Riders of the Purple Sage, Zane Grey

This is the second book that I've read of Zane Grey's. When I had finished his other book, The Last Trail, I had gone to Wikipedia.org to pick up a bit about Zane Grey. In the reading of the first paragraph, it mentioned that this book, Riders of the Purple Sage, was his first and perhaps his best book. The previous book disturbed me for its content, bothered me for its romantic interlude, its nearly perfect heroes and heroines, and most of all for the not too infrequent remarks about natives, and the plot which was quite cruel to them. However, what shone forth from that book was his ability to narrate a story with brilliant descriptions in setting. This book is available freely at Gutenberg.org.

When I decided to read this story, I wanted to choose something that was quick and easy to digest. This was both. But also there's this other thing that heppened to me in the other book that has given me a lot of food for thought about what I could do to make a new tale from the perspective of the other side of the coin. ie., from the perspective of the natives, or even the outlaws. A story like that has a lot of promise, and it could be teased into either a western or even into a scifi story. The more I've been thinking about it, the more I've liked it. Being an amateur writer, this kind of thing really motivates me to pick another story and read it.

With all that said, I'd wager that now's the time to dig into the book itself. I'd already finished reading the story by the time I started to write my thoughts on it.

First off, the amount of bad-mouthing that was bothersome in The Last Trail is minimal here. Most often they're referred to in the same breath as animals, and at one point as child-like. He even writes that maybe this way of thinking and seeing the world, with eyes too naive and young and innocent to lie either to others or to one's own self. Also, there are no Native Americans in this tale. They only exist in comparisons. Several times one might consider it flattering. They're supposed to be remarkably stealthy, and so to be quiet like an Indian would be a positive comparison to make about how the hero is able to accomplish something.

Another mention here that's important to the story is that this is a tale about Mormons. It's not a flattering tale at all. It's quite simply a mixture of a bunch of bad rustlers and Mormons who are rustlers. It's a tale of jealous rage where a girl is captured from a village to be added to the collection of wives. So, there does seem to be quite a bit of tale directed against the reputation of Mormons. Now, I don't know truth from fiction in terms of how Mormons were in those days. Although I was one for a year or so, I was in a small city where Mormons are a minority. So, mostly they're decent folks who don't want to bother other people. But this is something I've noticed in religions: minorities are often like that. It's when folks are the majority that the abuse comes, regardless of which religion it is. Having never been in Utah I couldn't say for certain that this is the case for that cult as well, but my social theory has deep roots in a long list of histories of a variety of cultures through the centuries. Human nature is what it is and seems to care little for the rules both real and hidden in a variety of different cults.

In this book, I might say that the characters cleanly fit the stereotypes that were set in the first book I read. There are two main heroes. First, the seasoned warrior, Lassiter. He is a man who has killed in cold blood, or so goes the legend (but the reality is he's a killer in the name of both defence and revenge). He is an alpha male who drives fear into the hearts of men who vastly outnumber him. Only in the end are any encounters detailed, and even these are secondhand tales told by witnesses or even by the main character himself. We are never actually exposed to the actual incidents.

The second main hero, Venters, perhaps the main hero but not quite the equal of the former, is young when we first meet him. I say he might be the main hero because we do get to see into his actions first hand like witnesses rather than as hearsay. However, in terms of the weight of narration, my guess is that the first hero has gotten the most printed about him. Back to the second hero: he is a boy on the very verge of becoming a man. He is a Gentile (non-Mormon) and more than half the host of problems that will assault the heroes and those who rely on their care. Well, at this time he's naked without a weapon, and it's with ease that he is being brought out to be punished for getting himself involved with a Mormon though he's a Gentile. This punishment is interrupted by Lessiter. His reputation as a gunman and his cold cool and calm confidence is enough to scare off the antagonists. However, after fleeing into the wilderness and stumbling on the woman who will become his love interest, he becomes a tough and hardened man who seems to be just as tough as Lessiter. However, at one point he does become mad (as in blood lust crazy) and murders a bad man in cold blood.

The women are basically two. The main female character is incredibly beautiful. There is no one to compare her to. She's the alpha female, and her beauty, wealth, and stubborn adherence to her own will are the main ingredients which continue to feed the narrative throughout the book. She is soft natured, and unwilling to prejudice herself against Gentiles even though she herself is a Mormon. She also works until the very end to shelter the Mormons from the guns of Lessiter until she's finally come round to the idea that there's nothing to do but stop violence with violence. Nonetheless, the violence that Lessiter commits is no longer on a hair trigger. It takes an awful lot of instigation to make him come at their enemies, guns ablazing.

The second woman also fits the profile of the ideal woman, though younger. She's innocent: too innocent. She's profoundly beautiful. Little is written about her. For most of the book she is helpless and on the cusp of dying except for the careful attention of, ironically, the man who shot her, Venters. She's then kept out of the excitement until the final act of the book hidden away in an old Aztec dwelling. She is weak and strong at the same time. At one point she is described as being a horse rider without equal.

Again, in this novel, the scenes are gorgeously rendered. Zane's detailed pen somehow manages to paint a stirringly beautiful rendition of his settings while at the same time adding tension and or mood to the scene.

This book was a lot less offensive to me than the first one I read. However, if I was still a Mormon, perhaps the opposite would be true. I think I would find it highly offensive.