Pride of Tyson

By Max Brand

Book Overview

Fleeing the life of a New York aristocrat, Henry Tyson blazes a trail to the land of lawless renegades and rustlers, double-dealing gamblers and backshooting gringos to live the untamed life of a... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0843941138
• ISBN13: 9780843941135
• Release Date: January 1996
• Publisher: Leisure Books
• Length: 315 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 7.0" x 1.0" x 4.5"

Customer Reviews

A very subtle atypical western

I say atypical in the sense that this isn't a violent, gun-slinging western. Of course, within the whole genre, few stories actually are real violent gun-slingers, but for some reason people tend to think that a "good western" is a Clint Eastwood kind of constant-killing story. Admittedly, when I read westerns, that's actually what I prefer - a real frontier justice, shoot-them-until-they're-dead-and-then-kill-them-some-more knid of story, and I bought this book thinking it would be the same. Why did I think so? Becaause of the blurb on the back cover. Yes it has violence, and some gunslinging, but golly, it's not the most important part of the story, and, also by golly, I really, really liked it anyway.It's a pretty darn good story of a "wild west" that is in process of being tamed - the story centers around the main character who is an engineer in charge of building a damn, and the labor struggles he has with the mexican laborers, and, how could it be otherwise? the struggles he has with the woman he really loves who happens to be the sister of a rich boy the main character met many years before who is now working for the main character as a common laborer because he is eschewing his rich, east-coast upbringing in order to discover what it is to be a man.Now, in the realm of books about what-it-means-to-be-a-man, this is not one of the highest literary achievements, but it does pretty darn well, and I'm quite impressed with it.I'm prety in comparison with the generation that grew up with Max Brand, too, but I loved reading the book. I was compelled to keep turning pages because I liked the characters, and because the story was very interesting and written well enough. It is not a book with "impressive" writing skills (i.e., exciting metaphors, similes, allusions, symbolism), but it is an exciting read. It is very close to being great, but doesn't quite make it, and I say that because the author, while writing very well, is not writing in what I would call an "artistic" way - a way that makes us rethink who we are as people, as individuals, etc., and he does not write in a way that excites us with his creative and original use of words - because he isn't creative or original. Brand is still awfully darn compellnig, though, as an author, and this book is recommended, even to those who (like me) actually prefer our westerns to be full of shooting, killing, violence, and black-and-white senses of justice.