By Duane Spurlock
Here at The Pulp Rack, I've written a few essays about how Frederick Faust (Max Brand) used landscape in his stories. In many cases, the landscape acts as a character—it provides an obstacle for a protagonist to overcome, much as a dragon or a chapel perilous might serve as a test for a hero on a quest. In other cases, the landscape serves an expressionistic role that highlights or reveals something about a character's qualities or psychological makeup, much in the way the film directors of the 1920s, '30s and '40s used expressionistic scenery and sets to create an atmosphere of menace and visually portray a character's psychological state.
I finally got around to reading one of Faust's most famous novels, Destry Rides Again. I've seen two or three times the Jimmy Stewart movie supposedly based on this novel—the two have as much alike as a porcupine and a silk scarf—and so had put off reading this particular story. However, it turned out to be quite different than I was expecting. Originally serialized in six parts as "Twelve Peers" in Street & Smith's Western Story Magazine issues Feb. 1, 1930 – March 8, 1930 (I read the book edition, an Aeonian Press reprint of the 1930 Dodd, Mead edition), the narrative differs also from the other stories we've looked at from the landscape angle. In each of the previous works we've examined, the landscape reflects in some fashion the conflict around which the plot revolves or acts as a protagonist or challenge to the hero. In this latter role, landscape tests the hero to help determine his worthiness to be considered heroic.
Destry is a novel of conversion, the conversion of the hero. When we say conversion these days, many readers may assume a spiritual conversion is meant. From what I've read about Faust, he was not necessarily a religious person. Instead, it might be more accurate to say that literature was his religion. He was very well read, and among his favorite reading materials were works infused with aspects of Christianity—-Shakespeare's plays, Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Dante's Divine Comedy, and so forth. While Faust lived in Italy, he would read aloud from his favorite works and could discuss literature all night long with guests. He loved literature, absorbed what he read like a sponge, and all that he read informed his own writing in some fashion. So, while Faust was not particularly religious, Christian motifs and elements entered his writing from time to time—-simply look to works like Luck, Crossroads, or "The Bells of San Carlos"—-and that, to some extent, happens in Destry Rides Again. Destry's conversion is not an overtly Christian conversion, but it borrows from Christianity by focusing on an epiphany initiated by the sacrifice of an innocent.
From the opening, Harry Destry is already heroic, larger than life. He is the best shot, the best fighter, the best knife thrower to be found in the town of Wham. He has proven his greatness before the novel even begins. That isn't to say that the narrative includes no testing of Destry, because he carries a flaw —- pride, or arrogance —- that leads to the tests he faces during the course of the novel. However, although there are a few scenes in which Destry is on the run, I was surprised as I read to find that he is not really tested by the landscape in the way Faust's characters typically are challenged by the natural world.
But the challenges of the natural world do play a smaller part with a secondary character. Willie Thornton is a country boy of 10 years or so who is filled with hero worship for the famous Harry Destry. During the course of the novel, Willie becomes heroic. He is the character Faust chooses to be tested by landscape.
Chased by a murderer to a river, Willie manages to survive the currents, only to fall comatose to weariness, exposure, and fever. Later, Willie rises from his sick bed, still weak with fever, to ride across the countryside in search of Destry to save his hero from the murderer's plot. To the boy's fever-wracked eyes and mind, the landscape takes on a magical form and is animated by strange energies, reflecting Willie's passage from mere boyhood to the land of heroes:
"He rode into a queer fairyland, for it was the golden time of the afternoon, and hills and trees to the fevered eyes of the boy were enwrapped with mists of rich fire, shot with rose. The dust that puffed up under the hoofs of the horse rose as a magic vapor; the wind struck it away, or tossed it high and thin in weird shapes. The world was possessed of motion—the hills rolled in waves, the trees swayed, the road itself heaved and fell gently before him." (p. 255)
Willie's quest allows him to enter this magic-infused land of heroes. The reader has already seen Destry travel through it, and by describing the mountains as giants standing in "glistening armor," Faust animates the land with the same heroic energy that emanates from Destry:
"So all this rough-headed sea of mountains was really a gigantic preserve for Destry, and the harsh face of it pleased him more than ever did the barbed wire fence of a landowner who wishes to guard his game. Moreover, there was such beauty here as soft green hills, and pleasant meadows, and ploughed fields never could afford; for all about him the giants stood up in glistening armor against the pale blue sky and raised his heart and his thoughts with them." (p. 239)
(This discussion would fit in well with my earlier essay, "Faust's Men and the Mountains," which appears elsewhere on The Pulp Rack. In the paragraph immediately following, Faust contrasts this heroic land to that of the common folks:
"So Destry felt as he stared about him at the highlands. But yonder in the mist which covered the lower region of Wham and its surrounding valley were many men, danger, deceit, struggle, doubt of one another." (p. 239))
Willie's heroism reveals to Destry his flaw, by which Destry becomes more human—he becomes aware of his arrogance and the self-centered quality of his vengeance on the 12 men who wrongly sentenced him to prison. With fresh humility, Destry becomes more heroic in the reader's eyes:
"…this boy had once almost died for him, and now actually might be dying for him in fact. He knew it, and wonder filled him. He became to himself something more than a mere name and a vague thing; he for the first time visualized 'Destry' as that man appeared before the eyes of others, striking terror, striking wonder, filling at least the eyes of a child with an ideal!
Knowing this, he felt a sudden scorn for the baser parts that were in him, the idler, the scoffer at others, the disdainful mocker at the labors of life. He wished to be simple, real, quiet, able to command the affection of his peers.
It seemed to Destry that, through the boy, for the first time he could realize the meaning of the word 'peer.'" (pp. 267-8)
Through Destry's stunning recognition of his own role in the dilemma in which he finds himself, he realizes that Willie's quest to save him makes the boy more heroic than the man Willie worships:
"He [Destry], too, had been a child; so were they all, men, and women, children also, needing help, protection, cherishing, but capable now and then and here and there of great deeds inspired by love and high aspiration. It was such a power that had come upon little Willie Thornton. He with his small hand had snatched a life from the shadow of the law and thrown another man in the peril of the gibbet!" (p. 269)
Links:
Other articles on Frederick Faust at The Pulp Rack that relate to this article:
Click here to read "Faust's Men and the Mountains."
Click here to read "Frederick Faust’s Use of Landscape: 'The One-Way Trail.'"
Click here for the index of entries at The Pulp Rack about Max Brand.
Click here to purchase a DVD of the 1939 film featuring Jimmy Stewart.
Posted by ds at April 14, 2006 04:47 PM
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