Shane

Rating:
Summary: Can see why its a Classic !
Review: I am new to the Western genre but I love it. I heard Shane is considered to be the best western novel ever. I just read it and although I understand that there is so much more to western stories than is displayed in this short book, but in the AMAZING way that this one was written, I can see why it is so beloved.
I enjoy Louis Lamour and am looking forward to trying other authors who have received good reviews such as Elmer Kelton, Kirby Jonas,Glendon Swarthout and Mike Blakely among others. Shane is soo ENGAGING. Honestly, the best way to describe it is UNIQUE. Get it !!!!

Rating:
Summary: Shane - The epic western hero
Review: I first heard of "Shane" in the 50's when Alan Ladd made a movie of the book. While I in general liked the movie (who doesn't like westerns), I didn't care for the casting of the supporting stars, in particular Brandon DeWilde, Jean Arthur, and Van Halen (?). I didn't read the book until the 70's and was totally blown away by way it was written. In my opinion, Schaefer dwarfs both L'Amour and Grey. The lead character shows that he is subject to all the strengths and weaknesses of all men, but unlike weaker men, he is able to overcome his weaknesses to ultimately achieve his ideals in the end. The final shootout was an excellant climax for the book. I highly recommend this book to anyone whether they like westerns or not.

Rating:
Summary: A Little Masterpiece
Review: This tale of the mysterious stranger who rides in from the distant hills and rides off again, in the end, is mythic archetype of the first order. Shane, unknown and brooding, finds a place for himself at a little farmstead where he is befriended by the farmer's young son, trying desperately to shed his past and make a new and simpler life for himself among the good homesteaders who surround him. But the scheming cattle barons in the area, who control the town and seek to drive the homesteaders out make this impossible. The farmer and his wife who have befriended Shane are already being sucked into a confrontation, not of their own making, in which they must give up everything they have and flee their valley, along with their kind, or stand and fight and be destroyed by the cattlemen who want to keep the range free, at whatever the cost. Shane, the mystery man, tries to help the farmers stand up to the cowboy bullies sent by the ranchers but matters get out of hand when the head rancher, frustrated by Shane's presence and backbone, calls in a ruthless gunman from nearby Cheyenne to bring matters to a head. But Shane is more than what he seems as our little boy narrator and the cattle barons and the farmer and his wife soon find out and the tale culminates in a final confrontation which is emotionally powerful as strong men face one another in a battle for justice and right. A great, if rather short, tale, the epitome of the Old West. I loved this book and the movie that came after it. By the way, Clint Eastwood's film, Pale Rider, is another re-make, albeit with some variations, of this very wonderful novel. -- SWM

Rating:
Summary: Discover a relatively unknown American classic!
Review: I was turned onto this book in an online forum and decided to check it out. I was glad that I did. This book should rank as one of the great American classics. Set in 1889, it tells the story, from a coming-of-age boy's point of view, of how a stranger comes to town and changes everything. The story focuses on a rising conflict between homesteading farmers and ranchers, who see the farmers as encroaching on their lands. On the surface, this sounds like just another run-of-the mill Western. But this is not your typical Western at all. There are no gun fights (except at the very end) or chasing of Indians.

I was captivated with the story from the very first few pages and I found it difficult to put the book down. This book - actually a long short story - is tightly written. Not a word is wasted. Though the book was short, I found myself slowing down and absorbing each word, as if I was savoring a fine slab of prime rib. This is not the sort of book you want to rush through.

The story conveys some very powerful moral themes but you must read the book carefully to grasp them all. These moral themes are just as important today as they were on the American frontier 100 years ago. One is that it is far better to face danger and risk death than to run from it and not be able to live with yourself afterwards. Another is that pacifism only ensures your own destruction. You must be prepared to defend yourself against your adversaries. You cannot expect to get along with them or allow them to "buy you off." For once they do, you have sold your soul to them.

The underlying theme of the entire story however is the coming of age of the boy (who narrates this story) and the powerful life lessons that the stranger (Shane) provides to him.

I know this book was made into a movie but I have never seen it. Having read the book, I have little desire to see the movie. No movie can possibly surpass the vivid images this book has left in my imagination of what life might have been like on the American frontier in the late 1800s.

Lastly, despite the cover art and the poor placement of this book in bookstores (usually the teen section), this is not a "children's book." It is very much an adult book. Of course, it can be read by teenagers, but it is much more challenging then Harry Potter and other fare associated with teens today.

Rating:
Summary: Classic western for children and adults
Review: I suspect only an American could have written this book. And
not because it's a Western. It's the style--clean, sparse, simple, without a wasted word. It reminds me somewhat of Hemingway. Although I don't like to use the word, I have to call
this novel a classic (when anyone says the word, "Shane," doesn't everyone know what that means?) Most everyone would enjoy it, whether they're children or adults. It's short enough to be read in one sitting. There's no need to go into the plot;

all the rest of the reviews have done that. All I'll say is that I recommend it, and I think nearly everyone will enjoy it.

Rating:
Summary: THE GREATEST WESTERN
Review: This book is definely one of the best westerns ever written, if not "THE BEST". I read this as a child, about 12 yrs. old. Now, in my twenties, I still love it.

Rating:
Summary: Poignant and engrossing
Review: When this was made into a movie I was seeing lots of movies, but I never saw Alan Ladd in this. I must have thought it was just a Western and I ordinarily skipped them. Surely a mistake, I now know since after reading the book I surely want to see the movie (rated five stars and "one of the best westerns ever made" in my Video and Movie Guide). I was really caught up in this story, and my attention was held as surely as when I read "Where the Red Fern Grows"--also a book told from a young boy's view. I found Shane a poignant, thrilling, suspenseful and satisfying book, and it can be read in a very short time, since it is truly unlaydownable and only 214 pages.

Rating:
Summary: It's the worst book I've ever read!
Review: This is a horrible book! It's about a stupid gun man with a dark past! He comes to this family and causes havic in this small stupid western town! It's sexist and racist and just so bad, and still trying to figure out what to do with the book!

Rating:
Summary: One of the best Westerns ever
Review: Folks, I'm James Drury, who you might remember as television's THE VIRGINIAN, and once in a while I read a book that just has to be read over and over and over. Shane was such a book. The fact that there could be any rating in this section other than a 5 simply astounds me. People keep talking about this stump in the book like the book was about the stump. If you think the book was "about a stump" you are too young to be reading beyond grade school level. Jack Schaefer had a hugely powerful grasp of the West and of Western characters, and he left us a legacy with this book that can never be topped. That's coming from a man who reads Kirby Jonas's novels on audio tape. I enjoy Kirby Jonas's books to no end, and I know of no better author, but Jack Schaefer's "SHANE" is a book for anyone to strive to match. It is an all-time classic that I would put hand in hand with Kirby Jonas's DEATH OF AN EAGLE. It's a shame anyone ever has to feel like they're "forced" to read such a tremendous book as Shane.

Rating:
Summary: incomparable
Review: He was clean-shaven and his face was lean and hard and burned from high forehead to firm,
tapering chin. His eyes seemed hooded in the shadow of the hat's brim. He came closer, and I
could see that this was because the brows were drawn in a frown of fixed and habitual alertness.
Beneath them the eyes were endlessly searching from side to side and forward, checking off every
item in view, missing nothing. As I noticed this, a sudden chill, I could not have told why, struck
through me there in the warm and open sun.

Well, we all know why that chill ran through little Bob as Shane rode up to the Starrett homestead in the Wyoming Territory in the summer of 1889, because Shane was a lethal, albeit reluctant, gunslinger. This slender American classic tells the story, familiar to every cultured American from the great George Stevens' movie (1953), of how Shane, fleeing a mysterious but obviously violent past, was befriended by the Starretts and stayed on to help them fight off the predatory intentions of the valley's big rancher and his evil henchmen. It is a story that is central to the American mythos.

The great Westerns penetrate deep within the American psyche; they strike a chord that lies somewhere within our national character, just waiting to be plucked. I believe that their unique power derives from a truly elemental facet of democracy--that in order for men to enjoy the freedom that a democracy allows, they must be able to depend on the fundamental goodness of their fellow men. An unyielding, self enforcing morality is a prerequisite for a political system based on liberty; men are unwilling to limit the coercive power of government when they live in fear of one another.

Certainly the Western and the code of the West represent a sanitized and romanticized view of the Frontier and the men who tamed it, but it is a romance that serves the democratic purpose. These morality tales are instructive and aspirational. Of course men like Shane are archetypes in a kind of a national myth making:

There were sharp hidden hardnesses in him. But these were not for us. He was dangerous as
mother had said. But not to us as father too had said. And he was no longer a stranger. He was a
man like a father in whom a boy could believe in the simple knowing that what was beyond
comprehension was still clean and solid and right.

This is a little boy's impossible view of a hero, but here we see that the character of Joe Starrett is equally important. Joe Starrett is a simple sod farmer, but he is kind and decent and honest and courageous, the equal of Shane in every respect except for speed on the draw. Joe is the true yeoman hero of this tale and one of the duties that Shane performs is to demonstrate this fact to young Bob (and to us).

Stories like Shane are a product of a time when Americans genuinely believed in democratic ideals and in the American Dream. They express our native confidence that we can produce men who will measure up these standards. It is no coincidence that the Western died in the mid-60's along with the sense of confidence in our national purpose. It is also unsurprising that it was Ronald Reagan, that hero of myriad Westerns, who stanched the bleeding and made people believe again, however briefly.

Here is just one other example of the instructive nature of these stories. This is Shane, teaching Bob to shoot:

"Listen, Bob. A gun is just a tool. No better and no worse than any other tool, a shovel--or an axe
or a saddle or a stove or anything. Think of it always that way. A gun is as good--and as bad--as
the man who carries it. Remember that."

Think of the level of personal responsibility that this attitude assumes. Contrast it with the near fascist drive to abolish gun rights today. The underlying argument of the forces of gun control is that guns are evil in and of themselves, regardless of the men who wield them. This is part and parcel of the Democrat myth of the '90s. Which do you think is more likely to foster good citizenship, holding guns responsible for violence or holding men responsible?

As for me, I choose the classic Westerns and the democratic ideals that they convey, over the moral relativism that permeates our current culture.

GRADE: A+