Riders of the Purple Sage

Rating:
Summary: More purple than sage, but worth reading
Review: If you are not an aficionado of the Western novel but would like to sample the genre, then you should try one or more of the three great classics; Jack Schaefer's "Shane", Owen Wister's "The Virginian" , and this novel by Zane Grey. Of the three, "Shane" has the most literary merit and is the only one with claims to being great literature. "The Virginian" is often regarded as the first true representative of the genre, establishing as it does many of the great archetypal characters and incidents of Western myth, and "Riders of the Purple Sage" remains the best-selling Western.

"Riders" has two very remarkable features. The first is the surprising complexity and mythic depth of the story. There is for example, a Garden of Eden theme, with two of the characters isolated for an extended time in a lush wilderness. This is so strikingly like the Emil Zola novel "La Faute de l'Abbe Mouret" (The Abbe Mouret's Sin) that one wonders if Grey had read and been inspired by that work. Interwoven with this is an Oedipal theme. If all of this sounds a bit much for a cowboy yarn, I can only say that it really is all there.

The other remarkable thing about the book is its attitude toward the Mormon religion. The hero is an avowed "killer of Mormons". The LDS church is depicted as essentially brutal and tyrannical. This, I suppose, reflects a prejudice of the time, but I wonder how present-day members of that church regard this novel.

It has to be said that Grey is not a great writer and in particular, he cannot do dialogue. In fact, the dialogue in the first few pages is so appalling that I nearly gave up on the book there and then. However, I'm glad I stuck with it. It is such a fine and strange story and has such a wonderful sense of place.

Rating:
Summary: Riders of the Purple Sage is a good read!
Review: In Riders of the Purple Sage, Zane Grey takes the reader to the small Mormon town in Utah called Cottonwoods. The novel is set in the 1870's. The novel is centered on the life of Jane WIthersteen, whose father was the founder and center of the town. Jane faces many troubles in Cottonwoods. The main one is that her cattle have been stolen by Oldring and his gang. Another is that Jane is pressured by the townspeople because she allows Gentiles to live there. She is torn between her feelings and her religion until a stranger, Lassiter, comes riding into town searching for the answers to a secret that only Jane knows the answer to.

Jane is the main character in the book. This book is different because most westerns do not center around the life of a woman. Most westerns are focused on the rough, tough, cowboy who shoots people and lives on the edge to survive. Jane is different. Her father founded the town she lives in and she keeps the town going. She is like the head of the town. She owns almost everything in the town and the landscape around it. She is very wealthy and has no biases. She likes who she likes because of who they are, not what their religion is, like the rest of the town does. The town hates that she acts like that. Jane takes Lassiter in and answers his questions about the secret. I really like that the author uses a woman in this novel because it gives a whole different perspective to a western. Most westerns focus on the cowboy and his journeys, but this book focuses on a woman, Jane, throughout the book and the troubles she encounters living in the West. It gives us a perspective of what women may have been like in the West. It still has the rough, tough cowboy, but he is not the only focus in the book. There is more happening than just the journey of a cowboy.

This book was also a pleasure to read because it does a good job of describing the landscape around Cottonwoods and in the sage. Some westerns give the reader an idea of the landscape, but this book focuses on the landscape and uses it in the book. For instance, Venters travels into the sage and hides behind the rock and in holes in the mountains and terrain around him. The landscape is used throughout the book when the characters are faced with problems such as the one described above with Venters. The landscape helped to hide him. I think it was clever to bring the landscape in and use it as part of the story. Alot of westerns do not use the landscape, they just describe it to give the reader a setting and an idea of the landscape in the book.

The book is a typical western though, because Lassiter is a typical cowboy. He has a deep secret and is in search of answers to that secret. He is a stranger that comes riding into town. He sleeps in the sage under the stars and will not sleep inside. He is on a mission and is not going to let anything or anyone get in his way. Most westerns have the cowboy meet a woman as in this story.

Overall, I think this is a good book for all sorts of readers. Zane Grey is a good writer who includes aspects for all kinds of readers. Riders of the Purple Sage is an action pact, mystery solving, all around good book for anyone who is in the mood for a western.

Rating:
Summary: surprised by Great Literature
Review: No wonder this book started the whole western Genre. It is great literature! Not only does it rivet your attention, but it also asks and confronts meaty philosophical and ethical questions through the lives of its protagonists (e.g. "what do you do when your faith seems to require you to do evil in its name?")
Grey gets a little wordy in his descriptions and his characters sometimes seem a little too too. but this will hold your attention and leave you feeling like you've done more than simply fill your mind with candy.

Rating:
Summary: reveiw of riders of the purple sage
Review: RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE An american western By Zane Grey 280 pp.New York Penguin Books 9.95 This book from Zane Grey embodies the american west almost perfectly. There is a homesteading woman that needs help, a dogooder cowboy, a mysterious gunslinger, and an array of villains that range from rustlers to officials of the mormon church. Almost every western archetype ever used shows up in this book except the town drunk and the almost always present indian. It's a great relief not to see the indian used as a scape goat once again in a western. Originally published in nineteen twelve this book helped set the tone for and developed character archetypes for the entire western genera. What exactly makes up the western genera and why did it happen. The western genera is full of larger than life heros who's only flaw might be an overzealous for bring a bad guy to justice and an inability to speak to a woman. The heroin in these stores is usually a single homesteading woman with a farm or land to protect. The heroin almost always looks to the good guy for support and by the end of the story they have come to depend on each other and generally ride of into the sunset together. The bad guy in the typical western usually has some reason for forcing the heroin into something she doesn't want to do. Examples of this are unwanted manage, selling or leaving her property, or he puts her in danger (usually the indian). The hero will more often than not already know and dislike the villain, or sometimes the villain is made an enemy because he is doing something to the heroin. In some cases the villain comes to town looking to call out the hero and the heroin isn't involved much if at all. One or a few of these situations in play add wide open spaces, horses and guns and you've got yourself a western The story is situated Utah and the description of the landscape is beautiful. Grey utilizes his setting, the story isn't just set out on the plains of utah because it seemed like a good place to put it. With all of the changes in landscape that occur in this book the characters have endless places to explore and hide. The part of the book that appealed to me the most was the character of the gunslinger lassiter. Of all of the westerns that I have ever read lassiter probably has the strongest presence of any cowboy character that I have ever come across in my reading. he dresses in black from head to toe and gives the impression of being an unthinking tool of justice that exists to fight for what he feels is right and destroy anything he feels is evil. The character of lasiter and the image that he is given especially early on in the book reminds me of my favorite hard nosed western hero of all time. The Gunslinger Roland from Steven Kings book The Gunslinger. I feel that this book is almost a kind of surreal sequel to Riders of the Purple Sage, Both mysterious gunslingers clad entirely in black are on a quest for revenge following a mysterious man that had ruined there life and the lives of the people around them. Stephen kings version of lasiter is a much more violent man in a much more violent land. This may just be a sign of the times seeing that Greys book and kings book have about seventy years between there publishing dates. Riders Of The Purple Sage is much more unpredictable than the average western. The characters in this book develop differently than average western characters because of the setting and plot twists in the story. The characters in the book are amazingly much less static than the average characters in a western. The story is made much more interesting by the characters ability to change throughout the story. Making it a book that is fun to read from cover to cover. As westerns go this book not only fits the genera perfectly but adds a couple of different twists and is entertaining through the entire book.

Rating:
Summary: Not the Western I'd Expected
Review: The lovely Jane Withersteen, Mormon lady rancher on the Utah borderlands is saved, in the nick of time, from the attentions of the grim Mormon elder Tull, and his minions, by the appearance, from out of the mysterious sage, of a gunman called Lassiter. This man is renowned in Mormon country as a Mormon hater and killer and Jane finds she is strangely drawn to this oddly heroic figure who saves her and her hired hand from the Mormons. These men have come to enforce their will on her by driving off her non-Mormon cowpokes and causing her to marry Elder Tull. But Jane is a convinced Mormon and cannot believe ill of Tull and his cronies so she makes it her business to persuade Lassiter to lay aside his guns and hatred of the Mormons so that he will do them no more harm. In the meantime her hired hand, Venters, freed by Lassiter's timely appearance, goes off into the sage, to save himself, and there encounters the mysterious rustlers who have been plaguing the local ranchers (and now Jane) and learns their deadly secret.

Who Lassiter really is and why he hates the Mormons gradually comes out as Jane works her wiles on him, but Tull and his boys, and especially the local bishop, Dyer, only see that Jane is in disobedience to the Church and their will by allowing Lassiter to stay on. Accordingly they continue to press her via the community, causing all her Mormon hands to leave her and all other awful things to occur.

RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE is a somewhat strange book and exceedingly harsh on the Mormons (who may or may not have been, as portrayed rather convincingly here, a closed and scheming "cult" in their earliest days) and it is written in somewhat purplish prose (reminiscent of the sage it persistently describes). There are long tiresome sections of descriptive text about the weather and, repeatedly, about the sage and the rest of the landscape which can be grating but which does have an hypnotic effect after awhile.

The point of view, interestingly enough, is highly subjective as we constantly see what the main characters are seeing, especially the action as it is happening to them -- a very effective device as it creates an illusion of immediacy and the sense that you are right there with the people in the tale.

But there is not a great deal of action until the end and the characters are rather thinly drawn, especially Jane who seems so good and intelligent and yet, oddly, cannot see the darkness surrounding her in her Mormon community. The cowpoke Venters is hard to get a fix on and Lassiter, himself, seems overly passive and too good for the gunman he is said to be for much of the tale. Lots of coincidences too, drive this plot.

And yet, for all of this I liked the book. Though dragging here and there, I wanted to finish it and, indeed, it ended well if a bit melodramatically.

My copy had a foreword in it which notes the narrative's repressed sexuality throughout and I think this is accurate. It's hard to believe that two young people falling in love with one another could find themselves trapped for weeks in a hidden canyon and never reach out physically for the other. Maybe it was just the literary convention of the time. But the narrative, the descriptions of the landscape and the sage are all fraught with sexual energy and metaphor. But it is also this suppressed tension and almost surreal sense of immediacy, this dreamlike quality, which gives the tale its special power. Not particularly original or even moving, it is yet engrossing and compelling.

I find I am willing to finish fewer and fewer books these days as I grow impatient with their authors. But this one held me to the end. For all its flaws and idiosyncrasies, it worked.

Rating:
Summary: A superb "theatre of the mind" audiobook experience.
Review: The St. Charles Players turn their considerable talents to creating an Audio Theatre production of Zane Grey's classic western tale Riders Of The Purple Sage in this two cassette, 165 minute, multi-cast dramatization. Here the listener will thrill to the echos of gunfire on the western plan, loyal riders for the brand, a stranger who rides to the sound of the guns, beliefs and passions intertwined with betrayal and violence. Zane Grey was a master storyteller who set the standards for the western novel. This Monterey Soundworks production is flawlessly recorded and offers up a true "theatre of the mind" experience that offers a true saga of enchanting excitement and intrigue set in the days of a mythic western frontier.

Rating:
Summary: Predictable, but engaging
Review: This book could be the script for an Aaron Spelling Western Soap Opera. Grey's women characters are supposed to be strong, but their beliefs never seem to match their actions. His research on Mormons (if he did any) must have come from a really disgruntled former member of the religion. Taken for what it is, a romantic old western, it's good entertainment. You'll roll your eyes, but you'll keep reading.

Rating:
Summary: Very interesting
Review: This is the only western I've ever read; I'm mostly into classical literature, science writing, and non-fiction, but I asked friends for a book rec in the field, and they said read this one and the two Thomas Berger novels about Little Big Man.

The novel is interesting in that it's not a stereotypical western story. The main character is a woman who owns a large cattle ranch and is basically the mainstay of the little town of Cottonwoods, a Mormon town on the Utah border, sort of like the Cartwright family was in the popular TV western series, only in this case, Lorne Green is replaced by a female lead. The novel also is unusual in that it shows her struggling against the tyranny and even criminality of her fellow Mormon ranchers, who don't like the fact of a beautiful, wealthy, but unattached woman, who wields considerable influence in the local town despite their best attempts to undermine her.

One the things that sparked my interest in the novel was hearing an English prof in a radio interview on National Public Radio talk about some of the scholarship that is being devoted to genres like the western novel. She was working herself on the books of Karl May (The Legend of the Llano Estacado), Owen Wister (The Virgianian), and Zane Grey.

One of the interesting things she had to say had to do with Grey's vivid prose descriptions of the western landscape. She said Grey's prose sensualized the landscape, giving it an almost masculine sensuality and almost sexuality. I'm about halfway into the book, and I can say that the rugged countryside of sheer, rock-walled canyons, arid plateaus and valleys, and wide-open spaces of this part of Utah are vividly described by Grey and serve, not just as a dramatic backdrop against which the novel's events take place, but as a palpable force for good or evil by itself...I think the book has a strong plot with a lot of powerful elements going for it: interesting characters (including a dangerous and mysterious but chivalrous gunslinger), a sympathetic main character who struggles and triumphs against society's evils (not just a few western-style bad guys), beautiful and evocative descriptions of the landscape, and, as the backcover says it, "hairsbreadth escapes."

One last interesting thing is that, if I remember correctly, Zane Grey was actually a Pennsylvania dentist who failed in his attempt to set up a profitable dental practice in New York. He wanted to get into writing westerns, and when his first novel was a big success, his writing career was launched and he never looked back. Riders of the Purple Sage is probably his most famous book, and despite it's not being a typical western novel, it has become a classic in its field.

Rating:
Summary: Great summer read
Review: Western novels, movies, TV series have not been popular in recent years. It is good family entertainment, particularly US history.

Having never read a Zane Grey book, I was pleasantly rewarded with an excellent read. There should be a revival of Zane Grey literature.

Rating:
Summary: One of the most wonderful books ever!
Review: What a delightful story -- promise rises from the ashes of misfortune. All is not lost. There is a future and it's bright and clear in the valley. I understand there is a sequel to Rider of the Purple Sage and would like to read it. If anyone has information, please let me know. Happy Zane Grey reading to all fans!