Charles Portis noted that actors in the 1969 “True Grit” had trouble with the “intentionally stilted dialogue.” (Portis did not write the screenplay, but he was on set, and did write the final scene between Mattie and Rooster in the family graveyard, which is not in the book.)
Says Donna Tartt (narrator of the audio book):
Those homely old American voices — by turns formal, tragicomic and haunting — are crystallized on every page of his work, with the immediacy one sometimes sees in a daguerreotype 150 years old. One would have to return to the 19th century, and Twain, to find another author who captured those particular cadences as well as he.
I wish I’d read these books when I was younger and less jaded, but I am going to be the curmudgeon on this thread.
True Grit
I really wanted to like this more. Mattie’s got a great voice and her dry wit can be very funny. But about half way through, I just got bored and wanted it to be over already. (Interestingly I watched the more recent version of the movie and fell asleep exactly where I got bored with the book too.) The over the top finale with Mattie irritated me as well. I did like that Rooster actually got to show he had “true grit” by saving Mattie and thought it was an interesting an unexpected choice for the author to show that despite that one episode where he was his best self, he just reverted back to Rooster as usual.
Shane
All the metaphors and symbolism seemed so obvious. Miriam? Joseph? The angelic Shane? Oof. And I’m not sure that I like the message, “Once a gunslinger, always a gunslinger?” I read the critical edition and skimmed through some of the essays. They included Pauline Kael’s review of the movie from her collection of movie reviews, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. which summed up my feelings perfectly. “The Western was better before it became so self-importantly self-conscious”.
How is it June 2nd? I read Shane first and then True Grit. I enjoyed Shane. I think I read it in junior high…? I never saw the movie. True Grit falls into the just okay category for me. I didn’t love it, but not disappointed that I read it. This was my first read of it and I have not seen the movie. I will try to take some time later to look through the questions and try to add more.
@mathmom, the “Marian-Joe / Mary-Joseph” symbolism never occurred to me. Maybe that’s why my very Catholic parents liked the movie so much.
Occasionally, I thought about Lonesome Dove as I was reading True Grit and Shane – only because I do like Westerns, and I love that one. So I couldn’t help thinking about that longer, more arduous, trek across the 19th century West, as Mattie was engaged in her simpler journey.
Do those of you who feel “meh” about Shane and True Grit feel the same way about Lonesome Dove (if you read it, that is, either as part of this book club or at some other time)? Or does it fall into another category because it is so different in style, characterizations, and complexity?
Well … I’m not “meh” about either True Grit or Shane but then again I have a history with both. However, Lonesome Dove is coming with me should I ever be sent to a desert island or end up in solitary confinement. Totally different categories (and while I really like True Grit and Shane neither is coming with me for the long haul.)
I haven’t read many westerns, unless you count stuff like the Little House books! But I did take a movie class with a professor whose expertise was Westerns. I remember loving Stagecoach, High Noon, The Searchers, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. I remember liking Lonesome Dove very much, though not maybe desert island much. LOL.
@mathmom “ The over the top finale with Mattie irritated me as well. ”
I enjoyed True Grit, until the the ending, Rooster racing to save Mattie, killing the horse to get her medical help. I agree that entire sequence, snakes in the pit, irritated me, too.
Loved Lonesome Dove, a sweeping epic, with bold, lovable characters. It swept me away, a truly American saga, it had soul.
I don’t want to open a Pandora’s box, about gun violence, but here in south Jersey we have Philadelphia tv stations, the daily horrific gun violence, is so depressing.
And, I don’t mean to throw a political wet blanket on our Wild West selections, but it bothered me throughout the book,
I know, I know it was written at a different time, but I read this during our epidemic of gun violence, and couldn’t shake it.
But….it’s a western. Gosh agorry!, as Bob Starrett would say. What’s a western without venomous snakes, the demise of a beloved horse and hard riding to save a comrade’s life? Those are elements of the genre, and I think Portis employs them skillfully. I would have been disappointed if our three heroes (anti-heroes?) had calmly dispatched Tom Chaney, tipped their hats to one another and trotted off home. Whether it’s John Dunbar having Cisco shot out from under him in Dances with Wolves, or Sean being bitten by cottonmouths in Lonesome Dove, or Molly galloping madly across the prairie holding the dying stranger in The Virginian, the harsh, wild, and yes, over-the-top, experiences of these cowboys (and cowgirls) are what make up the fabric of these stories.
Absolutely, I hear you as regards gun violence. And even though the books were written in an earlier time, and set in a still earlier time, it doesn’t make the gun violence in them any easier to take. But it did make me reflect on how much of our modern gun-saturated society can trace its roots directly back to our Old West gun-saturated past. Some of the arguments haven’t changed an iota:
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.
Sorry, Shane, I’m not buying it. Sounds like an NRA argument. And that’s as political as I’m going to get, lest the mods shut me down!
I actually thought that was one of Shane’s better lines!
I am actually less bothered by the guns in Westerns than the attitudes about Native Americans and the premise that white people were more deserving of the land.
My daughter just finished True Grit for the first time.
“What did you think of the ending?” I asked.
“Action-packed!”
“Maybe too much?”
“Nah. The way I see it, if you’re going to fall into a pit of rattlesnakes, there might as well be bats and skeletons, too.”
That’s the spirit!
The gun violence made her wince, but it was Rooster’s treatment of Little Blackie during the pony’s final ride that brought her to tears.
Yes, this country has a horrendous history. Fletcher and the homesteaders are fighting over land that’s not even theirs to claim – probably not far from where the Arapaho and Shoshone tribes were displaced onto the Wind River Reservation about 10 years prior to the start of the story.
According to SparkNotes re Shane, guns fall into the “Symbols” category:
Guns: Bob notices how strange it is that Shane does not carry a gun. It is surprising for a man to look so dangerous without even having a gun on him. The gun is attached to the stripping away of manhood. Shane, a real man, does not need to carry a gun. Only at the end does he use or touch his gun, and when he does it is only to do the single thing he thinks is most reprehensible. It is not accidental that the only time Shane uses a gun he does something that he believes reflects so poorly on who he is that it calls into question whether or not he is really a man.
I’m kind of meh about Shane, though I enjoyed it as an example of a genre I seldom read. I haven’t finished True Grit, and am not sure I will. Neither Shane nor Mattie feel “real” to me. I haven’t seen either movie.
But I loved Lonesome Dove. That one felt totally different–deeper character development, more complex story, just a fuller novel all around. Though probably not a desert island pick for me.
Speaking of guns, this little passage about them from True Grit made me laugh.
He [Lucky Ned Pepper] said, “Most girls like play pretties, but you like guns, don’t you?”
“I don’t care a thing in the world about guns. If I did I would have one that worked.”
Mattie does have a great voice, and a unique way of talking in abrupt sentences.
The adult Mattie’s voice definitely comes through. I suspect that some of her stern moralism–which is somewhat amusing coming from a 14 year old–is actually her older self, unable to hold back from doing a little preaching now and again.
Both young and old Mattie drive a hard bargain. As a girl, we see it in her negotiations with Stonehill and Rooster Cogburn. In the last chapter, it’s clear she hasn’t changed much in that regard:
I had Rooster’s body removed to Dardanelle on the train. The railroads do not like to cary disinterred bodies in the summertime but I got around paying the premium rate by having my correspondent bank in Memphis work the deed from that end through a grocery wholesaler that did a volume freight business.
It’s funny – she is simultaneously impractical and sentimental (disinterring Rooster’s body and reburying him in her family plot) and hard-headed.
I found the last chapter to be bittersweet. I salute Mattie for hanging on to her independence and pursuing a career at a time when that was virtually unheard of for women. Yet it has come at a cost. There’s no love lost between her and the residents of Dardanelle:
They love to slander you if you have any substance. They say I love nothing but money and the Presbyterian Church and that is why I never married. They think everybody is dying to get married. It is true that I love my church and my bank. What is wrong with that? I will tell you a secret. Those same people talk mighty nice when they come in to get a crop loan or beg a mortgage extension!
At least she seems to have a close relationship with her brother and sister, including some good-hearted teasing by Little Frank. I chuckled at the passive-aggressive sibling digs here:
Little Frank loves fun at the other fellow’s expense and the more he thinks it tells on you the better he loves it. We have always liked jokes in our family and I think they are all right in their place. Victoria likes a good joke herself, so far as she can understand one. I have never held it against either one of them for leaving me at home to look after Mama, and they know it, for I have told them.
Hailee Steinfeld was actually 14 when she played Mattie Ross. Here’s a 1 minute clip for those who have no intention of watching the movie, but would like a glimpse:
I saw this movie in the theater when it first came out and couldn’t understand 90% of what Jeff Bridges was saying. Still can’t.
Giving a little equal time to “Shane,” here’s the “A gun is a tool” clip:
I found the description beneath the clip to be curious. Maybe the scene is the tiniest bit controversial, but “shocking” seems extreme. Here’s a more measured description:
One of the more revered and profound screenplay moments in Shane is a collection of statements centering on the risks and rewards of guns after a teachable moment that read, “A gun is a tool, no better or no worse than any other tool: an axe, a shovel or anything. A gun is as good or as bad as the man using it. Remember that.” There is parallel power in those lines that encapsulates societal and doctrinal challenges still at odds in today’s American landscape. VINTAGE REVIEW: Shane — Every Movie Has a Lesson
I learned this from Wikipedia:
Ladd disliked and was uncomfortable with guns; Shane’s shooting demonstration for Joey required 116 takes.
Thanks for posting the two movie video clips, @Mary13 . I loved Joey’s face when Shane shot the gun! Shane did not look at all like I pictured him in my head. I felt the same about Jeff Bridges as Rooster on the first clip. I assume Jeff Bridges didn’t work because, even though I never saw the movie, John Wayne will always be Rooster Cogburn.
This is what I thought when reading the story. We were hearing Mattie’s memories of the events. I’m guessing a little literary license was included in the retelling.
I read somewhere that the author of Shane thought the same thing about Alan Ladd as Shane, at least at first. He pictured Shane as dark and dangerous, gun or no gun.
I’m surprised there isn’t a discussion question about the relationship between Shane and Marion Starrett. They were in love with each other, correct? They never acted on it, and Joe seemed okay with it, but it was there. Anyone feel it was important to the story? Was it just to make Shane’s charismatic figure even larger?
