And by twenty-one all that he knew was the power of the gun

[sovay]

I just finished re-reading Jack Schaefer's Shane (1949) for the first time in more than twenty years. I found a critical edition—the restored "words that might offend" are about a dozen incidences of "hell" and "damn," edited out when the novel was reprinted in 1954 and kept bowdlerized in school editions since. Which is almost certainly how I first encountered it, since it was assigned reading in my seventh-grade English class. I can't remember what we were intended to learn from it.¹ Mostly I remember that my mother showed me the 1953 film afterward and the only actor whose memory stayed with me was Alan Ladd even though he didn't look at all like the dark, wiry, dangerously black-clad Shane of the book. But I'd liked the story and I wasn't at all sure how it was going to have held up, being an archetypal Western written in the first half of the twentieth century. I am pleased to report that not only has Shane not been visited by the suck fairy, it's a lot more interesting than I was able to appreciate in seventh grade or really have the attention to analyze at the end of this very sleepless week. Stylistically, I didn't expect the language to remind me of Le Guin. I think it's the deliberate simplicity that handles details and abstractions with the same degree of significance; the first-person narrative looks back on a life-changing summer of the narrator's childhood with all the experience of the decades since, but reports only what he understood at the time and lets the adult reader infer the more complex connections that were only starting to become visible to eight- or nine-year-old Bob Starrett in 1889. I have the same kind of double vision, coming back to the story all these years later. At the age of eleven or twelve, I responded most strongly to the supernatural overtones of Shane. He's human, he bleeds, he loves, he's good with children, he has to learn about farming to stay with the Starretts, he has a sense of humor and a lot of believably written damage, but he's also the stranger who comes out nowhere to perform a heroic deed at his own cost and vanish when his work is done—the man in black, the man with no name, an apparition of a mythically violent world already passing away. He appears out of the clarity of sunlight on the road and disappears when a cloud crosses the moon. It was easy for me to imagine him as some aspect of the land, a mythago of the American West if I'd known the word then. The original serial published in Argosy in 1946 went by the title Rider from Nowhere. As an adult, I'm left struck by the intimacy between the three adults in the narrator's life, a state of affairs which the boy who loves and idolizes the mysterious, competent, self-contained stranger finds so natural, it doesn't even rate remarking on: how easily his parents accommodate Shane as an integral part of the household, a tacit third parent to Bob and a kind of shadow partner to each of them; he is easier in their company than he's been with himself in a long time, healing into someone who isn't always combat-scanning his environment for danger even if he will never take a seat with his back to the door, and in return they are inspired to be the best versions of their already brave and affectionate selves around him, recognizing his trust for the rarity it is and not wanting to let it down. The attraction between Shane and Marian Starrett is a binding between all three of them, not a source of rivalry or tension. "Did ever a woman have two such men?" she exults and laments after Shane and Joe have taken down a barful of bullies in tandem; her husband's response is the notably non-territorial, "Don't fret yourself, Marian. I'm man enough to know a better when his trail meets mine. Whatever happens will be all right." He carried Shane out of the bar after the fight, gathering the smaller, more badly battered man gently into his arms like, the narrator thinks, "he did me when I stayed up too late and got all drowsy and had to be carried to bed." Later in the novel, after a close brush with a hired killer whose provocatively crude remarks about Marian almost led to violence on the part of both men, Bob watches all three of his parents worry about one another:

It was only then that I realized mother was gripping my shoulders so that they hurt. She dropped on a chair and held me to her. We could hear father and Shane on the porch.

"He'd have drilled you, Joe, before you could have brought the gun up and pumped in a shell."

"But you, you crazy fool!" Father was covering his feelings with a show of exasperation. "You'd have made him plug you just so I'd have a chance to get him."

Mother jumped up. She pushed me aside. She flared at them from the doorway. "And both of you would have acted like fools just because he said that about me. I'll have you two know that if it's got to be done, I can take being insulted just as much as you can."

Peering around her, I saw them gaping at her in astonishment. "But, Marian," father objected mildly, coming to her. "What better reason could a man have?"

"Yes," said Shane gently. "What better reason?" He was not looking just at mother. He was looking at the two of them.

Shane leaves behind a lot more than the chance of a life without violence when he rides away at the novel's end. It's a much more muted ending than the film's, too, underscoring the Starretts' decision to stay on the farm that Shane sacrificed his best self for as a form of keeping faith with him—"So you'd run out on Shane just when he's really here to stay!"—and finally shifting the narrative into the tangle of stories that grew up around the stranger after his departure, each more outlandish than the last, none of which bother Bob because he knows none of them get anywhere near the truth. "He belonged to me, to father and mother and me, and nothing could ever spoil that." That interests me now because I can think of at least two other novels I read early which close with this same kind of dissolve into myth that the reader knows to recognize as a normal human tendency, but also not trust as the final word. I just can't remember if I identified it as such at the time. It should not surprise me that Shane the novel is in part a story about stories, though, because so many of the narratives I love are. I'm not sure the film is. I should probably rewatch it to be sure. I should get some sleep first.

1. It was my first year in a public school rather than the alternative private school I'd spent my first six grades in; I was nonplussed by a lot of the curriculum. We read at least one awesomely depressing short Steinbeck novel—either The Red Pony (1933) or The Pearl (1947), which in combination with Of Mice and Men (1937) the next year convinced me that I hated Steinbeck until I discovered Cannery Row (1945) and Sweet Thursday (1954) in college—and some short fiction it's difficult for me to recall because I always read the rest of the anthologies around the assigned stories, so Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment" and Ray Bradbury's "Fever Dream" might have been required reading or they might just have been adjacent to O. Henry's "A Retrieved Reformation." I think we must have read Theodore Taylor's The Cay (1969) because I have vague memories of making a map of the island. Without going through boxes in my parents' house, I have no idea what else. In the middle school library on my own time I read Jean M. Auel's The Clan of the Cave Bear (1980), which almost certainly influenced me more than anything I read for school that year, God help me.

Comments

[movingfinger]

Everyone read The Cay in school. Quite possibly they are still assigning that book and a craft project of some kind to go with it. We made dioramas. And The Red Pony. A curriculum to sour the noncommittal reader on reading.

[yhlee]

I escaped The Cay and The Red Pony but remember both being in elementary school classroom libraries.

[sovay]

I escaped The Cay and The Red Pony but remember both being in elementary school classroom libraries.

Bullet dodged!

I really can't remember if we were assigned The Red Pony or The Pearl—I would read whatever was in circulation in other classes whenever I found the copies lying around, so I remember reading The Pearl in my seventh-grade science classroom and I think the little laminated hardcover had been left there by a previous student, because I have a memory of it lying on the countertop beneath the cabinets, but it's equally possible it was assigned reading that I just happened to complete in this fashion while having access to a copy of my own. Meanwhile, I have perfectly clear and vivid memories of reading Monica Hughes' The Keeper of the Isis Light (1980), The Guardian of Isis (1981), and The Isis Pedlar (1982) in the stacks of the midde school library; I've never read them again, but I can tell you that the third book has a serious case of Space Irish. I don't understand my brain's system of priorities.

[sovay]

Everyone read The Cay in school. Quite possibly they are still assigning that book and a craft project of some kind to go with it. We made dioramas.

Huh. I wonder how it got fixed in the curriculum. As books about race go, I'm pretty sure I read more complex ones in elementary school.

I did not have to make a lot of dioramas in school. The only one I can remember was my choice, in sixth grade, for Felice Holman's Slake's Limbo (1974). I was very proud of the replica graffiti which I painted on the inside walls of the shoebox and the little grey rubber rat I found because it had a sweet face with dotted black eyes and it needed to look like a companion, not a health threat. In hindsight, I'm pretty sure the cover of the edition we read was whitewashed.

And The Red Pony. A curriculum to sour the noncommittal reader on reading.

To be fair to my school system, we also had reading projects of our own choice, which is how I made a poster for Brian Jacques' Mattimeo (1989) and read Diana Wynne Jones' Dogsbody (1975) chapter-by-chapter with my mother. But my brother, four years after me, got an even more depressing boatload of books in seventh and eighth grade, so maybe it's just an issue endemic to middle school.

[rushthatspeaks]

Not only did they assign us The Cay and a craft project, but the author was local, so he came in to speak and they showed the poor man all of our craft projects. In detail.

I mostly recall said author as looking very tired.

[sovay]

I mostly recall said author as looking very tired.

I wonder if that happened to him every year.

[yhlee]

I want to read this book now.

I had to read The Pearl and Of Mice and Men and, yeah, hated Steinbeck. Of Cannery Row, which we also read, I remember nothing except that it taught me the word "peristalsis."

[sovay]

I want to read this book now.

You absolutely should. It may be the archetypal I'm-your-gun story.

Of Cannery Row, which we also read, I remember nothing except that it taught me the word "peristalsis."

Hee. I like its language and I like the novel's collection of characters, especially Doc, the disreputable but ethical marine biologist of whom it's clear Steinbeck is also really fond. If there's a film adaptation, I've never seen it. There is a Rodgers and Hammerstein musical of Sweet Thursday called Pipe Dream (1955) and I think it would have been all right if it had been Rodgers and Hart. Later on I became fond of The Moon Is Down (1942) and The Grapes of Wrath (1939), mostly because I had a friend in grad school who made good arguments for both books, but it took some getting over the early exposure first.

[rosefox]

I read The Pearl in sixth grade (whyyyy would you do this to poor innocent children) and it completely put me off Steinbeck. I've never read anything else of his and quite likely never will.

Hooray for unexpected well-depicted polyamory! I want the fix-it fic where he comes back three days later going "I don't know what I was thinking, leaving you like that".

[sovay]

I read The Pearl in sixth grade (whyyyy would you do this to poor innocent children) and it completely put me off Steinbeck.

I can't think of a better way to do it (unless it's The Red Pony) and I can't think of a reason why anyone would. I get that you probably don't want to hit kids with The Grapes of Wrath right off the bat, but what's wrong with The Log from the Sea of Cortez (1951)? Co-written with Ed Ricketts, lots of nature writing and sea-writing and philosophical science, and if you must subject students to The Pearl, Steinbeck summarizes the plot in Sea of Cortez so they don't have to suffer unduly. The other way, I don't know how anybody's left who wants to read Steinbeck anymore.

Hooray for unexpected well-depicted polyamory!

I didn't remember it at all—I probably didn't notice it the first time around. I like the novel all the better for it now. I am grimly resigning myself to the likelihood that the film, having been made in the 1950's, probably either deletes this subplot or converts it into something zero-sum.

I want the fix-it fic where he comes back three days later going "I don't know what I was thinking, leaving you like that".

I would enjoy that very much.

[thawrecka]

I remember hating The Red Pony so very very much. Almost every book assigned me in English Literature until about year 12 was intolerably depressing or had characters I detested. Or both.

[sovay]

I remember hating The Red Pony so very very much.

I'm sensing a theme!

Almost every book assigned me in English Literature until about year 12 was intolerably depressing or had characters I detested. Or both.

When my brother got to eighth grade, his English class assigned him Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles (1950), at which point we all realized it didn't matter who the author was, they would be unerringly represented in the school curriculum by the most depressing work in their entire catalogue.

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

That sounds terrific - and I didn't even know it was a book before it was a movie!

[sovay]

That sounds terrific - and I didn't even know it was a book before it was a movie!

I recommend it! I didn't entirely expect to be able to. I haven't gotten into most of the essays in the critical edition yet, but one of the prefaces mentioned that while the novel was never a bestseller, it's never been out of print, either. Now I can see why. Just make sure you get the non-bowdlerized text!

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

Everything I know about Shane comes from the brief description of the movie in Margaret Storey's Pauline (children's/YA novel, 1965 -- you might like it). I've never known whether the Western movie the characters actually see (and greatly admire), The Slow Gun, is a real one or not. Can't find it by the title and main character name, so probably not.

[sovay]

Margaret Storey's Pauline (children's/YA novel, 1965 -- you might like it)

What's it like?

I've never known whether the Western movie the characters actually see (and greatly admire), The Slow Gun, is a real one or not. Can't find it by the title and main character name, so probably not.

You never know. After years of assuming that the movie titles in Daniel Pinkwater's The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death (1982) were all fictional, it turns out a surprising quantity of them aren't.

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

It's a very slice-of-life book (the Kirkus review complains about nothing much happening, which generally means the sort of book I like) about a girl (bookish and sensitive, natch) who has to stay with well-meaning but mostly unsympathetic relatives. The plot is predictable enough, but the point is the character sketches and the mid-1960s atmosphere. I really like the conversations with her school friends and her one sympathetic cousin.

[sovay]

The plot is predictable enough, but the point is the character sketches and the mid-1960s atmosphere. I really like the conversations with her school friends and her one sympathetic cousin.

Nice. I'll look for it in libraries. Thank you.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Love how your coming back to the story gives you the same double vision as the story's narrator has.

I read it around the same age, also for school. I remember doodling coiled springs in my notebook because the teacher talked about Shane being described as like a coiled spring. Now I want to go back and reread it, to see how the relationship between the three adults sits with me.

[sovay]

Love how your coming back to the story gives you the same double vision as the story's narrator has.

It was a great bonus!

Now I want to go back and reread it, to see how the relationship between the three adults sits with me.

I really loved the novel, read as an adult. I'm a little scared of rewatching the film now.

[daidoji-gisei.livejournal.com]

I read this book 5 or 6 years ago, having picked up a copy in a damaged-book blowout at the UNL Press warehouse and never having heard of it before then. I was amazed by all the things that weren't said but were still there for the reader to see.

[sovay]

I was amazed by all the things that weren't said but were still there for the reader to see.

I should really get around to the rest of the critical edition and see if there are any essays that address them.

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

I just read it (not the critical edition) and was a bit gobsmacked that the first thing Marian asks Shane about is women's hats. And he knows the answer, because he is very observant. Only in a totally manly way for manly reasons, though. I mean, you never know when that woman's hat might try to kill you. You gotta have your back to the wall so you can keep a tight eye on all the hats.