The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance by
Dorothy M. Johnson
The swamper’s job at the Prairie Belle was
not disgraceful until Rance Foster made it so.
This brief tale was the inspiration for the film. I’ll
admit the film is one of the few Ford/Wayne team-ups that leaves me a little cold.
Likely my fault.
I always found Jimmy Stewart’s resentment hard to reconcile,
but the source story has no such issues. Interior motivations are clear, adult,
unromantic and make for fine reading.
“If you’d asked me,” Barricune mused, I could’ve
helped you. But you didn’t want no helping. A man shouldn’t be ashamed to ask
somebody that knows better than him.”
Sparse writing from a keen observer.
The Hanging Tree by Dorothy M. Johnson
“Now I wonder who got strung up on that tree,” remarked
his partner. Wonder Rusell was Joe Frail’s age—thirty—but not of his disposition.
Russell was never moody, and he required little from the world he lived in. He
wondered aloud about a thousand things but did not require answers to his questions.
A wonderful novella full of human truth and the brooding
uncertainties inside the facades most of us assemble each morning for the
world.
The ending may be a bit pat and abrupt, but it works.
What works even better, the ride along the way inside
the skulls of real-life humans uncertain in their own skins no matter what they
present to the world.
