Shane: Twenty-five Years Later
1974; University of Nebraska Press; Volume: 9; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/wal.1974.0016
ISSN1948-7142
Autores Tópico(s)American Literature and Culture
ResumoNOTES G E R A L D H A S L A M California State College, Sonoma Shane: Twenty-five Years Later In 1949 an eastern newspaperman published a short novel set in a Wyoming valley where the conflict between a free-range cattleman and stubborn yeomen farmers intent upon homesteading allowed a gunfighter to try altering his life. He rode into our valley in the summer of ’89. . . . In that clear Wyoming air I could see him plainly, though he was still several miles away. There seemed nothing remarkable about him, just another stray horseman riding up the road toward the cluster of frame buildings that was our town. Then I saw a pair of cowhands, loping past him, stop and stare with a curious intentness. The rider was Shane, and the writer was Jack Schaefer. Today, after some sixty editions in twenty-five different languages, Shane (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1949) remains among the most popular and also most studied novels in Western American Literature. It has been attacked as being “simple,” a “mere code western,” but it has endured for a quarter century. That the novel was converted into a memorable motion picture certainly transfused further life into the book. But the elements of the novel that allowed it to be so compellingly dramatized must be credited with much of the film’s success. Alan Ladd, Jean Arthur, 216 Western American Literature Ben Johnson, Van Heflin, Brandon DeWilde, and Jack Palance aside, without the powerful simplicity of Schaefer’s story, there was no movie. Jack Schaefer did not remain an easterner long. He relocated in New Mexico where he now lives. And he did not fall for the big money hucksterism that urged him to write sequels to Shane. His artistic sense told him that that story was done, so he involved himself ever more deeply in the history and myth of his chosen region, and continued writing, producing at least two other memorable books: The Canyon (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1953), and Monte Walsh (Boston: Hough ton Mifflin, 1963). Best of all, he is still writing. Shane introduced readers to a slate-hard style, to atale-teller’s grasp of plot and character, and to a scholar’s detailed quest for historical truth as best it could be known. But it did more: it revealed a writer who could capture the magic of an area along with its ordinariness. By the time one read the final, powerful lines — He was a man who rode into our little valley out of the heart of the great and glowing West and when his work was done rode back whence he had come and he was Shane. — it was clear that not just a book, but a man ofspecial quality had come West. Today, twenty-five years later, we can offer Jack congratulations, and thanks. ...
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