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"This could well be one of the best value-for-money books you'll ever try to close a suitcase on" HERALD "Beautiful examples of the genre... A rare treat" THE PRESS (YORK)
THE PRESS (YORK)
"Beautiful examples of the genre... A rare treat"
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
30 of 33 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
As a long term reader and admirer of Leonard I was aware that he had in his early days written a lot of western shorts (including '3.10 to Yuma', the story on which the film was based). However, this collection is a revelation in that it includes a number of stories which in their atmosphere, dialogue, tension and simple humanity rival any other short story writer, including the greats like Kipling.
If you want to know what I mean read the last three stories.
Brian Harris
If you want to know what I mean read the last three stories.
Brian Harris
17 of 19 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Being a long time fan of E.L. It has been a great experience to read his very first stories brought all together in this treasure chest of sparkling jewels of writing. All 30 of them are literary gems.They are all obviously western stories, but all of them glow with the skill and genius that is Elmore Leonard and the genre is irrelavent. Buy it,read it and enjoy....cowboys and Indians don't get better than this or any other short story writing for that matter!
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
(Note: This review is of the Harper paperback edition.)
Published in 2007, the 546-page COMPLETE WESTERN STORIES OF ELMORE LEONARD is a both compendium of the author's early writings and a tribute to an era when cowboys, gunslingers, outlaws, and troublesome redskins dominated both pulp fiction and the black and white television airwaves. For those familiar with and fans of Leonard's contemporary crime fiction, who would've thought he had a previous life as a Western storyteller? That's what intrigued me and compelled me to work my way through this monster volume even though I generally have little interest in sagebrush sagas. (The last Western I read, one in the SACKETT series by Louis L'Amour, was the result of precarious circumstance when I found myself without reading material, and, long previous to that, it was something or other by Larry McMurtry.)
This volume is comprised of thirty-one yarns, the first penned for Argosy magazine in 1951, and the last appearing in 1994 in New Trails, an anthology of Western writers. Twenty-seven of the tales were written between 1951 and 1956. All take place in the Arizona and New Mexico Territories, and most, I gather, are set in the 1870s.
The aggregate cast of characters includes just about all the usual personae one encounters in the genre: hard-working cowpoke, rustler, stage robber, small-time rancher, Army scout, junior cavalry officer, lawman, hidden treasure seeker, drifter, buffalo hunter, and marauding savage. (Um, sorry. In PC-speak, the last one would be "misunderstood and oppressed Native American.") Perhaps the only types that I would've expected to appear but didn't were the shifty gambler concealing an ace and a derringer and the saloon girl of easy virtue with a heart of gold. Intrepid females appear only infrequently, and only then in supporting roles. Also not present on the vast stage is the itinerant quick-draw gunslinger who rides into town eager to enhance his reputation with another notch on his pistol grip - perhaps because such are more a figment of popular myth than actuality.
The first of the volume's storylines are what might be expected considering the time and place, i.e. confrontations between the U.S. Army and/or its civilian scouts and the Apaches. But the plots gradually become more nuanced until they include tensions arising in both burgeoning and failed male-female relationships, and examination of the niches occupied by Whites and Blacks in the social hierarchy of the period.
Almost needless to say, all the stories are mini-morality plays, and perhaps the most satisfying revolve around that old saw: Don't get mad, get even. Perhaps my favorite one in the book has that theme: "Moment of Vengeance."
What I liked most about COMPLETE WESTERN STORIES as a whole was that so many of the tales' outcomes are completely unexpected and the individual characters aren't simply interchangeable cookie-cutter creations slotted-in to complete some formulaic narrative.
Even though all stories in this anthology don't rate five stars, I'm awarding the maximum to the whole because it grandly evokes a genre that is today pretty much neglected.
Published in 2007, the 546-page COMPLETE WESTERN STORIES OF ELMORE LEONARD is a both compendium of the author's early writings and a tribute to an era when cowboys, gunslingers, outlaws, and troublesome redskins dominated both pulp fiction and the black and white television airwaves. For those familiar with and fans of Leonard's contemporary crime fiction, who would've thought he had a previous life as a Western storyteller? That's what intrigued me and compelled me to work my way through this monster volume even though I generally have little interest in sagebrush sagas. (The last Western I read, one in the SACKETT series by Louis L'Amour, was the result of precarious circumstance when I found myself without reading material, and, long previous to that, it was something or other by Larry McMurtry.)
This volume is comprised of thirty-one yarns, the first penned for Argosy magazine in 1951, and the last appearing in 1994 in New Trails, an anthology of Western writers. Twenty-seven of the tales were written between 1951 and 1956. All take place in the Arizona and New Mexico Territories, and most, I gather, are set in the 1870s.
The aggregate cast of characters includes just about all the usual personae one encounters in the genre: hard-working cowpoke, rustler, stage robber, small-time rancher, Army scout, junior cavalry officer, lawman, hidden treasure seeker, drifter, buffalo hunter, and marauding savage. (Um, sorry. In PC-speak, the last one would be "misunderstood and oppressed Native American.") Perhaps the only types that I would've expected to appear but didn't were the shifty gambler concealing an ace and a derringer and the saloon girl of easy virtue with a heart of gold. Intrepid females appear only infrequently, and only then in supporting roles. Also not present on the vast stage is the itinerant quick-draw gunslinger who rides into town eager to enhance his reputation with another notch on his pistol grip - perhaps because such are more a figment of popular myth than actuality.
The first of the volume's storylines are what might be expected considering the time and place, i.e. confrontations between the U.S. Army and/or its civilian scouts and the Apaches. But the plots gradually become more nuanced until they include tensions arising in both burgeoning and failed male-female relationships, and examination of the niches occupied by Whites and Blacks in the social hierarchy of the period.
Almost needless to say, all the stories are mini-morality plays, and perhaps the most satisfying revolve around that old saw: Don't get mad, get even. Perhaps my favorite one in the book has that theme: "Moment of Vengeance."
What I liked most about COMPLETE WESTERN STORIES as a whole was that so many of the tales' outcomes are completely unexpected and the individual characters aren't simply interchangeable cookie-cutter creations slotted-in to complete some formulaic narrative.
Even though all stories in this anthology don't rate five stars, I'm awarding the maximum to the whole because it grandly evokes a genre that is today pretty much neglected.
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