The Streak

© 1937 by Max Brand

Occasionally, avid reader that I am, I stumble across a novel whose simplistic beauty and perfection qualifies it to be something of a Platonic Form. Such a novel is The Streak, a neat and tidy accomplishment from the pen of Max Brand that the old philosopher himself might rubber-stamp to the aether world as the Form of the Western Novel. Now, other Westerns might be better, indeed I assume there are scores of better Westerns that readers better acquainted with the genre could point out to me. But this bit of philosophic geekiness was the first thing that came to my mind sitting down to review this novel.

What more praise can I give a novel? I suppose a novel can change one’s life substantially; I’m not going that far with this book. But it hits all my criteria for a good tale: it pulled me in, made me forget the job and the bills and the to-do lists and such, kept me turning the pages to see what would happen next. I liked the characters, their actions and words made sense, and the plot moved logically forward without any forced suspensions of disbelief required.

Okay – enough of the literary eggheadry. How about this: Hey Hollywood! Make this a movie!

The Streak is a kindler, gentler Western, yet still retains that rough, edge-of-civilization nastiness and brutality so unfortunately common to frontier life at the time. I imagined a youngish Jimmy Stewart in the role of our protagonist, Jim Terrance, “Blondy” to his friends Buck McGuire and Bill Roan. Fed up and bored with ranch life, the trio decides to split up and travel about for a year, then meet up and compare adventures.

Year goes by; Bill and Buck ain’t done much to be honest. Blondy said he was going out west to Jasper Canyon to see what’s what, but he hasn’t returned. So the boys head on out and soon discover that their old friend is now “The Streak,” a gunslinger with veins of ice who’s rounded up a half-dozen undesirables, who’s tamed the untameable stallion Rocket, who’s successfully wooed the beautiful daughter of one of Jasper’s most powerful families – and who’s now been accused of cold-blood murdering the wealthiest power broker in the canyon.

Only none of it’s true, as Blondy swears, and no one believes. He’s just been at the right place at the right time, and things just happen to, er, happen for him. A victim of happy circumstances. And good-natured gossip. The entire canyon of Jasper believes him to be the great man in the white hat, riding up out of the dust to solve all the town’s problems, to fix all the wrongs.

Did he murder the miser Philip Coles? Can he outmaneuver the posse sent to track him down? How will “The Streak” face the ruthless psychopathic gunslinger Calico Charlie, sent to gun him down for a bounty? How can Blondy untangle himself from this gloriously false image the people of Jasper County have built upon him? I tell you, it’s classic black-and-white Western cinema. I think I actually envisioned the novel in black-and-white while reading it! The 178 yellowed pages turned fast – I read it in about four hours partly because I took my time and enjoyed it. Will I remember plot details and character names a year from now? Maybe, maybe not. But considering I could’ve spent those four hours watching mindless teevee I am the better man because of it.

Grade: solid A. Will check out more of Max Brand’s work as I come across it.

A note about the author: Max Brand was one of many pen names for the extremely prolific writer Frederick Schiller Faust (now that’s a name that I’m not convinced needs a pen name). Brand wrote about 500 novels and almost the same amount of short stories, often serialized in magazines (as The Streak was). Wikipedia estimates his total output at something like 25 to 30 million words. To compare, the entire five-and-a-half year to-date run of Recovering Hopper holds something like 750,000 words – about three percent of Brand’s total. Wikipedia also states that he wrote so frantically that a 12,000 word weekend was not uncommon. That’s about two weeks output for me when I wrote my two unpublished novels.

But most notably, Brand enlisted in the armed forces in his late 40s at the outbreak of World War II to serve as a front-line reporter. This despite poor health for nearly two decades (he had a heart attack in 1921). In 1944, a few days shy of his 52nd birthday, covering the fighting in Italy, he was killed by shrapnel.