Weave a circle round
him thrice
And close your eyes
with holy dread
For he on honey-dew
hath fed
And drunk the milk of
Paradise.
—Samuel Taylor
Coleridge; Kubla Khan
Last year, when I
reviewed Shane by Jack Schaefer,
I admitted that I did not know much about Westerns and that I intended to
rectify the mistake. Well... it's taken me a while to get around to it. I have so many books lying unread on my shelves... But because of my blog, I tend to emphasize crime and detective fiction. As a result, I have plenty of books in other genres lying unread and which I will probably never read if I follow my current reading patterns. So I've decided to rebel. For the next little bit -- maybe one week, maybe two, maybe a month... who knows? It depends how much I enjoy myself... - I've decided to take a small hiatus from mysteries and to focus on other genres. (There might be one or two mystery reviews, but these would be out of my backlog.) And to kick this break off, today I’d like to talk about another Western that
was recommended to me by Bill Pronzini: The
Shootist by Glendon Swarthout.
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| The scene of the crime has temporarily been taken over by other genres. All those who object may use the provided space-time continuum to proceed to the next crime fiction review. |
Western fans might recognize the title as
the title of John Wayne’s final movie, and for good reason: that movie was
adapted from the book by the author’s own son, Miles Hood Swarthout. The film
co-starred such legendary actors as Lauren Bacall and Jimmy Stewart, and it
included other high-profile names: Ron Howard, Scatman Crothers, Richard Boone,
Harry Morgan, and John Carradine all come to mind. I consider the movie to be
one of the finest Westerns ever made, a poignant valentine to the Western and
the type of iconic hero John Wayne might have played. (Indeed, the movie began
with a unique sequence, in which a series of clips from Wayne’s glory days in
film were used to show his character’s
glory days.)
