiece. However, the book is well worth reading and stands on its own merits.

As a new reader of Western fiction, the Searchers epitomized to me post Civil War Texas. It encompasses many familiar characters and themes: the hard scrabble frontier existence, the solitary and stubborn cowboy, family and community values, fearful Comanche raids, and survival on the vast empty land relying on your horse and your wits.

Well researched and well written, I enjoyed the language and style of writing very much. There was fine show more attention to detail on the daily life in the saddle of our two principals, Amos and Mart, on the lifestyle of the Comanches and the dealings with various nefarious individuals that Amos and Mart run into during their six-year search for abducted niece, Debbie.

For the most part, the characters are fully three-dimensional. You can feel their disappointment, fear, focus and exhaustion as they track Debbie and her Comanche captors. Relationships are complex and sometimes conflicted and Martin matures and comes into his own as a man during his wanderings.

Well done and enjoyable reading for anyone interested in the Old West. show less

The novel is not as noxious as the John Wayne film, first of all. That would be difficult. I don't think it can quite escape the film's shadow, however. I can recommend it as a good book to read mindfully, to read not so much for the story itself but to remain aware of one's feelings with respect to portrayed events.

I have loved the film for years now and wasn't disappointed by the book. Like a good story's it was richer in detail and more in depth character development than film. Recommend if you love Westerns.