Comments on reviews (April 1998)

On Suzanne Brockmann's Review of Shane

As a writer of romance fiction, Suzanne Brockmann brings to her informal, yet insightful, appreciation of Shane a refreshing point of view not often found in the critical literature. Her frank admission that Shane still leaves her "breathless" after "countless readings" is an implicit reminder that Jack Schaefer wrote the novel for adults, not children (for whom it tends to be marketed)--though it does have special appeal for young adolescent readers, as evidenced by Story Tweedy-Yates's review, discussed below.

A few factual and interpretive errors should be corrected, however, if only "for the record": (1) there is only one cattle baron (Fletcher) in the novel; (2) Shane first rides onto the Starrett homestead, not into town; (3) the story is told not from the viewpoint of Bob Starrett as a boy, but of the man recalling his childhood--a subtle detail commonly overlooked; and, most importantly, (4) Shane is not, properly speaking, a "hired killer," since that term connotes a cold-blooded murderer, whereas Schaefer implies that Shane's gunfighting is always employed in the cause of justice,

Of greater import is Ms. Brockmann's claim that Shane feels anguish "over the struggle to do right when every cell in his body wants to do otherwise"--seeming to imply that "do[ing] "otherwise" means doing wrong. It is a mistake to suggest that Shane "struggle[s] to do right," when doing right is at the very core of his being--as I argue in "Jack Schaefer, Teller of Tales." Shane's anguish is over the conflict between a deeply felt moral obligation to use force (lethal, if need be) in the cause of right, and his seemingly impossible quest for a tranquil life.

Regarding Ms. Brockmann's criticism that Schaefer might have given Marion something better to do than baking an apple pie (to show her "stubborn strength and spirit" in one of the novel's pivotal scenes)--and her subsequent decision to "let it slide" because Shane was written "in the dark ages of the 1940's"--I note the more relevant fact that the novel is set in the 1890's, on the American frontier, a time and a place in which such domestic skills formed part of an equitable division of labor that had survival value, psychological as well as physical, and were the existential equivalent of such "manly" tasks as mending fences or, more tellingly in Shane, clearing the land of stumps.--Louis Torres

On Story Tweedy-Yates's Review of Shane

This little gem of a review, written by a twelve-year-old student a few years ago, is remarkable for its "highly refined sense of literary analysis," as her teacher then remarked--a sense often more astute than that of scholars writing on the subject. Story recognizes that Shane is "gentleman-like" (though she errs in calling him a "cowboy"), and "a good man" despite his "dark past." In remarking that he "has become" good, however, she mistakenly implies that he had once been bad. As I suggest above, and as I have argued elsewhere, Schaefer provides subtle clues throughout the novel to indicate that Shane was always virtuous.

Story's speculation that Shane must have had a troubled childhood--most likely an abusive father--is most astute, and helps to explain his heartfelt remark (which she quotes) that young Bob has "a real man behind him" (his father)--"the kind that could back him for the chance another kid never had." It also sheds light on the tender solicitude Shane expresses toward Bob throughout the novel. This allusion to child abuse brings to mind Schaefer's great cowboy hero Monte Walsh, and his youthful confrontation with a violently abusive stepfather. One can easily imagine Shane fleeing his boyhood home under similar circumstancs. (In Monte Walsh, the youthful Monte escapes on horseback, leaving behind his hapless mother, whom he loves but never sees again.) Schaefer's two heroes are similar in many essential respects.

Finally, Story's concluding remark that she loves the novel because Schaefer "made [her] wish that [she] was Bob" is disarmingly revealing of her unselfconscious affection for the tale of Schaefer's gunfighter-hero, and for the hero himself. Her review, much like Suzanne Brockmann's, noted above, thereby exemplifies a principle defended recently by Professor Robert Alter (in the Winter 1998 newsletter of the Association of Literary Scholars and Critics): it is, he argues, "perfectly healthy for critics to express unabashedly what in some circles is now regarded as an embarrassment--their love for the works of literature they discuss."--Louis Torres

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