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A review by twilliamson
Riders of the Purple Sage by Zane Grey
4.0
Grey's 1912 novel Riders of the Purple Sage is probably a prime example of what I would expect from a Western: horse riders, gunfights, funny accents, and romantic notions of masculinity recovered from working a hostile landscape into hospitable condition. Grey's West is a world inhabited by larger-than-life characters whose fates are intricately connected by melodramatic twists and whose landscapes seem to exist somewhere between reality and the painter's vision.
Riders is a romance, though, in a more classical sense. Grey cannot help himself from expressing his admiration for the West, and his romantic notions seep into every bit of his prose. From sweeping plains of purple sage to hidden paradises tucked in the canyons of Utah, Grey juxtaposes the idyllic West with the vicissitudes of human vice, associating virtue with virginal land and vice with unnatural human politicking.
The politicking in question pertains to the corruptive elements of the Mormon faith, and Grey is fairly unapologetic here: he deliberately points out that, while Mormonism may be a true and just faith to some, human will to power will always corrupt institutions of power, and thus his Mormon characters are unscrupulous villains hell-bent on the consumption of both land and man. Through Jane Withersteen, Grey's protagonist, the author dives into what separates a good Mormon from a bad one, and through Lassiter, Jane's romantic interest, Grey shows that a virtuous Gentile can often be more just than a corrupt Mormon--and that religion, in the case of Mormonism, is just another tool the corrupt use in their lust for power and privilege.
Human politics aside, Grey also imbibes his story with melodrama and romance, such that his novel feels less like a rootin', tootin', cowboy shootin' novel of gunslinging action than it does rustic romance. For Grey, his women are distinctly feminine, his men distinctly and ruggedly masculine (when they're the heroes, of course), and they're inevitably drawn to each other such that they each can only accentuate the gendered performances of the other. This is probably the one aspect that has aged most poorly in the novel, although Grey does find some ways to subvert these expectations on occasion. This is by no means a transgressive novel, but Grey does at least make an attempt to inspect the ways in which our social situations can reflect on our own gender performances.
What I loved about the book is its prose (even if he overuses words like "purple" and "sage" and "purple sage" and "riders" and "riders of the purple sage"), its themes, its philosophical questions about religion and our duty to it, and its action. What I didn't like was the constant romanticism, or its absolutely god-awful dialogue (Fay, the child, being the absolute fucking worst).
Nevertheless, it's easy to see why this book is a classic. I think Grey deserves his accolades, if using this book were to serve as the sole representation of his ability. It's far from a perfect book, but it connects where it needs to. I think it's a worthy read.
Riders is a romance, though, in a more classical sense. Grey cannot help himself from expressing his admiration for the West, and his romantic notions seep into every bit of his prose. From sweeping plains of purple sage to hidden paradises tucked in the canyons of Utah, Grey juxtaposes the idyllic West with the vicissitudes of human vice, associating virtue with virginal land and vice with unnatural human politicking.
The politicking in question pertains to the corruptive elements of the Mormon faith, and Grey is fairly unapologetic here: he deliberately points out that, while Mormonism may be a true and just faith to some, human will to power will always corrupt institutions of power, and thus his Mormon characters are unscrupulous villains hell-bent on the consumption of both land and man. Through Jane Withersteen, Grey's protagonist, the author dives into what separates a good Mormon from a bad one, and through Lassiter, Jane's romantic interest, Grey shows that a virtuous Gentile can often be more just than a corrupt Mormon--and that religion, in the case of Mormonism, is just another tool the corrupt use in their lust for power and privilege.
Human politics aside, Grey also imbibes his story with melodrama and romance, such that his novel feels less like a rootin', tootin', cowboy shootin' novel of gunslinging action than it does rustic romance. For Grey, his women are distinctly feminine, his men distinctly and ruggedly masculine (when they're the heroes, of course), and they're inevitably drawn to each other such that they each can only accentuate the gendered performances of the other. This is probably the one aspect that has aged most poorly in the novel, although Grey does find some ways to subvert these expectations on occasion. This is by no means a transgressive novel, but Grey does at least make an attempt to inspect the ways in which our social situations can reflect on our own gender performances.
What I loved about the book is its prose (even if he overuses words like "purple" and "sage" and "purple sage" and "riders" and "riders of the purple sage"), its themes, its philosophical questions about religion and our duty to it, and its action. What I didn't like was the constant romanticism, or its absolutely god-awful dialogue (Fay, the child, being the absolute fucking worst).
Nevertheless, it's easy to see why this book is a classic. I think Grey deserves his accolades, if using this book were to serve as the sole representation of his ability. It's far from a perfect book, but it connects where it needs to. I think it's a worthy read.