Breakheart Pass by Alistair MacLean
1975; University of Nebraska Press; Volume: 10; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/wal.1975.0038
ISSN1948-7142
Autores Tópico(s)Themes in Literature Analysis
ResumoReviews 153 her to Eastern Oregon to kill a monster. They go; they come to the Hawkline mansion, and they discover the monster. I won’t tell the “plot”, so as not to destroy it, except that there is a happy ending to the main story, with an “unhappy” 18th-19th centuryish wrapping up, a “wry” attempt to slide over that fairy tale ending. Fairy tale is the key phrase, though. For The Haivkline Monster is a fairy tale for delayed adolescents. And, although I’ve said elsewhere that the intelligent young are no longer reading Brautigan, I may be wrong— Simon and Schuster need only to bring out a paperback (students don’t buy hardbacks) in order to have a fairy tale best seller. But wait — the Book of the Month Club offers it — along with an enthusiastic quote from Erich Segal, he who wrote Love Story. That audience is still out there, with its warm, soft, and conservative heart. L. L. LEE, Western Washington State College Breakheart Pass. By Alistair MacLean. (Garden City, New York: Double day, 1974. 178 pages. $5.95.) Breakheart Pass is the first Western by Alistar MacLean, the best selling author of such adventure mysteries as The Guns of Navarone and Ice Station Zebra, and it will hopefully be his last. Writing in the tradition of the popular Western, MacLean brings to this story of a United States Army train on its way to Fort Humboldt in the Old West to fight a supposed cholera epidemic all the inappropriate trappings of a not-so-polite British mystery story. Theoretically the “action” takes place in the West, but action sequences are few and far between; the characters mostly talk about them. It is almost as if MacLean has rediscovered the dime novel, and interest ingly, Breakheart Pass is similar in some important ways to a novel like Seth Jones. In both novels, for example, the protagonists have hidden identities. In MacLean’s novel, the main character, John Deakin, is in reality a Federal Agent who is disguised as an accused arsonist and murderer. Seth Jones was, of course, in disguise until he revealed his true identity as the much revered Eugene Morton just in time to marry the lovely Ina Haverland whom he had lately rescued from the wily savages. And both novels have more than a little gratuitous violence. Who can forget the ending to Chapter 7 of Seth Jones where our hero calmly tomahawked an unsuspecting savage to death while the other Indians looked on with amaze 154 Western American Literature ment? In Breakheart Pass Deakin is constantly jamming his Colt into the ribs, kidneys, and teeth of unlikeable foes and frequently helping people off the train in a most ungentlemanly and deadly manner. He is not even above clubbing an unsuspecting foe from behind. In short, Deakin is no stranger to the belief that a lot of might on the side of justice is acceptable. While the novel is set in the Old West, as far as the plot is concerned it could just as well have been located in New Jersey. The landscape is not central to the plot; the novel, in fact, never leaves the track beds. MacLean’s major failing, however, is that he chooses to inform the reader about a character’s personality or motives, and even sometimes actions, instead of allowing the character to act or speak for himself/herself. Of Colonel Claremont, a major character, he writes: “A meticulous and exceptionally thorough individual . . . one who had a powerful aversion to the even tenor of his ways being interrupted far less disrupted and one who was totally incapable of suffering either fools or incompetence gladly”. . . . (p. 20) Of Garritty, a minor character, he writes: “Garritty appeared to smile but, behind all that russet foliage, his intended expression was almost wholly a matter for conjecture.” (p. 14) If he were still alive, Max Brand would find such prose cause for a showdown! The novel’s plot concerns a deceptive plan to steal gold bullion from Fort Humboldt using Indian accomplices who are to be paid in brand new Winchester repeating rifles, a deed tantamout, as we all know...
Referência(s)